Some of downtown Raleigh's ‘Brutalist’ architecture is on the chopping block

There were a lot of stories in the local daily newspaper in May about what North Carolina legislators wanted to do with some state government buildings that help form the downtown Raleigh landscape.

Most of the discussion involves the demolition of structures that are, and have been, described both professionally and derogatorily as “Brutalist architecture.” Other buildings are targeted for restoration and/or new occupants.

The stories piqued my interest because a year ago I’d noticed — and photographed — a few of the buildings cited in the stories when I did my downtown Raleigh walk-around shoot. 

At the time, I wondered (privately) what the state was thinking when it allowed these to go up. But despite my urges to crawl into a rabbit hole and get answers to that question at the time (for the record, I do rabbit hole crawls a lot), I shrugged it aside and decided this wasn’t the time. Well, the “issue” (for lack of a better word) is back, as it were.

So in the spirit of better late than never, here goes ... 

I’m sure Raleigh wasn’t alone when it went through a phase when it thought it was economically prudent to approve large, quadrilateral-shaped concrete structures to house its sundry government offices.

The state Legislative Services Office is controlling the planned changes, which is a significant detail in itself — and the result of several recent legislative power-shift bills that became law. thanks to the current Republican majority state legislature. 

Such projects used to be in the domain of the State Construction Office, a division of the Department of Administration, an agency whose head has a seat on the gubernatorial cabinet. And the current governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat who has been in office since 2017.

All to say that during Cooper’s term, the Republican super-majority, veto-proof legislature made itself point person for state government building demolitions, restorations and construction coming down the pike. 

And at the top of the list of structures getting the death penalty (i.e., they’re scheduled for demolition) are the Department of Administration and Bath buildings. 

The Department of Administration Building, shown in the photo leading off the post (with a side view in the first photo immediately below), is at Salisbury and Jones streets, across the street from the State Legislative Building (Salisbury side) and the State Employees Credit Union (SECU), which is on the Jones Street side.  

After it comes down, according to the news stories, the site will be filled with a new $400 million “Education Campus,” which will house the Department of Public Instruction (which administers state public schools), the University of North Carolina System, the North Carolina Community College system and the Department of Commerce. It is scheduled to be finished in 2026.

Because the SECU building is all glass, and because there is a large iconic sphere of planet Earth in front of the Jones Street side of SECU (see picture above), the state is going to be very careful when it brings down the Administration building. It will not be imploded, but instead it will come using what they are calling a “deconstruction.” 

The NC Community College currently operates in a building at 200 W. Jones Street, in a block occasionally referred to as Caswell Square — one of five neighborhood “squares,” positioned in the original downtown grid map devised by surveyor William Christmas in 1792. The existing building is also a possible demolition target at some point. 

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A brief diversion from the main topic: On surveyor William Christmas’ original downtown street grid, the five squares were positioned in the form of a five-dotted die (see illustration above), with Union Square in the center encompassing the State Capitol. Using the die as imagery, the bottom right “dot” is Moore Square. The bottom left dot is Nash Square. The upper right dot is Burke Square (which is where the Governor’s Mansion is located), and the upper left dot is Caswell Square. The fives squares probably are worth a separate blog post at some point down the road.

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The governor’s office, which had been in the administration building until being moved a block north to the Albermale Building, will be moved to a new structure built on what is now a parking lot across Jones Street from the Governor’s Mansion. The governor’s home is bounded by Jones, Person, Lane and Blount streets, two blocks east of the Legislative Building.

Also on the demolition block is the Bath Building (first two photos below) at 306 N. Wilmington St., a structure that formerly housed the Department of Health and Human Services and was built without windows on the top floors because the Health Department needed space for its laboratories. It has been empty for years, and according to the LSO plan, it will be replaced by open space.

Named for one of the three original counties of North Carolina, this structure has been roundly criticized through the years as the height of Brutalist architecture, partly because of its square, concrete facade, but also because of the lack of windows, apparently in ignorance of the fact some laboratory work might need to be done with minimum or no light (as in photographic film development and print-making in the pre-digital age). 

The building was constructed and opened in the late 1970s under the guise of 1970s modernism architecture, but it didn’t take long before its design came under attack by the postmodernism architecture community. 

Through the years, it has been called ugly, among the more printable pejoratives. But it also has its defenders, people who embrace establishment institutions as a part of a community’s history. 

Brutalist architecture is a real professional term, by the way. According to its Wikipedia entry, the term emerged in the 1950s in the United Kingdom. Its buildings are characterized by minimalist constructions showcasing a preference for bare building materials and structural elements over decorative design. The style commonly makes use of exposed, unpainted concrete or brick angular geometric shapes and a predominantly single-color color palette, according to the Wikipedia entry. Other construction materials, such as steel, wood and glass also can be fashioned in Brutalist style. 

The term has been attributed to French-Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier. The style also has been referred to simply as “modern architecture” for the minimalist and economic approach to building design, particularly those found in urban communities. Le Corbusier himself was subject to criticism, not only for his building designs but also for his alleged ties with fascism, antisemitism, eugenics ... and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. 

Still another structure under consideration for removal is the tall and slender Archdale Building, a slender office tower in Halifax Mall north of Union Square, home of the State Capitol. Archdale is shown in the first two photos below. Most recently, it has been used by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. 

Meanwhile, the LSO has put the current Department of Public Instruction building (first three photos below) on a list for possible renovation. I don't know what this building would be used for after DPI moves to the new Education Campus where the Department of Administration Building currently stands. Perhaps that decision hasn't been made yet.                                 

The state government buildings cited above aren't the only example's of Le Corbusier’s Brutalist architecture in Raleigh. The gray granite Dobbs Building (pictured immediately below) is the home of the North Carolina Utilities Commission. To its credit, it has windows; but it is another quadrangular four-story concrete edifice. As is the same-description building immediately south of it (second photo below), the Legislative Office Building. Both of these, incidentally, are also accessible from Halifax Mall. 

Several blocks south of the mall, at 300 S. Salisbury St., is the Wake County Justice Center (first two photos below). It is a much taller structure of largely concrete, but it has narrow vertical strips of glass (windows). 

A few blocks west of it is a private enterprise structure, the AT&T Building (third, fourth and fifth photos below). These photos were taken from Nash Square, another of the five squares (the southwesterly one). 

Above and first two photos below show another massive quadrilateral skyscraper, which houses the State Department of Insurance.

Above: Elsewhere is this quadrilateral building, but I just don’t recall what or where it is.

Above and below: In May, there were still plans to raze this unique circular Holiday Inn structure at 320 Hillsborough Street in downtown Raleigh. But then in June, I came across a newspaper article indicating that it might not come down after all.

Meanwhile, another item in the news is the oak tree in downtown's Nash Square (another of the five original five squares) shown in the photo above. It, too, is targeted for removal. Its problem is the lengthy vertical crack in the trunk, something local officials have been monitoring closely for several years already. 

But they no longer want to sit and wait to see what happens and are worried it could do serious damage if it tumbles over. It is going to come down in the near future. I'm glad I got this picture of it during my visit downtown in March 2023.

In the article I read in May, the newspaper reported that another oak in Nash Square had been felled previously and the wood was used to create the large squirrel and acorn sculpture seen in the photos below. I’m chagrined to admit I didn’t get a good picture of the sculpture on my March 2023 outing. But I got it in the background of the first photo below, and then I blew it up and cropped it so you get a better idea of the detail, even though it is out of focus (second photo below).