Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 26, 1992 TAG: 9202260317
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GAINSBORO FIGHTS ROAD, WORKS TO KEEP HISTORY
Finally, momentum may be building to protect and restore Gainsboro, Roanoke's oldest neighborhood.Historic Gainsboro Preservation District, a new organization, drew 30 people to a meeting Tuesday night on how to keep proposed roads from destroying the community and how to proceed with preservation projects.
A city hearing on relocation of Wells Avenue near the Hotel Roanoke is not until summer. Evelyn Bethel, president of the organization, urged members to stop the road's dissection of Gainsboro. "We still have time for input," she said.
"The road leads nowhere. It serves no practical purpose," said George Heller, another group leader.
The road would create a loop for downtown traffic from Williamson Road to the intersection of Second Street and Gilmer Avenue. It would wipe out some of Gainsboro's oldest homes.
The road plan strikes at the heart of an effort to revive Gainsboro. "We want to become a live and vibrant part of downtown Roanoke," Bethel said.
The Gainsboro group recently learned that it is among 10 organizations vying for control of key blocks in the community, which predates Roanoke and its predecessor, the village of Big Lick.
Two Catholic organizations, the Hotel Roanoke and veterans planning a D-Day monument are among the groups pressing the city for control of parts of Gainsboro.
Bethel and Heller are writing to state and national preservation groups and asking lawyers for help in saving the community. Heller said a home there recently was found to date to 1825, years earlier than had been believed. The organization is negotiating to buy three old homes.
Gainsboro leaders recently asked city officials to nominate the Gainsboro branch of the library as a Virginia landmark.
"This is a neighborhood that's important to all of Roanoke," said architectural historian Anne Carter Lee. "This is where Roanoke was born, for God's sake, and it's intact." To make "asphalt cuts" through such an historic section, she said, should make every Roanoker shudder.