Have you ever walked down the cobblestone roads in City Market? Better yet, have you ever ridden a bicycle through those roads? If so, you’re aware of how rough and uncomfortable the path is. There’s a reason: the cobblestones — or more accurately, Belgian Block — are not in their original state. The only two (major) examples left of this once common way of road building were restored incorrectly, resulting in an uneven and bumpy surface.

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On Caswell Square (one of the five original public spaces on the 1792 plan for Raleigh) and adjacent to the Oral Hygiene Building lies an overlooked gem of late Victorian Raleigh architecture; the NC School for the Blind and Deaf. With the destruction of ‘Raleigh’s Own Castle‘ in 1967 and later the Park Hotel in 1975, this structure stands with the former Leonard Medical School building as one of the last two remaining examples of turreted public buildings in the area.

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Squeezed onto a narrow lot between the monolithic Baker Sunday school wing of Christ Church and the five story Capital Apartments on New Bern Avenue is Raleigh’s oldest surviving brick building — the State Bank of North Carolina.  When erected in 1813, it was the only structure on this block. In order to save it from demolition when the Baker wing was built, the venerable old building was moved 100 feet to its current location in 1968.

 

The top photo shows the State Bank in 1966 on its original, solid granite block foundation. The bottom photo shows the building in 2009 at its current site.

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