Downtown Raleigh, N.C. Part I: State Capitol and Union Square

For three hours on a beautiful Sunday morning (temperatures in the low 70s) into early afternoon, I strolled the downtown streets of  North Carolina capital city, spending equal time exploring the expansive state government buildings -- beginning with the Capitol, then going north into Halifax Mall -- and the business district surrounding the Capitol. 

In addition to the Capitol Building (featured in the lead-off photo) and Union Square (where the Capitol is located), I paid special attention on my walk-around to the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts (formerly Duke Performing Arts Center) on the south fringe of downtown. 

I also photographed a half-dozen or so downtown churches, the soon-to-be-razed historic circular Holiday Inn, the Campbell University School of Law, Nash Square Park, Bicentennial Mall between the capitol and Legislative Building. 

The Capitol is a modest-sized building, and today it serves mostly as office space for the governor and lieutenant governor. Since 1963, the General Assembly (state legislature) has convened in a structure about a block north of the capitol. The two structures are separated by a very nice plaza, called Bicentennial Mall, which is flanked by North Carolina's Museum of History and Museum of Natural Sciences. It's a pretty awesome couple blocks of real estate right there.

Just north of the Legislative Building, there is a narrow but lengthy green open area, called Halifax Mall, which is flanked by more state office buildings. It reminds me a bit of the five-block-long downtown mall in downtown Indianapolis. I don't know this for a fact, but I think the Indy mall, which contains American Legion Mall, the Indiana War Memorial and Museum and University Park, covers a little more space, but probably not by much. I'd estimate that Raleigh's Halifax Mall is a bit wider, just not quite as long as the comparable Indy real estate. 

When I was shooting at Raleigh's performing arts center, I didn't realize I was within a block of Shaw University, the oldest HBCU in the South. I didn't discover that until I returned home went online to pull up a map of downtown to help me retrace my walk-around route and to find various places I'd visited. 

However, a strikingly interesting structure east of the arts center did catch my eye, and I photographed it. When I got home and went online to do my map research and realized how close I'd come to Shaw University, I wondered if that "striking structure" was something on the Shaw campus. So I then tried to compare and match my photo with online building photos taken on the Shaw campus, and I got a match. 

My photo (shown below) shows the west facade of historic Estey Hall, the first structure built for the education of African-American women in the United States and the oldest surviving building on the Shaw campus. An Etsey Hall photo doesn't necessarily belong in a post about the State Capitol, but I present it here nevertheless because of its historic significance ... and, well, because I mentioned taking the photo.  

Built in 1873, with the south annex (to the right in the picture above) being added in 1882, Estey served as a women's dormitory and held classrooms for home economics, music, art and religion until the 1970s, when its deteriorating condition nearly cost it a date with the wrecking ball. It was saved by the Estey Hall Foundation, which succeeded in halting demolition and restoring it to its original appearance. Today it serves as an administrative building for housing affairs and houses the offices of the university president. 

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while know my interest in photographing college and university landscapes, and I would have been thrilled to have included Shaw on my itinerary. Yeah, it would have added time to my outing, but Shaw is a compact campus, so it probably would have required 45 minutes to an hour at the most. On the plus side, at least I know where to go when I get back to downtown. 

It turns out, I also was in close proximity -- although, again, not realizing it until after I got home -- to William Peace University a few blocks north of the Capitol. And a mile or so east of Peace Univ. is yet another HBCU, St. Augustine University. I'm excited that with some luck, perhaps some day I can get to all three on one trip. 

Because of the vast number of landmarks I photographed, I'll present my photos from this shoot as part of a multi-post series. (Are you ready to see the return of Roman numerals?) 

Today, in Part I, I begin with the North Carolina State Capitol and Union Square, the real estate on which it is located. 

There was a period since I've moved to Raleigh, probably just before the pandemic, when there was an concerted effort to remove monuments and sculptures devoted to Confederate or slave-owning authorities. You might remember that this movement triggered civil violence in many urban communities. 

Raleigh's downtown didn't escape that wave of unrest. In fact, the Capitol square itself was a target of violence because the lawn area surrounding the building accommodated monuments devoted to several prominent politicians who were slave owners. Law enforcement had to fence off the square for a period of time, so even if I wanted to have tried a shoot downtown, the Capitol would have not been accessible at close range.

Today, most of those monuments remain, but one has a picket-type fence surrounding it, perhaps to dissuade anyone with ill intentions. 

One thing that struck me while during my walk-around is the trees in downtown Raleigh. There are lots of them. And whether you're a pedestrian just trying to appreciate the various architecture or someone like me trying to photograph it, you have to decide whether any perspective that isn't right in front of a building will include trees. 

For photographers, this is a daunting task. The dilemma is to either integrate the trees into the composition or, which I attempted to do a lot most of the time, use them as a framing element. While processing my images, I concluded that I probably succeeded slightly more often than not. You can be the judge. 

As I said, there are so many trees downtown; Raleigh still has a lot of old, historic structures, especially its churches -- First Presbyterian, both First Baptist churches, Christ Church Episcopal, Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal and Edenton Street Methodist. And then there is Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the Raleigh Archdiocese's former cathedral, since replaced by Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral on the city's Westside, not far from the campus of North Carolina State University. 

The monument above is devoted to three U.S. presidents born in North Carolina. From left, they are James Knox Polk, Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson. Each has a tribute sentence at the bottom of their section. For Polk, it's "He enlarged our national boundaries." Jackson's is "He revitalized American democracy." And for Johnson, "He defended the Constitution." I guess these serve as inspirational for some; I'm not one of them.

 

The University of North Carolina-Greensboro opened in 1892 and was founded by Sanford, N.C., native Charles Duncan McIver, whose likeness is memorialized in the statue above. McIver was known in history as a promoter of education for women and was the institution's first president. UNCG began as the State Normal and Industrial School for White Girls. Five years later, the name changed to State Normal and Industrial College. In 1919, it became North Carolina College for Women, and from 1932-63 it was known as the Women's College of North Carolina (1932-63). It evolved into University of North Carolina-Greensboro when the state legislature merged several academic institutions while creating the UNC school system.   

George Washington is depicted in this monument, dedicated in 1857.

Above: A monument to white supremicist and former North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, who died in 1912, remains in Union Square. The monument was installed in 1924, and the side panels champion him as "the Education Governor."     

Above: A closeup of the Captiol's west facacde. 

A closeup of the cannon seen in the photo leading off the post. 

Raleigh native Worth Bagley, memorialized in the monument above, was the first U.S. solider to die in the Spanish-American War (in Cuba, May 11, 1898). The statue was dedicated in 1907, and the adjacent gun, taken from a Spanish naval deck, was added the following year.  

The Capitol's north facade closeup (above) and from the other side of a monument devoted to North Carolina residents killed during World War II (first two photos below).  

 

Above: A walkway on the south side of the Capitol leading to Morgan Street. 

Above and below: Photos blending the compression of a zoom lens with the integration of many trees sprinkled along Hillsborough Street. 

Above: Another zoom lens compression composition featuring the Capitol, this time looking north, several blocks south of Union Square along Fayetteville Street. 

Next Up: Nash Square Park