Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 22, 1995 TAG: 9505230047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Roanoke was featured in the prestigious Jefferson Lecture sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities last Monday - though it was not the kind of boosterism that the Chamber of Commerce might have commissioned.
Vincent Scully, the nation's pre-eminent architectural scholar, used Roanoke as an example of how architects - including himself - stood mute as urban renewal ran amok through American cities in the 1950s and '60s.
"It's amazing how much anthropology had been done in the South Seas, and yet we didn't know what happens when inner-city communities are destroyed," Scully said.
The sold-out crowd of 3,000 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., gasped in unison when he showed slides of aerial photographs of Gainsboro and Northeast Roanoke - before and after urban renewal.
Scully noted how the First Union Tower today looks down on the "desolation" of the two communities.
He credited Roanoke Times & World-News reporter Mary Bishop for shining a light on the long-ignored subject with her Jan. 29, 12-page report, "Street by Street, Block by Block: How Urban Renewal Uprooted Black Roanoke."
Scully, the Sterling professor of art history emeritus at Yale University, said architects have since realized the importance of designing buildings and cities in ways that foster a sense of community.
As an example of what people desire in housing, Scully showed a slide of a 1961 snapshot of a Gainsboro home ringed with flowers. The owners, Zenobia and Willis Ferguson, had a joint flower bed along their property line with their neighbor, Frances Parker.
The Ferguson house - along with Chestnut Avenue - was lost to urban renewal.
The right way to renovate
Planning some exterior changes to your home in Old Southwest or your business in downtown Roanoke?
You may want to attend one of two workshops this week and bone up on new design guidelines for construction and renovation projects in the city's two historic districts.
In the works since late last year, the new guidelines are more detailed than city zoning regulations regarding projects in the historic district.
They also offer illustrations to better explain how to appropriately renovate, add to or construct buildings in either district.
The guidelines also include sections on the architecture and significance of each district and the application process for the city Architectural Review Board.
The materials were prepared by Land & Community Associates after a series of public meetings that identified rehabilitation and construction issues.
The workshops will take place Wednesday.
Alterations to buildings in the downtown historic district will be discussed from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the fifth-floor boardroom at Center in the Square.
The workshop on changes to buildings in Old Southwest will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Alexander Gish House in Highland Park.
Copies of the illustrated guidelines will be available at the workshops. For more information, call Evie Lander, a city planner, at 981-2346.
That's Dr. Pincus, now
Now Roanoke School Board members can use a new title to address their colleague Finn Pincus, who recently was awarded a doctorate in educational administration.
"We'll have to call him Dr. Pincus," said Vice Chairman Marilyn Curtis. Pincus is the first board member to earn a doctoral degree.
He earned the doctorate in Virginia Tech's College of Education. His dissertation was a study of the graduation rates among scholarship football players in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
It is Pincus' third degree from Tech, where he earned master's degrees in business administration and counseling. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia.
Pincus, a board member for five years and former chairman, worked on his doctorate for four years.
He coaches men and women in track and cross country at Roanoke College and teaches courses in Bluefield College's off-campus program in Roanoke.
Pincus is former director of the ECPI Computer Institute in Roanoke.
Hot tickets
When Roanoke City Council agreed to cut the Victory Stadium lease rate for a fledging semiprofessional football team, members didn't expect to get anything in return.
Except, perhaps, to fill a few seats in the riverfront stadium on dates that it might otherwise go unused.
But Nick Rush, who modestly has named his football team the Roanoke Rush after himself, had another idea - one that prompted guffaws and a bit of political wincing.
The Christiansburg businessman and member of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors appeared before council May 8 and outlined his plans for the team's six games in Roanoke.
He also asked council to cut the lease rate on the stadium from 8 percent of the gate to 4 percent for the first season. Council unanimously approved the request.
"Good luck,'' Vice Mayor John Edwards told him. "We're looking forward to seeing your games."
"Thanks," Rush replied. "We'll have season's passes for all of you."
by CNB