The Development of Modernism in Raleigh 1945-1965 - Triangle ...

The Development of Modern Architecture in Raleigh 1945-1965 29Starmount, and Buffalo Acres. In Southwest Raleigh are Pineview Hills and RoyleneAcres.Later tract subdivisions in North Raleigh include Gatewood, Rollingwood, NorthwoodAcres, and Northglen; tract subdivisions in East Raleigh include Sherwood Forest andWorthdale. These later subdivisions contain colonial Ranches. Widely scattered examplesof contemporary houses, often located on the most topographically challenged lots, suchas those at the end of cul-de-sacs that slope downhill, are found in all of thesesubdivisions.With the exception of the 1920s South Park subdivision near downtown, AfricanAmerican subdivisions do not appear in Raleigh until the late 1950s. The earliest post-World War II subdivision in Raleigh planned for African Americans is RochesterHeights, a small subdivision east of Garner Road in South Raleigh platted in 1957.Developer Harry Phillips was white, but he provided a community for middle class blackfamilies who were drawn to its proximity to Fuller Elementary School, built in 1950 forAfrican Americans. (The present school building has been overbuilt so that its originalappearance is lost.) Many of the teachers, attorneys, doctors and others who constructedcustom Ranches and Split-Levels in Rochester Heights previously lived in WashingtonTerrace, the early 20 th century neighborhood around Washington High School onFayetteville Street, a short distance to the north. The subdivision streets are named forfamous African Americans such as Cab Calloway and Pearl Bailey. The custom housesare actually quite typical examples of brick Ranches and Split-Levels, but they were builtfor the homeowners, rather than as speculative houses.Madonna Acres (platted 1960) is the first suburb for black homeowners developed by ablack developer—John Winters. Homeowners designed their own homes in consultationwith Winters, whose building company built them. A number of these are Contemporary.Biltmore Hills, developed by John Winters and developer Ed Richards for AfricanAmericans, is a very large speculative subdivision filled with Minimal archetypalRanches and Split-Levels, with a few Colonial and some Contemporary-style houses.Battery Heights was platted in the 1930s, but the eastern four blocks were developed withlarge custom contemporary Ranches and Split-Levels in the late 1950s and early 1960s.These were built for black doctors, teachers, and other professionals.SignificanceRaleigh’s postwar subdivisions, in their evolution from transitional grid-patternedneighborhoods of Cape Cod and Minimal Traditional houses of the late 1940s tocurvilinear subdivisions of tract houses or custom houses of the 1950s and 1960s, arerepresentative of the post-World War II suburban landscape throughout the United States.The speculative and custom subdivisions, laid out in gently curving streets, with cul-desacsduring the latter phase of the era, and occasionally with an adjacent strip shoppingcenter or a neighborhood school, reflect national trends. The only subdivision plan withsignificance in land planning is the first phase of Longview Gardens, its traffic circle andradiating streets expressive of the ideals of the City Beautiful movement of the early