Wake County, NC - Bicentennial File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Barbara Kawamoto Reprinted with permission of the News & Observer and cannot be reproduced without permission. Landscape Architect finds Raleigh Pleasing The News and Observer December 29, 1991 Raleigh 200/The New Capital By Frederick Law Olmsted "Journey through the Seaboard Slave States" 1856 Before Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) became known as a landscape architect, he made a name for himself as an outspoken abolitionist and traveler. He toured extensively in the South and Southwest in the years 1852-56, and published three volumes of his observations that were influential in shaping Northern opinion. He arrived in Raleigh on the painfully slow Raleigh-Gaston Railroad. "The city of Raleigh (old Sir Walter), the capital of North Carolina, is a pleasing town - the streets wide and lined with trees, and many white wooden mansions, all having little courtyards of flowers and shrubbery around them. The State House is, in every way, a noble building, constructed of brownish-gray granite, in Grecian style. It stands on an elevated position, near the center of the city, in a square field, which is shaded by some tall old oaks, and could easily be made into an appropriate and beautiful little park; but which, with singular negligence, or more singular economy (while $500,000 has been spent upon the simple edifice), remains in a rude state of undressed nature, and is used as a hog pasture." "A trifle of the expense, employed with doubtful advantage, to give a smooth exterior face to the blocks of stone, if laid out in grading, smoothing, and dressing its ground base, would have added indescribably to the beauty of the edifice. An architect should always begin his work upon the ground." "There are several other public buildings and institutions of charity and education, honorable to the State. A church, near the Capitol (Christ Episcopal Church), not yet completed, is very beautiful; cruciform in ground plan, the walls of stone and the interior woodwork of oiled native pine, and with, thus far, none of the irreligious falsities in stucco and paint that so generally disenchant all expression of worship in our city meeting houses." "It is hard to admire what is common; and it is, perhaps, asking too much of the citizens of Raleigh, that they should plant for ornament, or even cause to be retained about such institutions as their Lunatic Asylum, the beautiful evergreens that crowd about the town; but can any man walk from the Capitol oaks to the pine grove, a little beyond the Deaf and Dumb Institution, and say that he would not far rather have the latter than the former to curtain his habitation?" "If he can in summer, let him try it again, as I did, on a soft winter’s day, when the evergreens fill the air with a balsamic odor, and the green light comes quivering through them, and the foot falls silently upon the elastic carpet they have spread, deluding one with all the feelings of spring." "The country, for miles about Raleigh, is nearly all pine forest, unfertile, and so little cultivated, that it is a mystery how a town of 2,500 inhabitants can obtain sufficient supplies for it to exist." ============================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. The electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ==============================================================