Downtown – Greensboro, North Carolina

Isaac Kremer/ November 11, 2018/ beer, downtown, Economic, Field Notes, garden, museum, Physical, placemaking, public art, storefront/ 0 comments

As we approached Greensboro for the first time in 2018, public art on this retaining wall indicated that Greensboro embraced creativity and made it part of the community identity.

Lebauer Park is a focal point of the community. Linear in orientation, it provides connectivity between the downtown and the children’s museum and library slightly on the outskirts.

A mature tree canopy provides shaded places for people to linger and gather. Benches positioned at an angle create “conversation landscapes.” Pathways lined with pavers lead to a sequence of outdoor rooms.

Play is prioritized with these outdoor ping pong tables. They have branding for the area they are located in, further reinforcing place identity.

Where the park meets the street, the paving details are continued, with a multi-colored border between the edge of the sidewalk, the curb and the street.

The Greensboro Cultural Center is another institutional building near the museum and library.

Back in the core these Modernistic glass square lighting posts are a holdover from an earlier period of modernization and beautification efforts, now out of step with the present that favors more traditional design.

This trompe l’oeil mural filled the arches in a blind arcade at street level. Twisted columns designed in terra cotta frame the painting that evokes a period streetscape scene.

Given the role of Greensboro as a major center of blue jean manufacturing, these sculptures pay homage to this important local industry. Wrangler jean designs are creatively painted by artists.

More examples of the blue jean public art project are throughout the town.

A protected bike corral on the street encourages alternate modes of transportation to driving. The sidewalks are wide enough to accommodate both pedestrians and bikes. The absence of bike lanes is noticable. An early Lime Bike is parked in this area providing a bike share option to encourage cycling for those who might not have wheels of their own.

Wayfinding signage helps people navigate Greensboro. The custom metalwork of the sign post creates visual interest at pedestrian and street level, while the sign is at a height to be primarily oriented for drivers rather than pedestrians.

The “Infinite Welcome” sculpture fills a landscaped area with limited public use on the edge of a parking lot. A “SpaceBird” is perched at the top.

Another sculpture with three interlocking rings is nearby. It has a playful feel befitting of its location near the Children’s Museum and with the lib

Greensboro Children’s Museum is a large and much loved institution. Their very unique sign utilizes shadow to identify the building.

The tensile play structure at the Children’s Museum brought me and my two older kids. We enjoyed climbing around and getting pretty high above the ground.

Adjacent to the library is a small village with historic buildings, likely moved to this location. There is not much by way of interpretation.

Multi story buildings with a hand-painted sign in the foreground, and a ghost sign for a furniture company in the background on the upper floor evoke a sense of place.

This customized blade sign uses industrial materials to advertise the Cadillac Garage in this building.

More public art, this time a faded mural, seeks to portray this area as having an identity related to music and the arts.

Gate City Candy Factory and a large lollipop mural spanning two walls clearly identifies activities in this area.

This mural on the bland wall of a building facing a parking lot enlivens an otherwise dull and uninteresting section of town. There is am amateurish quality with the use of perspective and different heart-sized shapes depicting natural scenes.

Metalwork is present throughout Greensboro, including this abstract sculpture in an unexpected location with a historic building in the background.

Natty Greene’s Brewing Company is a restaurant and brewery that serves as an important third place in downtown Greensboro. People gravitate here for the food, drinking, and entertainment.

Across the street is the location of a home where Jefferson Davis held two meetings of his cabinet, April 12-13, 1865, in the waning days of the Civil War.

Another public art project features a timeline with different years interconnected within unique shapes. They spill over different paving a building surfaces giving people a reason to follow the course. In some ways this technique refers to the Freedom Walk and other urban walks with painting along the pavement.

This ghost sign for Coe Groc. Seed is for a store no longer present. It gives a human scale to the buildings and creates a visual marker to help people orient themselves to the surrounding area. The decision to restore the sign rather than to leave it in a decayed state reflects a debate in preservation circles about how to handle hand painted signs like this.

Another larger than life piece of public art anchors this part of the downtown where it is located.

A geometric pattern is painted on this building, drawing attention to the store on the ground floor, without explicitly referring to what its product is.

These plaques celebrate the people and everyday activities that occurred here. In so doing they took the focus off the building as an artifact, and instead focus on the culture of the place and what people contribute to it. This celebration of the everyday was a refreshing breath of fresh air, compared to often stuffy and stodgy plaques of long distant people and events that are harder to relate to.

These two murals along the railroad line seek to highlight people and stories connected with the neighborhood. Whether part of the initial project or later, graffiti artists seem to have added their tags. This is reminiscent of similar railroad fronting tracks in Austin, Texas, particularly those near the Sixth Street neighborhood.

Chez Genese utilized alternating paint colors on the cornice to help the storefront stand out. A blade sign projecting from the building gives it some added visibility.

HQ Greensboro is a coworking space in a historic building that has been adaptively reused. Private meeting spaces and large open social work spaces give plenty of opportunities for different types of work to occur.

Across the street from HQ Greensboro is a restaurant with a really interesting canopy covering an outdoor seating area, upheld by heavy wood timbers and metal plates for the braces. A row of Lime Bikes shows how this is a designated bike share pickup and dropoff area for people who frequent this establishment.

Around the corner from the coworking space is a makerspace. The Forge Greensboro Makerspace is a project of UNCG.

The quirky DIY and public art aesthetic combine in this news box and bike rack.

Scuppermong Books provides a third place for book lovers in downtown Greensboro. The prismatic glass windows on the front are designed to diffuse light through the length of the storefront. A custom blade sign draws the eye and creates some visual interest from the street.

The Wrangler pop-up shop in Greensboro activated a vacant storefront in the leadup to the busy holiday shopping season in November 2018. Here they provided some of their exclusive and higher profit margin items for discerning customers. The design of the store, while very low-key and from easy to acquire and assemble materials, all fit well together to create a cohesive retail experience.

The Greensboro wayfinding sign with map is on a customized metal base with a silhouetted G for the icon beneath.

An interpretive marker recognizes the Underground Railroad that provided African-Americans routs to escape from slavery. In 1819 John Dimery became the first known passenger to use the route which went from Greensboro to Indiana. A Quaker by the name of Vestal Coffin arranged his escape.

The F.W. Woolworth Co. and its famous lunch counter provided a crucial location for the Civil Rights Movement. Here young people had a sit-in galvanizing the attention of the nation and the world.

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum provides a fascinating opportunity to connect with the Civil Rights Movement and stories very specific to Greensboro. A recreated lunch counter is on the lower level where interpreters talk through courageous actions undertaken by activists and the backlash they experienced. In another section there is a hall of horrors with etched mirrors and silhouettes of violence that black people encountered in the US.

An exhibit on Paul Robeson connected with Princeton where I lead the business association.

Another exhibit on Birmingham’s “Project Cto fight downtown segregation, was foreshadowing for a visit I made to Birmingham less than a year later in 2024.

A marker recognizes the pharmacy where O. Henry was employed. The inscription of “Here he was loved by old and young, white and black, rich and poor” evokes a time with greater racial integration and tolerance than other periods. As a famed novelist surely his life experiences here informed his writing.

Second Visit in 2023

This sculptured pavilion along a trail creates a moment of excitement and entrance while navigating through town. Illumination at night makes this a recognizable landmark.

This nighttime activation of public spaces continues at one of their parts. Colored lights are projected on to netting suspended between pylons. Lighting in this area makes it welcoming and inviting despite the darkness of night.

The downtown park is well illuminated making it a welcoming place to take a stroll, even after night fall.

Utility box cover is branded with Downtown Greensboro logo and features art from high school students. This is a powerful way to make students feel connected to the downtown, and hopefully take the next step which is to be good caretakers.

The free trolly provides an excellent way to navigate around Greensboro. Fixed pickup stops and regular service also make it a fun way to see the town.

The Steven Tager Center for the Performing Arts is near the downtown park. This provides a destination for people to encourage them to visit Greensboro and hopefully explore the surrounding area.

A return visit to Lebauer Park has all of the amenities readily on display. We returned to play ping pong, walk the trails, and enjoy the natural surroundings.

Interesting marker identifying the store where Lunsford Richardson developed a line of home remedies of which Vicks VapoRub became the world-renowned remedy of the common cold. Yet another Greensboro milestone.

Greensboro has two-sided signs, making them legible from both directions. The sculpted bases and skyline at the top further give it local character and context.

A good point to end our recent visit is The Freedom Pledge dedicated on December 5, 1947:

I am an American, a free American

Free to speak without fear

Free to worship God in my own way

Free to stand up for what I think right

Free to oppose what I believe wrong

Free to choose those who govern my country

This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold

For myself and all mankind.

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About Isaac Kremer

Isaac is a respected national downtown revitalization leader, speaker, and author. Districts Isaac managed have achieved $850 million of investment, over 1,645 jobs created, and were 2X Great American Main Street Award Semifinalists and a 1X GAMSA winner in 2023. His work has been featured in Newsday, NJBIZ, ROI-NJ, TapInto, and USA Today. Isaac is a Main Street America Revitalization Professional (MSARP), with additional certifications from the National Parks Service, Project for Public Spaces, Grow America (formerly the National Development Council), and the Strategic Doing Institute. He currently serves as Executive Director for Experience Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey.

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