Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501310094
SECTION: STREET BY STREET PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Gainsboro, the one that survives, sits to the west of the interstate. What little remains of it is nestled among the spires of St. Andrew's Catholic Church, the penthouse of the Hotel Roanoke and the two-story stacks of red plastic crates at the Cola-Cola Bottling Co.
Before the interstate, before the Civic Center, before McDonald's and all the industries and parking lots that now pave the way into town, Gainsboro sat cheek-by-jowl with Northeast.
Jefferson Street was the north-south boundary between the two communities, but life blurred any mapmaker's distinctions.
It was all one big black community, with every social class and personal philosophy packed tightly together - prim-and-proper churches towering near gin joints, solid old brick homes whose lawyer- and doctor-owners tipped their hats to the laborers and domestics who lived down the row in clapboard shotgun houses and tin-roofed shacks.
Northeast was the poorer of the two communities. The city's incinerator was there, and kids played in the fly ash and begged stale doughnuts when the Krispy Kreme man came to dump them. The city's gasworks was there, too, with its 156-foot-tall holding tank that gave that part of Northeast the nickname "Tanktown."
Some streets still were unpaved, "and the paved ones were very poorly maintained," said retired plumber Walter Wheaton, who installed many black families' first bathrooms.
In 1950, there was the Uneeda Lunch, the Modern Barber Shop, George Murray's grocery, the Citizens Undertaking Establishment, Roy J. Waller's blacksmith shop and Morning Star Baptist Church.
Altogether, more than 80 institutions and private businesses hugged the curbs of Northeast's streets.
It was home to people like Leroy Campbell.
by CNB