Heather Leah likes to play a game where she picks a spot in Raleigh and asks herself what stood there 50, 100, or 200 years ago.
Consider State Parking Lot 20 on the corner of Blount and Jones Streets across from the governor’s mansion. A century ago, Meredith College students studied there in a stately Queen Anne–style mansion bedecked with turrets, gables, and wraparound porches. After Meredith relocated to Hillsborough Street, the building was converted into a hotel, then an office building, then demolished in 1967.
Venture down an overgrown footpath off Peace Street and discover a hidden riverbed flanked by stone walls. It’s one of the last vestiges of the Devereux Meadow baseball stadium, where various minor league baseball teams played between 1945 and 1971. The river was routed underground in the 1930s to make room for the ballpark. Today, it’s been paved over in most places.
In the spot where the North Raleigh Hilton stands, colonial North Carolinians gathered 200 years ago in Isaac Hunter’s Tavern—an establishment so popular among politicians of the day that the General Assembly passed a resolution in the late 1700s requiring the new state capitol be located within 10 miles of it…