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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I started out with only a Facebook status update and the vague directions “across from the Carmax on Glenwood” to go on. An hour and a half later, I found the Water Garden.

Walking along Glenwood Avenue after it leaves downtown Raleigh, one feels beyond doubt that this is not a place intended for human traffic. Furniture warehouses and car lots sit in misanthropic isolation off of a busy road with no sidewalk. You’re not supposed to walk around here, and if you do, you feel small and lost in a blinding, concrete commercial desert. On foot, you realize how far apart everything is, how much space there is that possibly no one has walked in years.

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(This is an opinion piece I submitted to New Raleigh as part of their discussion on whether or not the Municipal Building should be saved. Read their article for more viewpoints and discussion.)

In mid-March, the Raleigh City Council stalled on the resolution to replace the old Municipal Building with the new Clarence Lightner Public Safety Center. In the past few days, there has been a renewed push in exploring ways to overcome objecting Councillors’ concerns about the cost of the project.

The debates both for and against building the new Lightner Center had valid supporting arguments, but noticeably absent from the debate was the case for preserving the existing structure. That has changed in recent weeks, and I’m going to add my voice to the growing chorus of citizens calling for preservation rather than destruction.

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