How places of the past are perfect starting point for building future
This summer, I took my children to Alamance Battleground, the scene of a pre-Revolutionary War skirmish. The conflict’s small scale created a landscape that a child can digest easily, and my boys scouted the field from the Regulators’ high-ground and crouched behind a rock to take aim at Governor Tryon’s “bad guys.”
On the drive back to Raleigh, I attempted to answer a torrent of questions. Once the queries about the actual battle had passed, my 7-year-old took up more abstract contemplation. We covered a lot of ground including the Constitution, the First and Second Amendments, and how our government officials are not above the law. Eventually, he formulated this question, “So the Regulators were like the people at the protests?” He was referring to the various protests we regularly see at the Legislative Building, and, now, because he had visited someplace old, he suddenly understood something new about our current world.
Our old buildings, landscapes and streetscapes, even the modest ones, provide us with so much: proven opportunities for economic development demonstrated in the Raleigh Historic Development Commission’s recent study of preservation’s impact in Raleigh; a sense of place that helps us “buy in” to our city and foster its well-being; and sustainability because the greenest building is the one that’s already built.
But preservation also provides Raleigh with something even more valuable: history-based conversation that leads to understanding and empathy. Old buildings and landscapes are the only historic documents we can walk into. They are the best way for us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, or, more literally, in someone else’s house or neighborhood or place of business or worship. That comprehension and recognition of a perspective different from yours are priceless human experiences that our elected officials and economic leaders should support even though they can’t run a cost-benefit analysis on them.
It’s our collective duty to understand our current political, economic and social climate. That climate affects where our tax dollars go, and understanding it helps us recognize why people respond to the world in certain ways. Learning about our past is how we come to that understanding, and buildings and landscapes give us the perfect starting point.
Look around Raleigh and ask questions. Why do we have two beautiful carousels? Why is there a house on Boylan Avenue that’s facing the wrong way? Why did Dr. Manassas Pope build his house where he built it? What’s that stone hut on Glenwood Avenue at Harvey Street?
A visit to Yates Mill can help one appreciate the bags of cornmeal at the grocery store, but it also can provide an understanding of the state’s geography and agriculture that eventually created cotton mills that led to company towns that are now ghost towns. Today, those job losses are at the root of many conversations in the General Assembly: Learning about Yates Mill can help you understand why politicians talk about job creation.
Sitting in a classroom in the Panther Branch Rosenwald School or comparing the architectural embellishment of Washington Elementary School to that of Wiley Elementary can open up a world of conversation about Jim Crow: To figure out why The News & Observer writes about school diversity, start at a Rosenwald School.
Asking why there are Confederate soldiers in Oakwood Cemetery reveals a bit about Reconstruction, which might help one understand how a losing battle to maintain the horrors of slavery morphed into a romantic Lost Cause commemorated with monuments. That conversation can provide a context for many of today’s headlines: Start at disinterment, work your way to Black Lives Matter.
Buildings and places ignite the whys and the whos and the whats that cannot help but produce the I-get-its, the ah-has and the oh-that-explains-a-lots. When residents and visitors enjoy Moore and Nash squares, Oakwood, St. Augustine’s or the Capitol, they might ask a question that fires up a conversation that yields the understanding, recognition and empathy that make us better citizens.
The development pressures in downtown Raleigh and on the historic resources, districts and landmarks in Raleigh are tremendous at the moment. Hopefully, we have the confidence in our attractiveness to developers that we can occasionally say no to a few things in order to say yes to our collective self, our collective place, our collective history. The knowledge that an old place can give us is more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey. It contributes to making us better and smarter, and more tolerant, peaceful and responsible. Can a new hotel do that?
Sarah Woodard David, an architectural historian, is chair of the Raleigh Historic Development Commission.
Asking questions
Two carousels? Fewer than 300 historic carousels remain in the United States today, but Raleigh is home to two. Pullen Park was established in 1887, and its current carousel was installed in 1921, but Raleigh’s African-American citizens enjoyed only limited access to the park and its amenities. During the Great Depression, Raleigh and the WPA constructed Chavis Park for the city’s African-American residents. The park was intended to be comparable to Pullen Park and here, too, a carousel was installed. Both carousels were constructed around the same time although the one at Chavis Park wasn’t installed until the park was opened in 1938.
Dr. Pope’s House? Dr. Manassas T. Pope graduated from the Leonard Medical School at Shaw University in 1885. He practiced medicine in Raleigh from 1899 until his death in 1934. According to the house’s National Register nomination, Dr. Pope’s choice of location on Wilmington Street was not capricious, but reflected the “best place he was allowed” to build during an era of increasingly formalized racial segregation and evolving African-American middle and professional classes.
Boylan Avenue’s Sideways House? Elmwood is a two-story house built in the 1810s for John Louis Taylor, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. It seems to face sideways today not because it was moved but because its surroundings have undergone radical changes. The house was built on a very large lot facing Hillsborough. Over time, the countryside surrounding Raleigh was subdivided as the city grew, and at Elmwood, the front yard was divided to make room for a house facing Boylan Avenue and an auto repair shop on the corner of Boylan and Hillsborough. What might look like an accident is a reminder that Raleigh was once a very small town surrounded by countryside.
The Stone Hut on Glenwood Avenue? In 1912, Carolina Power and Light completed a street car line out Glenwood Avenue to the company’s new amusement park, Bloomsbury Park (now the location of the Carolina Country Club). When the Hayes Barton subdivision was opened in 1920, the developers constructed the stone pavilion at the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Harvey Street to shelter people waiting for the streetcar. Today, it’s probably Raleigh’s fanciest bus stop shelter.
This story was originally published October 17, 2015 at 2:01 PM with the headline "How places of the past are perfect starting point for building future."