Utility cables, wires are plentiful (ugh) in downtown Goldsboro, NC

Some 43 miles southeast of Raleigh, N.C., lies Goldsboro, the seat of Wayne County and home of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, the country’s only Air Force base name for a Naval officer.

The military base is what drew me to Goldsboro on Thursday, but I did not spend any time there. Instead, I spent a couple hours doing a photo-documentation of the city’s downtown area. Confused? I understand.

Lee Ann, a widow of a U.S. serviceman, needed to visit a military base to renew her military identification card. So she ended up at Seymour Johnson after dropping me off downtown. 

The drop off point was the Wayne County Courthouse, a buff-colored brick and concrete structure dating to 1912 and restored in 1999 (see photo leading off the post). Three sides of the building have porticos, each with four large support columns, giving it a familiar courthouse veneer. An atrium connects the main courthouse to a four-story annex added in 1952 and renovated in the early 1990s.

During my walk-through downtown Goldsboro, I found that photographing the majority of landmarks — and the courthouse was no exception — was compromised by voluminous low-hanging utility cables and wires and/or foliage from large, old trees. A good example of that is shown in the photo above, a view of the west side of the courthouse (far left), the annex (center) and the Sheriff's Department (right). 

In some cases, the number of cables and wires dangling or intersecting in just one location or one angle of a picture was extraordinary. I couldn’t help but wonder the difficulty a severe wind or snow/ice storm would present if downed wires resulted in power outages here. Usually if a solitary wire/cable or two cross a picture that I take, I can often remove the wires in post-processing. But there were so many to work around in Goldsboro that in most cases, if I couldn’t compose around the wires, I left them alone in the pictures. I mean … this is what the place actually looks like, you know?

While William Street between Walnut and Chestnut streets is where the county courthouse and sheriff’s department and Veterans Memorial Park (the latter illustrated in the photo below) are located, it was obvious that Center Street, a merchants district a few blocks west of William, is where the city had devoted recent beautification efforts. 

Center Street features several blocks of businesses, several roundabouts, nicely landscaped medians and even some striking outdoor installation art as well as the local police and fire departments anchoring the strip at the south end. 

At a roundabout at Center and Walnut streets, in the heart of the strip, one can enjoy an artsy fountain called Cityscape, built in 2015 (see two photos below). The fountain, designed by landscape architect and urban planner Alison Platt, features multiple granite slabs of different heights and color arranged to represent a compact city skyline.

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

Two more views of the courthouse (above and below) and the atrium that connects the courthouse with the annex (second photo below). 

Above: More cables and wires cross over this view of the Sheriff's Department from Chestnut Street, south of the courthouse.  

Another Center Street roundabout with installation art (above) and a closeup of the balancing figure on the art (below). 

A look north down Center Street from another roundabout where this installation art (below) appears. 

Above and below: At Chestnut and Center streets, this city park, referred to as The Hub, is located. 

Above: The Well Traveled Beer bar and bottle shop at 201 S. Center St. 

Above: The Paramount, Goldsboro's venue for performing arts, public events and revival films, has had a long history. The building dates to its beginning as a three-story armory in the 1800s before an eventual transformation to a vaudville house, closure in the 1980s, a renovation in the 1990s and its destruction by fire in 2005. It was rebuilt and reopened Feb. 15, 2008.  

Above and below: A clock sits along Center Street in the redeveloped merchants district. 

Another slice of Center Street (above and below). The Laughing Owl restaurant (below) features a mural on the side of its building facing East Walnut Street (second photo below). 

A sign hanging above the now-shuttered Family Shoe Store (above) at John and Walnut streets. The store, which closed in 2024, had been operated by members of the Bedford family since 1963. Below, a view of the front facade of the Independent Order of Oddfellows' Neuse Lodge No. 6 at 113 N. John St.

The Betterment Center (above) at 206 E. Mulberry St. and two views of the Wayne County Musuem (below and second photo below) at 116 N. William St. 

 

Above: The main office of Goldsboro's U.S. Post Office at 200 N. William St.  

Above: A statue of a World War I doughboy stands on the north lawn of the Wayne County Courthouse. 

Above: The front facade of First Baptist Church, 125 S. John St. 

Above: The front of the law office of Nina Fields Jackson, 111 N. William St. 

Above: A sign along the side of a building on North William Street featuring a quote from the late American tennis star Arthur Ashe. 

Above and below: Different compositions integrating the front facade of the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce building, 308 N. William St. 

Above and below: Different angles of the Fordham Home, 412 N. William St., a faith-based shelter and resource assistance facility for people struggling with substance abuse and other personal issues. 

Above: The front of The Word church, 300 N. William St. 

More utility cables and wires along North William Street, juxposing with the city water tower (above) and a few train cars (below) along a railroad (second photo below). 

Above: A chute spanning North William Street connecting separate plants of the former Borden Manufacturing Co. textile mill. 

Above: Still more utility cables and wires, this time overlaying St. Paul Methodist Church, 204 E. Chestnut St. 

Above: The Salvation Army center at 610 N. William St.

A 'storm' not for the ages, thankfully

It had been 2022 when the Triangle (the shorthand term locals use to refer to the metro area of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill) last saw any snow or ice to speak of.

So there was a bit of suspense, curiosity and even a hint of excitement when local meteorologists late last week amped up forecasts of the storm system that was heading this way after dumping snow and ice on the country’s midsection earlier in the week.

I’m sure local folks made the traditional stampede to grocery stores to stock up on the usual pre-storm essentials. We did not do that; we’d made our usual periodic grocery shopping several days beforehand. We were grateful the next day when the first of the ominous forecasts started hitting the airwaves, as it’s crazy being in a grocery store when frenzied folk go staple-stockpile shopping. 

And as it turned out, the Triangle did not get any serious bad weather. Snowfall and sleet accumulation was minimal (less than an inch, I’d say, which is a mere cough compared to what I remember getting in Wisconsin during “a storm” in my childhood/adolescent years). And there were minimal power outages, none of which affected us. 

We live south of Raleigh proper, so we probably got even less than those who live north of us received. 

As a precaution, I did park the car I usually drive in the detached garage overnight Friday so there wouldn’t be ice to scrape off windshields the next day if I had to use the vehicle. And even that, technically, proved to be unnecessary, as next-day post-storm temperatures reached the 40s, so any snow or ice that stuck to asphalt or concrete Friday night and was not in the vicinity of tree shade the following morning was melted by the time I went outside for my daily walk around 11:30 a.m. 

Shade was a safety concern on our property, though. It is heavily treed and is situated next door to a 93-acre woods, so while the snow/sleet did melt everything on our driveways by the time I began my walk, all had not melted from other areas of my circular house walk route (about one-tenth of a mile in one loop). So, I elected to do my entire walk on the neighborhood streets, almost all of which were sun-cleared and dried by the time I started the sojourn.

When I finished, I used my iPhone 13 Pro to take the photos of our property that you see in this post. There wasn’t a whole lot of snow and/or ice, but there was some still sticking to grass, concrete and pavers because those areas were blocked from sunlight by trees and branches, as you'll note viewing the images. 

You can see the dusting of snow and sleet on the stairs to the back deck (above) and on the patio at left as well as on the ground in front of the stairs. This area in front of the stairs is part of my walking path when weather is not an issue and I elect to use some or all of the circular house path for my walk. You can see the path better in the first two photos below. While portions of the pavers were cleared, they were not fully cleared, and any step that didn't hit squarely in the fully cleared portions would risk striking snow/ice, so that's why I did not use this path for even a portion of my walk. The pavers in the second photo below are a part of the path also seen in the right foreground of the photo leading off the post. That's the driveway to the detached garage in the background of the first photo below, which also illustrates how the sundry tree blockage splayed sunlight hitting the ground. 

Above and below: Shots of the north side yard, the area of our property that is least open to sunlight during the day in winter. 

Above: One treed area in the front of the property alongside the driveway (and apron) to the attached garage. This view looks southeast. 

Above: Stairs to the sundeck along the south side of the house. We rarely use this access, so it was not an issue for us after the storm. But the concrete walk in front of the stairs is part of my house walk route.  

Above: A chair off to the side of the detached garage driveway. 

Above: I used the iPhone's portrait feature for this closeup of the leaf with icicle. The portrait feature adjusts the camera's aperature setting to allow for enhanced background bokeh (blur).