Downtown park honors spirit of the African American struggle for freedom

When it comes to Freedom Park in downtown Raleigh, my camera and I can’t seem to win. 

The park comprises an acre and almost a full half-block bounded by Jones, Lane and Wilmington streets and flanked to the west by the North Carolina legislative building, on the east by the Executive Mansion (governor’s official residence) and on the south by the State Archives Building.

The park’s website (follow link in lead paragraph) says the park’s purpose is to provide “a deep reverence for the unyielding spirit of the African American struggle for freedom.” Furthermore, the website says, the park “stands as a timeless tribute to the universal ideals of liberty, resilience and equality.”

When I did my lengthy downtown walk-through shoot in March 2023, the park was under construction. I took a few construction pictures, but I left the site disappointed in my timing, largely because I don’t get to downtown very often. Freedom Park opened officially in August of that year, just five months after I’d been there. 

So when I did my recent downtown shoot on May 17, I figured I’d finally be able to do a photo profile of the park. Alas, access to significant portions of it was roped off with yellow construction tape. 

Apparently there is nothing major to worry about, but the tape is used to restrict access to certain areas when landscaping or new plantings are going in. The park is managed by the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission. 

In the center of the park stands a 45-foot Beacon of Freedom, which lights at dusk each evening. The park also includes 20 “Voices of Freedom” — powerful words of North Carolina African Americans — inscribed in the rust-colored low-rise walls. My photos in this post provide evidence of a few of those.

Fortunately, I obtained permission to use the first photo below, a drone shot of a large portion of the park, from award-winning architectural photographer Keith Isaacs, whose photos of the park adorn the Freedom Park website. The remaining images below Keith’s are mine from May 17.

To view a full gallery of images from my shoot, follow the link in this sentence. 

Coming tomorrow: Homes, buildings in Downtown Raleigh’s Blount Street Historic District

Where North Carolina governor lives, and where lieutenant governor works

In my May 17 shoot in downtown Raleigh, I was disappointed — but not entirely surprised — when I reached the square block encompassing the Executive Mansion and official residence of the North Carolina governor and saw the multitude of photographic impediments that stood before me.

It is a gated and fully fence-in property, so all of the photos you see in this post were shot between vertical black metal posts that made up the fencing. The best clear shot I could get of the mansion, built in 1891, was the photo you see leading off this post. 

The front of the house, which you see in the above picture, faces west, and from this point I began a clockwise circling of the block, heading north, then east and south before concluding with a turn north to return to the front. 

The next best shots will be in the first few pictures below. The first two are from the same vantage point, the south side of the dwelling; the difference is simply focal range. The second pulls back a bit to include some more foreground. 

The incumbent governor, by the way, is Josh Stein, a Democrat. It was nice that just a block north of this is a home housing the official office of the lieutenant governor. The incumbent is Rachel Hunt, also a Democrat.

I didn’t let the limitations of the shoot at the Executive Mansion deter me from capturing some landscape shots, and the mansion property has very nice gardens, trees ... and tons of tall bushes on its east side. 

I’ll present my shots of the lieutenant governor’s official residence below those of the governor in this post. Both residences are within the Blount Street Historic District and easy walking distance from the State Legislative Building.

The Hawkins-Hartness House that serves as the lieutenant governor’s office was constructed as a private residence in 1881 and is not gated. The State of North Carolina acquired the property in 1969, and it has served as the lieutenant governor’s office since 1988. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

In North Carolina, governor and lieutenant governor candidates do not run as a ticket; voters cast separate ballots for each of those offices. So it is possible for incumbents in the state’s top two offices to be from different political parties, which was the case during both of previous Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s two terms.

To view a full gallery of images taken at the two locations, follow the link in this sentence.  

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR’S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE

Coming tomorrow: North Carolina Freedom Park

Peace University rich in red brick buildings in historic Raleigh neighborhood

Like Shaw University, featured in yesterday’s post, William Peace University in Raleigh is a private college with considerable history. On May 17, I made my first visit to Peace, whose southern boundary abuts Peace Street at the north fringe of downtown Raleigh.

The school was established as Peace Institute in 1857 by a group of men in the Presbyterian Synod of North Carolina. William Peace, a Raleigh businessman and church elder, was the leading donor for the school's construction. His gift of $10,000 would have the purchasing power today of $390,000. 

The 8 acres of land on which the campus was developed and built was turned over to the school in 1878 by property owner R. Stanhope Pullen, another businessman and philanthropist for whom today’s Pullen Park in Raleigh is named.

The Main Building (its official name), the campus centerpiece pictured in the lead-off photo, was constructed between 1859-62, but almost immediately upon its completion, it was taken over by the Confederate States of America government to be used as a hospital for wounded Civil War soldiers. 

That war and the Reconstruction Era afterward delayed the school’s opening, but it eventually welcomed students in 1872. The school initially educated boys and girls in primary grades and women in high school and college. In 1925, it awarded its first junior college degrees to women, and five years later changed its name to Peace, a Junior College for Women.

In 1940, the school offered classes for women in the last two years of high school and first two years of college, and three years later it changed its name to Peace College. 

The school experienced its largest period of growth from the 1960s to 1970s, when 11 new buildings — with exteriors all in the same red brick as The Main Building — were added and existing structures were renovated. 

Peace became a four-year college degree-issuing institution in 1995 and distributed its first bachelor’s degrees in 1997. 

The change to its current name, Peace University, occurred in 2012, the same year the school began admitting male students. Today it has an enrollment of about 730 and offers undergraduate degrees in more than 30 majors as well as accelerated bachelor’s degrees through Peace Online for working adults. 

Peace athletic teams, the Pacers, are members of the NCAA Division III and compete in the USA South Athletic Conference. Peace students have nine interscholastic sports to choose from — cross country, basketball, swimming, tennis, golf, lacrosse, volleyball and soccer for men and women, plus baseball for men and softball for women.

The campus is north of the heart of downtown Raleigh but within the Blount Street Historic District, which boasts multiple stately and historic homes. For example, Peace is just a few blocks north of the North Carolina Executive Mansion, the official home of the state's sitting governor. 

To view a full gallery of images taken at Peace University, follow the link in this sentence. 

Above: The view of The Main Building and Main Lawn as one enters campus from the south end along Peace Street. In an interesting detail, The Main Building is in the center of seven inter-connected buildings. It is flanked on the west (left) by Dinwiddie Chapel and Finley Residence Hall, and on the east (right) by Frazier Residence Hall, which in turn connects to two academic buildings, Presley (to the north) and Flowe (to the east). 

Above and below: Two views of the Lucy Cooper Finch Library, built in 1969. It has a collection of about 30,000 volumes. Below the first photo below are four images of the Lucy Finch Gaddy Garden, which is astride the library and named for one of Lucy Cooper Finch's daughters. Both women were Peace alumnae and philanthropists.

Davidson Residence Hall (above), which abuts Blount Street, and its connector (below) to Ross Residence Hall. 

Above: The brick pathways one sees throughout the campus.

The fountain (above) is in front of The Main Building on campus. Not far from it is the William Peace memorial bench, the backside of which is shown below. When it was installed in 2007, the bench had a bronze statue of the school's namesake seated on the far left side. In 2022, a university task force determined that Peace had been owner of 52 slaves and that slave labor was used to build The Main Building. So the university removed the statue but kept the bench in place. The task force’s research came at a time of heightened national awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement and protests. On the bench’s backside are etched names of school patrons and commemorations. When I came to the bench, there was a young woman sitting in the exact spot where the statue was once situated, which is why I don’thave a front shot of the bench … and why I cropped the photo the way I did.

Brown-McPherson Fine Arts Building (above) is across from Finley Residence Hall (below). Finley is on the west side of The Main Building. Frazier Residence Hall (second photo below) is on the east side of The Main Building. Dinwiddie Chapel (third photo below), technically is between The Main Building and Finley Hall, but they’re all connected.  

Above is an access to the Herman Athletic Center, while below is a full side view of the center. The school’s basketball and volleyball teams play here. 

Above: Flowe Residence Hall. 

Belk Dining Hall (above), Bingham Residence Hall (below) and the Bingham lawn (second photo below), adjacent to the residence hall, where several men were enjoying a game of Frisbee on this day. The school’s ball diamond, which is adjacent to and east of the Bingham lawn, is in the third photo below. 

 

Above is something I came across on the side of Pacer Performance Center as I left the campus and began my walk south along Blount Street to return to my parked car close to downtown. I shot this through an opening in a chain-link fence, but the lens couldn’t fit perfectly through the opening. That explains the unusually shaped light colored bricks you see left and right of the figure. That “foggy” appearance is actually blurred foreground fence link metal that was pressing against the outer sides of the lens.

Coming tomorrow: The North Carolina Executive Mansion (governor’s official residence) and the official offices of the Lieutenant Governor