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| travel & culture | CITY PORTRAIT Raleigh To understand our capital city, get to know it at sidewalk level: The story of Raleigh unfolds on its streets. WRITTEN BY SCOTT HULER You can see the State Capitol’s Christmas spirit from Fayetteville Street. This year’s Capitol tree lighting will take place on December 10 at 5:30 p.m. PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT ROBINSON MATT BY PHOTOGRAPH 58 OUR STATE | December 2015 | travel & culture | PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC WATERS ERIC BY PHOTOGRAPH The historic Briggs Hardware building, completed in 1874, now houses the City of Raleigh Museum. On First Night Raleigh some years ago, we escaped the early New Year’s Eve revelry by strolling our howling 2-year-old up was for decades the no-traffic zone the day, and at night, its restaurants and the grassy hill over the State Capitol whose empty cobblestone pedestrian bars are busy enough that after years of grounds. We tried to toss the remains mall and lonely iron benches, running pushing to inject life into downtown, of his dinner, uneaten for hours; no dice. between faceless office towers and park- civic leaders now pass regulations to “I want my icy hot dog!” he wailed. Fine ing decks, told the story of Raleigh’s lost, calm things down. Every parade runs then, kid, eat it, but let’s at least get purposeless downtown. down Fayetteville Street, every down- rid of this awful crumbly bun. “I want Not anymore. Now lined with small, town festival closes off Fayetteville my crumbly bun!” He ate them both leafy trees, sidewalk restaurant tables, Street — and Raleigh is always hav- between shrieks in the cold December and iron lampposts, the street celebrates ing a downtown festival. Protests like Onight, as we escaped the crowds teeming the three- and four-story historic build- the annual Moral March progress up on Fayetteville Street. ings — like the former Briggs Hardware Fayetteville Street to the Capitol or past I’ll give you a moment to digest store, with its concrete cornice and it to the legislature. Fayetteville Street that phrase: the crowds teeming on pressed-metal trim — that it used to is once again the running stream of Fayetteville Street. Fayetteville Street ignore. Fayetteville Street bustles during humanity that courses through Raleigh. 60 OUR STATE | December 2015 | travel & culture | A meal with a view If you like your food to come with a side of city sights, try this trio of restaurants. CAPITAL CLUB 16 With wide windows that look out onto both Martin and Salisbury streets, Capital Club 16 captures the energy of downtown Raleigh while serving up European-inspired American fare. When the weather’s nice, diners vie for a seat on the sidewalk, even closer to the action. capitalclub16.com THE ROCKFORD When it opened in 1994, The Rockford had little signage — you just had to know that climbing the stairs to the second- The “Big Acorn” in Moore floor restaurant meant being rewarded Square celebrates Raleigh with a sandwich like the ABC (apple, as the “City of Oaks.” Every year, as part of bacon, and cheddar). These days, it’s First Night Raleigh, the no secret that a meal at The Rockford 1,250-pound acorn is comes with a plum view of Glenwood lowered from a crane to Avenue. therockfordrestaurant.com ring in the new year. THE RALEIGH TIMES The Raleigh Times’s name — and decor — honors the newspaper that once occupied its circa-1906 Hargett Street storefront. Enjoy upscale pub food and watch the city go by from the rooftop patio, a sidewalk table, or a window perch. raleightimesbar.com But Fayetteville Street, running clasp hands with their across-the-street south and away from the gray Doric neighbors — and its two- and three- Capitol that sits on a rise at the cen- story brick warehouses, which are ter of Raleigh, has more stories to tell slowly finding new uses. Raleigh lives than how a poor but hopeful decision to on your scale, passes time at your pace. turn it into a pedestrian mall in the late Raleigh was streets on a piece of 1970s finished what was left of Raleigh’s paper before it was anything else — and downtown. In fact, the story of Raleigh its future was obvious even then. The flows down Fayetteville Street — and all earliest plan for the city — the William of Raleigh’s streets. Christmas design from 1792 — has the statehouse where it remains today: in PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC WATERS ERIC BY PHOTOGRAPHY RALEIGH IS A STREET-LEVEL CITY. ITS the middle of the road. The old city More than a great view: The Raleigh charms are its trees — downtown oaks is a grid of streets crossing at right Times makes “best of” lists for both its that stretch across wide avenues to angles, with five parks arranged like burgers and its beer selection. 62 OUR STATE | December 2015 | travel & culture | Raleigh on foot Raleigh 101: Start in the Capital District (State Capitol, North Carolina museums of history and natural science). Then try one of these walking tours. TASTE CAROLINA The best kind of walking tour is one with snacks along the way. Taste Carolina tour guides talk local history as they walk culinary adventurers to several restaurants and cocktail bars around Raleigh. tastecarolina.net/raleigh WAREHOUSE DISTRICT To see Raleigh’s revitalization in action, take a self-guided tour of the Warehouse District, six blocks of shops, restaurants, breweries, and Mecca restaurant art galleries, plus CAM Raleigh, the has been a Raleigh contemporary art museum. If you’re staple since 1930 looking to do a little holiday shopping (it moved once, in for someone with a sweet tooth (or 1937, but the cozy yourself), try Videri Chocolate Factory. booths are original). raleighwarehousedistrict.com HISTORIC OAKWOOD A stroll around Raleigh’s 19th-century It’s on the street, not in one of the new Oakwood neighborhood is pleasant at any time of year, but a Christmas skyscrapers, museums, or apartment Candlelight Tour on December 12 and 13 offers an opportunity to cross the buildings, that you find Raleigh’s heart. threshold and walk inside a dozen of the historic homes. historicoakwood.org the five-spot on a die, like Philadelphia, and Wilmington. Others bear the names or Savannah. (Two of those parks have — Person, Jones, McDowell, Dawson, been absorbed by state government, Blount — of the commissioners who though one does hold the lovely gover- chose the spot for the city. Surrounding nor’s mansion.) At the center of the city’s them all are streets with the simplest of main intersection, where Hillsborough names: North, South, East, and West — and Fayetteville streets end, is Union the boundaries of that first city. Square, with the beautiful gray Greek And it’s on the street, not in one of temple of the Capitol building at its the new skyscrapers, museums, or apart- center, right in the middle of the street, ment buildings, that you find Raleigh’s clogging up traffic. Raleigh, that is, has heart. Turn off Fayetteville onto Martin, Sleepy Southern Capital Where Nothing and sit down in The Mecca Restaurant, Much Gets Done in its DNA. founded in 1930. With its hexagonal tile That grid of streets tells the story of floor, long, varnished bar, and cramped not just Raleigh, but of North Carolina maze of upstairs rooms, you feel you at the moment of the nation’s found- might be sitting not only in a booth from ing. Eight of the streets bear the names the Hoover administration, but next to of the state’s eight judicial districts: one of the very legislators from that era, WATERS ERIC BY PHOTOGRAPHY The 1875 Heck-Pool House is one of Fayetteville, Morgan, Hillsborough, still doing business from that dim booth. three Second Empire-style houses built Edenton, Halifax, New Bern, Salisbury, Or walk to Nash Square, and you’ll sit in Oakwood by Col. Jonathan M. Heck. 64 OUR STATE | December 2015 | travel & culture | beneath an oak whose roots wrestle the stone sepulchres crumbling beyond the you still haven’t had to crane your neck. the leafy Hayes Barton neighborhood Raleigh has the empty space to support the street, and someone on the top could concrete to a draw, and whose branches obligatory cast-iron rail fence; just west You’re on the streets. still bristles with enormous period- its sudden growth now. But above all, it hear you. Most of what’s lovely about have probably been spreading since Joel of West Street is the Boylan Avenue revival manses from the ’20s. Oakwood’s means that that growth mostly follows Raleigh still happens at that scale. Lane served Cherry Bounce and sold his bridge, the best place to see the skyline, FOR ITS FIRST HUNDRED YEARS, Victorian painted ladies still delight the the same street-level scale. Raleigh is property to hungover commissioners across a railyard that’s been around for Raleigh just kind of was. Legislators eye on Person and Bloodworth streets. still a place that feels like it was built for Scott Huler is the author of six books of the next morning to create the city in more than a century. (You can get a beer came around once in a while, but other- Neighborhoods rise and descend in people. When they completed the Briggs nonfiction, most recently On the Grid, the first place. Just east of East Street is from the Boylan Bridge Brewpub now.) wise, planted by legislative compromise attractiveness, of course, but even the building in 1874 and called it Raleigh’s and was the 2011 Piedmont Laureate in Raleigh’s first cemetery, two-century-old You’re absorbing Raleigh’s history and where even the Tuscarora didn’t have flight to the suburbs didn’t much harm first skyscraper, you could yell up from Creative Nonfiction.

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