Fayetteville Street

Back to the Future: Fayetteville Street

The original 1792 plan for the city of Raleigh included five public squares and a checkerboard pattern of streets named after a variety of colonial-era cities (Wilmington, Edenton, Salisbury) and famous personalities (Blount, Lane, Davie, Morgan). The central square, Union Square, was to be the home of the state capitol, although the first capitol building was not completed until 1794. Radiating out from Union Square were the four streets that would define the quadrants of early Raleigh, all named after cities competing with Raleigh to house the state capitol: Hillsborough, Halifax, New Bern, and Fayetteville. Hillsborough Street was home to Raleigh's first suburbs, New Bern Avenue served as a catalyst for the Oakwood area that would house Raleigh's power elite, and Halifax Street was largely subsumed by state government operations; the current North Carolina legislative building is built on top of old Halifax Street.

But Fayetteville Street, by far the shortest of the four streets radiating from Union Square, quickly became dubbed "North Carolina's Main Street". A president was born there, business flourished, and the street was the place to see and be seen.

In 1792, no one foresaw Raleigh's explosive growth in the post-World War II era. Fayetteville Street was a simple five-block thoroughfare that ran south from the Capitol to connect with what there was of a wagon road leading to Fayetteville and points south. Even in the earliest years, though, Fayetteville Street was home to numerous taverns and inns, mostly catering to the legislators who called Raleigh home for a few months every year. The first Executive Mansion, a house at the corner of Fayetteville and Hargett streets only a block from the Capitol, was dedicated in 1797; a second Executive Mansion was built in 1816 at the south end of Fayetteville Street. The second mansion, along with the future Memorial Auditorium, would be landmarks of the south end of the street for nearly 150 years. President Andrew Johnson was born on Fayetteville Street, across from the Capitol on the southeast corner of Fayetteville and Morgan. While the tiny kitchen that housed the future chief executive is now on display at the Mordecai Historic Park just north of downtown, its original home was behind an inn on the corner where his parents were both employed.

Having a wide thoroughfare was not without its benefits to civic events. Raleigh soon found that Fayetteville Street was the preferred area for parades, the circus, military formations, and just about anything else city leaders could imagine. These events drew even more people to downtown, and while Raleigh remained small, Fayetteville Street stayed the center of commerce for the city through the remainder of the 19th century.

A circus turns onto Fayetteville Street from Morgan Street, circa 1895. (Photo from NC Division of Archives and History; click to enlarge)

A view down Fayetteville Street from the state capitol, circa 1910. The future home of Memorial Auditorium is at center. (Photo from NC Division of Archives and History; click to enlarge)

By the turn of the 20th century, Raleigh had slowly started to grow. A new neighborhood, Boylan Heights, began growing to the west of downtown, and Carolina Power and Light (today's Progress Energy) inaugurated the use of streetcars along major thoroughfares, including Fayetteville Street. When the streetcars were discontinued in 1933, CP&L established electrified bus service along the length of the street. While the taverns that were part of Fayetteville Street in the early days of the city had passed into history, the street was still home to numerous shops and hotels that defined it as the central business district of Raleigh.

The south end of Fayetteville Street had sat idle for years after the Executive Mansion was moved to a new location at Blount and Jones streets in 1883, and in the late 1920s a project was undertaken to build an auditorium to anchor the south end of the street, opposite the Capitol. Dedicated in honor of fallen veterans of World War I, Memorial Auditorium's marble columns nicely complemented the state capitol five blocks away. At this point, the street was still the center of business in Raleigh, but few people knew that events were about to transpire that would spell the end of Fayetteville Street as the city knew it.

Looking south along Fayetteville Street in the mid-1920s. (Photo from NC Division of Archives and History; click to enlarge)

A south-facing view of Fayetteville Street from the top of the State Capitol, 1972. Compare to the 1910 photo above, taken from the same site. (Photo from NC Division of Archives and History; click to enlarge)

After World War II, the automobile's emergence enabled Raleigh to expand well beyond the borders it had mostly occupied for the first 150 years of its history. While "suburbs" like Brooklyn-Glenwood and Boylan Heights were still well-established within the city, new developments like Hayes-Barton, College Park and Oberlin spread out the city more than it ever had been. Fayetteville Street remained home to old-Raleigh landmarks such as S&W Cafeteria, Hudson-Belk and the Sir Walter Hotel, but an upstart shopping center a mile west of downtown threatened the viability of Fayetteville Street as a shopping magnet.

Developer J.W. "Willie" York saw an opportunity to attract shoppers to an area outside of downtown, and opened Cameron Village in 1947 as the South's first open-air shopping center. The shopping center was so wildly successful that two malls followed in relatively short order, North Hills in 1966 and Crabtree Valley in 1972. No longer were shoppers required to make the trek to Fayetteville Street to shop, and as a result business dropped sharply along the corridor which had served as the only place to shop in the nearly 200-year history of the city. A proposal was floated which would convert Fayetteville Street to a pedestrian mall, an innovation which had been successfully implemented elsewhere in the country and would hopefully serve as an incentive to visit downtown again. Additionally, Raleigh would construct a civic center, to be placed square in the middle of the mall between Davie and Lenoir streets and serve as a gathering place for the rapidly-growing city. Raleigh's city council approved the construction, and as the nation's bicentennial year began, Fayetteville Street closed to traffic on January 1, 1976.

By 1999, the view south from the State Capitol toward Memorial Auditorium had been obscured by trees along the mall. (Photo by Robert Miller, The News and Observer; click to enlarge)

The opening of the Fayetteville Street Mall, in November of 1977, was a festive occasion for all involved. Businesses welcomed the opportunity to re-acquire customers who had all but given up on Fayetteville Street as a shopping corridor after the opening of the suburban shopping centers, and city leaders looked to the new mall with the promise of pedestrian traffic not impeded by automobiles. However, within a few years business along the mall had dropped back to pre-1977 levels, raising questions that the project was an expensive boondoggle that, interestingly, kept more people away from downtown than the old through street drew to the center of the city. Eventually, two long-time icons of Fayetteville Street, Hudson-Belk and Briggs Hardware, closed up shop, and the Sir Walter Hotel, long the preferred lodging for the legislative elite, was converted into apartments for the elderly. The street bustled with office workers during the day, but those people largely disappeared at 5:00, preferring instead to conduct their business in the suburbs.

Raleigh's explosive growth late in the 20th century drew attention to the fact that the city had no vibrant downtown to encourage tourists and residents alike to frequent. The civic center, built along with the construction of the mall, was quickly deemed too small for the types of events that the city truly wanted to attract, and even a mid-1990s renovation was too little, too late. Ironically, while the "new" civic center was an impetus to convert Fayetteville Street to a pedestrian mall, an even newer civic center would serve as a catalyst to re-open the street to vehicles.

The view south from the State Capitol onto the newly completed Fayetteville Street Mall, 1977. (Photo from Raleigh City Museum; click to enlarge)

A two-year project to rebuild Fayetteville Street as a thoroughfare yet again culminated in the grand opening, held on July 29, 2006. The city's demolition of the old civic center enabled the street to once again have Memorial Auditorium and the State Capitol as bookends, and in a change from the pre-1977 design, all traffic lights and streetlights were mounted on posts on either side of the street, enabling an unobstructed view from one end of the street to the other. The city envisioned the new Fayetteville Street to recapture the past glory as "North Carolina's Main Street", and new skyscrapers and hotels are planned to elevate the street's profile even more. Below are pictures taken from various media sources during the celebration of Fayetteville Street's reopening.

Raleigh mayor Charles Meeker leads a parade onto Fayetteville Street, the first vehicular traffic on the street since 1975. (Photo by Joshua Lott, The News and Observer; click to enlarge)

With the old civic center now demolished, patrons of Fayetteville Street can once again see both the Capitol and Memorial Auditorium. (Photo by Nathan Clendenin, WRAL.com; click to enlarge)

Looking down onto the newly-opened Fayetteville Street during the grand opening celebration. The Capitol is at top left. (Photo by Robert Willett, The News and Observer; click to enlarge)