Goodnight Raleigh - a look at the art, architecture, history, and people of the city at night
Corner of Jones and Person Streets
On the edge of where Oakwood brushes up against the various institutions of state government lies a beautiful and often overlooked part of Raleigh: North Person Street. The area is one of the oldest parts of the city, and likely has the most diverse array of Victorian architecture.
Edna Metz Wells Park drain, image credit: John Morris
The Raleigh I grew up in was a small dusty, small southern capital where most everyone knew everyone. Part of the circle included the son of the taxidermist at the old Museum of Natural History who imparted to his son a knowledge and appreciation for the natural world. Carl’s decidedly New Orleanian, Charlestonesque flavored rental on North Street provided a locus for our detailed weekend explorations of that world frequently involving Raleigh’s numerous subterranean conduits, local manifestations of urban waterways buried in concrete coast to coast spawned by a now-contested gestalt that nature was an entity to be separated from. This segregation, while bad for the life of streams proved an irresistable benefit to us growing up near downtown Raleigh, illustrated by a chum I found in a storm drain down from Wiley before and after school.
The Bath Building
Two years ago, I declared the structure above, the Bath Building, as the Ugliest in Raleigh. While I had a change of heart not long after writing the article, it’s still pretty high on the ‘ugly’ list. It is the perhaps the most striking and textbook example of the Brutalist style of architecture. Brutalism is characterized by an imposing rectilinear shape, poured concrete, and sparse use of glass and steel as exterior features.
Raleigh has a plethora of these buildings. Most are in the dead zone, the strip of state government buildings around Blount and Salisbury Streets.
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