'Discovering' Fayetteville, NC

 

The four months since my last post have been a mix of good, bad and ugly in our families. Fortunately, none of the bad or ugly involved death or destruction. But it did involve, as I'm sure it did in thousands of households across the globe, uncertainty and missed family holiday get-togethers, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For me, as someone who likes to get out and shoot periodically, I hadn't done anything I could call substantive since more than a year ago. 

I have had a few blog post ideas lined up to fill in the space since my last post in November, but none of them struck me as something I needed to get out of the way pronto. 

But as of  yesterday, Lee Ann and I both have received our two doses of COVID vaccinations and have gone the two weeks past when the shots are supposed to be fully effective. So, feeling better armed against the virus than we had ever felt before, we ventured Monday to Fayetteville, home of Fort Bragg, where Lee Ann had some brief business to take care of. She dropped me off in the downtown area, where I spent a couple hours doing my first extensive photo shoot since the pre-COVID days. 

It was great to be doing this again, and by "this" ... I mean photographing, indulging in a craft that brings me great pleasure and fulfillment. Lee Ann's drive to the fort would be 20 minutes or so, and I estimated that meant I'd have a little more than an hour to do what I wanted to do, which was photo-document the downtown area sufficiently to add Fayetteville to my "collection." And I hoped to do the same to as many churches that I came across the along the way. 

I succeeded on both objectives to the large part, even though I knew an hour wouldn't give me nearly the time I thought I'd need to cover enough of downtown Fayetteville to do it justice in my profiles. After all, Fayetteville is a city of 210,000 people; it is the state's sixth largest city. As it turned out, Lee Ann was delayed, and traffic returning to downtown to pick me up encountered the early hours of afternoon rush hour. So I had more like two hours to cover the territory I hoped to traverse. 

I came across my No. 1 objective right away; Lee Ann dropped me off at Market House, a historic building surrounded by a roundabout that is considered the center of downtown. Built in 1838, it has served has a city hall, city market and -- in its most notorious function -- an auction house for slaves. It was designated a Historic Landmark in 1973. 

This latter stain on the building's history prompted local protests -- some called them rioters -- in May 2020 amid the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement. The protests became so vehement -- they attempted to set the building afire -- that the city put up a black-screened fence around the structure to ward off vandals. The protests have since subsided, and while I saw a few curious onlookers when I was there Monday, there were no incidents or disturbances. 

I have mixed feelings about Market House (shown in the lead-off photo). I understand why historians want to preserve it; as one of the community's first and oldest buildings, its use as a city hall and market and its distinguished architecture are reasons to not make a rash decision. 

But I empathize with those who object to its daily reminder of its onetime use for slave trade, and because of that, I would understand if the city decided it should be removed. There is a part of me that feels the city -- if it wants to preserve the structure for historical purposes -- should spend whatever it must to find and develop a historical site elsewhere in the Cumberland County community, create a museum on that property, and move the building to that site as the centerpiece for the museum where its full story should be told. Leaving it at its current position in the heart of downtown, where the black community is reminded of its former use every time they pass it, is an injustice compounded and multiplied. 

I photographed Market House right away upon arriving in Fayetteville, and to my surprise, the high-dynamic range (HDR) software I used while processing those images enabled me to see through the black screens to see the bottom portions of the building. 

I also visited and photographed the county courthouse, which sadly is a modern box-like structure, as is the adjacent county sheriff's offices, both of which are a couple blocks southwest of Market House; several streets extending from the Market House roundabout reflecting local revitalization of the merchants district; city hall and the police department, which are several blocks east of Market House; and four downtown-area churches. 

Click on any picture to view a larger, sharper version of the image, which is particularly helpful when accessing the blog on a mobile device. To view a full gallery of images from my shoot, click on the link in this sentence. 

Photo geek stuff: I used my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm 3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens equipped with a B+W polarizing filter and bracketed each composition in three frames, one at normal exposure, one at 2/3 of a stop above normal and one at 2/3 of a stop below normal. I used 100 ISO to the extent possible, boosting that to as much as 650 when in dark, full shade. The camera's aperture was static at f/8 or f/9, leaving my shutter speed as the variable for the different exposures. I processed images in Photomatix version 6.1.1.

Above and first three below: Scenes from the merchants district off the Market House roundabout. 

A short distance from the Cumberland County Courthouse (first two images below) is this sculpture (above). 

Above: The County Law Enforcement building (sheriff's offices). 

A law office (above) and the back side of the county courthouse (below). 

A block south of the courthouse on West Russell Street, trains commute on tracks in the Russell Street median. 

On Gillespie Street, a block west of the current courthouse, is the county's original three-story Classic Revival courthouse, built in the mid-1920s. I could not ascertain if it is used for anything practical today. Below is an outdoor staircase on the backside of this building. 

A modern structure (above), and across the street from it is the older building below. 

Above: Another modern building, anchoring a corner of a revitalized section of the merchants' district downtown. 

Above and below are more examples of the revitalized area of the merchants' district.

A closeup of an installation sculpture (above) and a wider perspective of the installation within the merchants' district.

Above: Fayetteville devoted a lot of attention to landscaping in its revitalization efforts downtown. 

Downtown Fayetteville has its share of skyscrapers, and the two buildings above are examples. Below is another view of the Systel building as a backdrop to a nicely maintained Cross Creek Linear Park. A closeup of the park fountain, again with the Systel building in the background, appears in the second image below. 

Above: Fayetteville was the first American city named for Maquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who came to America to assist the colonies in their battle against the British in the Revolutionary War. This statue of him can be found in Cross Creek Linear Park. Many other U.S. communities would adopt Lafayette for their name later, but Fayetteville, N.C., is the only one of those communitiees that Lafayette would personally visit.

Above: The Market House as seen by southbound traffic approaching downtown on U.S. 401.

While scurrying west of Market House to find City Hall to photograph, I was delayed by the train above on tracks intersecting Hay Street east of City Hall (pictured below). 

Above: A closeup of the sculpture outside City Hall. 

Above: An exterior view of Segra Stadium, a baseball park built in recent years for the Class Low-A Fayetteville Woodpeckers Minor League baseball franchise. 

Above: A long-range skyscraper, roof and church spires shot taken at the lens' 300mm setting. 

Above: Another installation sculpture in the revitalized area of downtown. 

Above: The sign above the red door tells you what you need to know. 

The Italian bistro Pierro's (above) did not appear to be open when I swung by.