Before It was Glenwood South

This is how Ravenscroft School looked in 1972, right after the Glenwood Towers seniors apartment building was built. It had remained virtually unchanged since my school days there in the late 1950s. The buildings were converted to office use shortly after this photo was taken. Below is the view today.

Last week GNR publisher John Morris and I attended the Blogger Bash at the Edge Office on Glenwood Ave. Afterwards, we stopped in at a nondescript bar on Tucker Street around the corner from the Cafe Helios coffee shop.

As we were sitting on the outdoor deck sipping our brew, engaged in heady conversation, John asked me if I remembered Glenwood South when the strip was primarily a commercial and industrial area. (He relocated to Raleigh just four years ago, so he knows the area only as the entertainment district it has become in recent years.)

Read more »

The first NCSU library was located on the second floor of Holladay Hall, but this is the location of the first D.H. Hill Library. In 1926 this building was constructed and named in honor of one time librarian and later president of NCSU,  Daniel Harvey Hill, Jr. The senior D.H. Hill was a Confederate general during the Civil War and brother-in-law to Stonewall Jackson, considered by many to be one of the most talented military leaders in United States history.

Read more »

Tucked away in the woods behind a nondescript building on Raleigh’s busy Oberlin Road is a long-forgotten chunk of inside the beltline real estate. I am speaking of the old Oberlin Village Cemetery.

Few people are aware of its existence now, but this weedy, three-acre graveyard entangled with ivy is the final resting place for many former residents of the once-thriving African-American Community known as Oberlin.

Read more »