Category: Little Sugar Creek

Charlotte history, hiding behind a wall

Can you find the Jane Wilkes statue behind the brick wall along Morehead Street? (See below) Photo: Mary Newsom

One of the best statues I’ve ever seen sits atop Rome’s Gianicolo Hill. A series of Busts of Important Men lines an avenue, and there is the obligatory statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian hero of the Italian unification movement in the 19th century.

But a short walk away is another statue. It’s Anita Garibaldi. She is sidesaddle, atop a rearing horse, holding a small child in her left arm, close to her breast. With her right, she aims a pistol at the sky. What a woman!

Anita Garibaldi. Photo: “Blackcat” via Widkimedia Commons


Charlotte, in some ways being even more traditional than Rome, does not memorialize its women with statues. Heck, it barely memorialized anyone with statues – at least, not until the Trail of History project came along, since representational statuary today is about as fashionable among artists as bustles, spats and top hats. 

That’s a group of local donors and history buffs who are working to erect a series of statues of historic personages along the Little Sugar Creek Greenway. Their first was a monument to Capt. James Jack, who rode from Charlotte to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775 carrying (according to local legend) a copy of the May 20, 1775, Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Meck Dec skeptics say he only carried the Mecklenburg Resolves, adopted May 31, 1775. Whatever.  There’s a guy on a charging horse, in a pool of water across Kings Drive from Central Piedmont Community College.
Now Trail of History monument No. 2 is up, and by golly, it’s a woman: Jane
Renwick Smedberg Wilkes. Read more about her here. She was a New Yorker who married her first cousin, John Wilkes, and moved to Charlotte in 1854. After the Civil War she was active in founding the first two civilian hospitals in Charlotte, including Good Samaritan, the now-demolished hospital for blacks during that segregated era.

Jane Wilkes. Photo: Tom Hanchett

The statue, designed by Wendy M. Ross of Bethesda, Md., depicts a woman with a slight smile (and not brandishing a pistol). It’s the smile of someone who is possibly about to ask you to support a project for which she is raising funds, and whose smile is also a bit stern, as if to show that even if you do not give her any money, she will not rest until you – and others – make her project a success.

While it’s excellent that our monuments are honoring one woman among the seven people planned to have statues (see the list here), it’s a bit odd that this statue is hiding behind a very long brick wall along Morehead Street, where it crosses Little Sugar Creek. Why have a wall between the sidewalk and a public park area? That seems to me inappropriately suburbanistic for this part of the city.  Plus, it obscures the existence of the statue and the nice flowers planted around it. When you are walking on the Little Sugar Creek Greenway on the other side of the creek, you have no idea the monument to Jane Wilkes is even there.

I asked Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Department greenway planner Gwen Cook for details on the design of the garden. She relates, via email: “At Robert Haywood Morrison Gardens [the formal name for the small garden in which the statue resides], the wall is an essential element of the garden. The noise from Morehead Street is terrible. You couldn’t hear yourself think, and if we hadn’t got that right, we’d have no garden. We had to add the wall to manage the ambience of the garden.” She said the garden, but not the statue, are on maps along the greenway.

The only way I knew the statue was there was having read about it in the Charlotte Observer. As her great-great granddaughter, Margo Fonda of Charlotte, told the Observer, “Jane Wilkes was from a time when women didn’t vote, didn’t hold jobs and stayed in the background, but she did incredible things. And she was really humble about it, not even acknowledging it in her autobiography. The idea of a statue to her is really cool.”

*Once you get behind the brick wall, you discover Jane Wilkes’ statue. Photo: Mary Newsom

Remembering a designer who made a difference


Touring the soon-to-open greenway along Little Sugar Creek on Wednesday “Long-ignored creek debuts in starring role,” (slideshow here) my guides pointed me to some carved inscriptions in the pavement at each end of the pedestrian bridge that allows people to walk from Harding Place over the creek to the greenway. They were put there by the folks at LandDesign, in memory of the late Brad Davis.

Brad was a champion for parks, as well as good design. I met him shortly after I started writing my columns on city matters, and I respected the care he put into his work and designs. He was a long-time member of the county’s Park and Recreation Commission and helped found its nonprofit Partners for Parks. He died of cancer in 2007.

His colleagues at LandDesign, where he was a partner, donated money for a small memorial to him at the greenway. If you walk across the bridge you’ll see his words. I particularly liked those on the Harding Place side:
“Attaining good design is a real struggle between the idea of creating great spaces and meeting the regulations for public health, safety and welfare. When in doubt, do great design.”

Remembering a designer who made a difference


Touring the soon-to-open greenway along Little Sugar Creek on Wednesday “Long-ignored creek debuts in starring role,” (slideshow here) my guides pointed me to some carved inscriptions in the pavement at each end of the pedestrian bridge that allows people to walk from Harding Place over the creek to the greenway. They were put there by the folks at LandDesign, in memory of the late Brad Davis.

Brad was a champion for parks, as well as good design. I met him shortly after I started writing my columns on city matters, and I respected the care he put into his work and designs. He was a long-time member of the county’s Park and Recreation Commission and helped found its nonprofit Partners for Parks. He died of cancer in 2007.

His colleagues at LandDesign, where he was a partner, donated money for a small memorial to him at the greenway. If you walk across the bridge you’ll see his words. I particularly liked those on the Harding Place side:
“Attaining good design is a real struggle between the idea of creating great spaces and meeting the regulations for public health, safety and welfare. When in doubt, do great design.”

Creek loses its concrete cap

This is cool, so I’m putting it up right away, but please read my post from earlier today (it’s just below) about transit myth-busting.

Little Sugar Creek is free! It’s being removed from its concrete prison even now. County real estate services project manager Jay Higginbotham shot this photo today from the new bridge over Independence Boulevard.

The old concrete parking lot was built atop the creek when the former Midtown Square — originally Charlottetown Mall — opened in 1959, the first enclosed shopping mall in the South. Engineer Pete Verna supervised the project for developer James Rouse, who went on to national fame for such projects as the planned town of Columbia, Md., and Faneuil Hall marketplace in Boston. It was Verna, who’s still doing engineering work here, who designed the concrete over the creek, he told me in an interview a few years back.

Eventually all the concrete will be removed from the creek, and the county greenway system will run beside it.

Creek loses its concrete cap

This is cool, so I’m putting it up right away, but please read my post from earlier today (it’s just below) about transit myth-busting.

Little Sugar Creek is free! It’s being removed from its concrete prison even now. County real estate services project manager Jay Higginbotham shot this photo today from the new bridge over Independence Boulevard.

The old concrete parking lot was built atop the creek when the former Midtown Square — originally Charlottetown Mall — opened in 1959, the first enclosed shopping mall in the South. Engineer Pete Verna supervised the project for developer James Rouse, who went on to national fame for such projects as the planned town of Columbia, Md., and Faneuil Hall marketplace in Boston. It was Verna, who’s still doing engineering work here, who designed the concrete over the creek, he told me in an interview a few years back.

Eventually all the concrete will be removed from the creek, and the county greenway system will run beside it.