The last time I photographed the convention center, I focused mainly on the side minus the shimmer wall. This is a view as seen from South Dawson street.

Idlewild Avenue connects to Edenton and is definitely an older part of the city. If you aren’t familiar with it, I should warn you that people may want to talk to you if you drive down it. It looks normal and average enough in the photos, but you may encounter someone waving their arms and walking towards your car. It isn’t a certainty, but has been frequent in my experience.

Many of the surrounding neigborhoods have undergone restoration or revitalization, and are no longer plagued by the drugs and violence that Idlewild has. Neighborhoods one block away are peaceful and calm. In fact, I have friends that live very near this road–It’s how I came to learn of it. Although I warned you of people approaching your car while driving down it, I must say that I didn’t feel in any danger while taking these photos. The recent Raleigh news about Idlewild was of a house that burnt down very recently. I can’t find any more than what was on the nbc17 web site, which wasn’t much at all. The only future for that giant house is to be torn down.

I imagine that just like many of Raleigh’s former run down neighborhoods, this one will also undergo a transformation. It was sort of obvious to me from a question posed to me by a random passerby on Idlewild: “Are you buying up property here?”. A second man asked me if I lived in the house across the street. Seems the word on the street is that property in this area is definitely in demand. There is still the issue of crack dealers and prostitutes, but I imagine that will rapidly decline as more of these houses are renovated, divided, and rented out to higher paying tenants.

This is the home of Clearscapes, located in the Warehouse District. The web site says that

Clearscapes is a multi-disciplinary design firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina that was formed in 1981 when architect, Steven D. Schuster, and sculptor, Thomas H. Sayre, combined their creative talents and energies to design environments for some of North Carolina’s neediest citizens, the severely and profoundly retarded residents of Murdoch Center in Butner, North Carolina. Twenty four years later, the firm has matured to a broad-based, full service design firm comprised of twenty architects, artists, and support personnel with diverse educational, geographic and experiential backgrounds.

In addition to the design studio, the firm maintains a 4,000 square foot shop where material research, mock-up fabrications, and experimentation is done. The firm’s public art is built in the shop as well as components for many of its architectural projects. This facility is unique and extends the firm’s creativity beyond the confines of a traditional architectural firm.

There are several small sculptures and other art pieces around this building that make it one of the most interesting and attractive commercial spaces in all of Raleigh.