Photographing Raleigh’s Fayetteville St. Christmas Decorations

Holiday decorations on Fayetteville Street, Christmas 1965

A few nights ago John Morris and I visited Fayetteville St. and were bedazzled by the glittering Christmas lights lining the street. I reminisced with John about the annual Raleigh Christmas parade which was held at night back in the 1960s (rather than on Saturday morning as it is now). My family would all head downtown for that event, and while Mom went shopping, Dad took my brothers and me to watch the parade. We always staked out the corner at the Olivia Raney Library and Capitol Square. From that vantage point we could enjoy the parade as it made  its way up Hillsboro St., passed in front of the library before heading around the Square and then down Fayetteville St. Afterwards, we would walk down Fayetteville St. to meet up with Mom. I remember being awestruck by the shimmering spectacle of the thousands of colored Christmas lights.

I related to John how I attempted back in 1965 to photograph the view down Fayetteville St. of the Christmas decorations at night. I found, however, that to my dismay, trying to capture all the colored lights on film was beyond the scope of my Kodak Instamatic camera. Ultimately, the photograph ended up among the shuffle of the hundreds of photos I cranked out with my Instamatic back then. I only just recently ran across it again after all these years.

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Not long ago I wrote about the Boylan wye, and described what remains of that former downtown train switchyard and industrial district. Its most prominent relic can be easily seen from the Boylan Ave bridge: a rusted cement hopper towering over the site. But virtually invisible to most observers today is the weed-choked and debris-strewn sunken area that is the footprint of the former Smith Coal and Oil Co. coal yard.

This is a view of a portion of the Boylan wye from the bridge in 1970. The concrete plant is on the left and the coal yard is just right of center, below the two box cars. The present-day photo at the top shows the tracks the boxcars were parked on in 1970. The remnants of the coal yard are just to the right of these tracks.

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The Relocation of Raleigh’s Merrimon-Wynne House

On Saturday movers will relocate the historic Merrimon-Wynne House to a site about two blocks from where it has rested for more than 130 years. This will be the largest structure in Raleigh to be moved since the 3-story, solid brick Raleigh and Gaston  (later, Seaboard) Railroad office building made a similar trip in 1976. (The Seaboard building was relocated to accommodate construction of the Halifax Mall — but that is another story.)

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