ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997 TAG: 9702140088
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
Look at the signs.
Gargoyles - once found exclusively atop dank old Gothic cathedrals - are the hottest thing in lawn ornaments since pink flamingos.
Gregorian chants, popular in medieval times, have made a comeback, with monks recording best-selling CDs.
And in recent years we've seen movie remakes of such hoary Gothic tales as "Frankenstein" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Even Disney has jumped on the Gothic bandwagon, with its recent screen version of the Gothic novel, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
And if all that isn't enough to establish a trend, consider this: 1997 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of perhaps the most famous Gothic novel of all time:
"Dracula."
Gothic is hot.
And Roanoke, for once, is ahead of the curve.
Because long before people began putting gargoyles in their gardens and monks on their stereos, Roanoke was a bona fide Gothic city.
No, it never had vampires, like Transylvania. And it wasn't even here when Gothic first flourished, in Europe in the 13th through 15th centuries.
Nonetheless, Roanoke is chockablock with brooding Gothic buildings.
There is Greene Memorial United Methodist Church. St. John's Episcopal Church. St. Mark's Lutheran Church. And at least a dozen more, including the one looming over them all - high as a bishop's mitre, Gothic as Dracula's castle - St. Andrews Catholic Church on the hill.
Sure, they're all churches. And where did the hunchback of Notre Dame hang out? The mall?
The truth is, the Gothic sensibility has always been deeply rooted in religion - or at least the supernatural. In that part of life, in other words, that no computer program, no psychologist, no scientific study can explain.
Which may explain why here in 1997 America - not to mention Roanoke - Gothic still has a grip on our souls.
"There is something perennial about the Gothic appeal," believes Peter Graham, a Virginia Tech professor of 19th Century British literature (a hotbed of Gothic novels).
Graham said the Gothic spirit in the arts and literature has waxed and waned in the last few hundred years, but has never gone completely out of fashion.
"I think that mysterious, dark side of existence that none of our systems or rational models seems adequately to account for keeps the genre alive."
* * *
Gothic was born in the Middle Ages - the age of the Crusades, the Black Death and knights in shining armor.
It was an era of pilgrimages to holy places, a time when people attributed miraculous powers to the bones of dead saints or scraps of clothing supposedly worn by the Virgin Mary, or to splinters from the "true Cross."
It was also the age of the great cathedrals. The word "Gothic" was coined only later to describe them - probably by snooty Italians during the Renaissance, who believed such gloomy gray monsters as Winchester Cathedral and Notre Dame in northern Europe could only have been built by Goths. The Goths, you'll recall, were the armpit-scratching knuckleheads who sacked Rome.
In any case, the Italians got it wrong. Gothic architecture actually started in the Ile-de-France - that region around Paris where some of the world's greatest cathedrals may be found.
The word "Gothic" has endured - though over time it has come to mean things the old church builders never intended. "It has come more and more to focus on the macabre than the medieval," Graham said.
Gothic is now, for example, the realm of creepy fiction - so named because the first Gothic novels of the 1700s and 1800s almost always included a crumbling medieval castle or Gothic church.
And more: we have camp Gothic ("Batman," "The Addams Family") and party Gothic (Halloween). Weird Gothic (Satanic cults). Disney Gothic (see above).
We even have virtual Gothic. There's a vampire web site on the Internet.
And there is Gothic Roanoke.
One has to think in layers to come upon our Gothic city. To look beneath and between and above the tall buildings and the neighborhoods wealthy and modest for that part of Roanoke that speaks to the supernatural. To the weird, the spooky. The Divine.
Gothic Roanoke is the Grandin Theatre - with its dark stone walls, and those odd eagle-beaked stone birds looming out over the seats.
It is parts of old Southwest, where the old houses here and there have Gothic windows, with the distinctive pointed arch on top.
Of course, Gothic Roanoke is also dark cemeteries and dogs howling in the moonlight and gray mornings in February.
But it is mostly churches.
Like medieval Europe, Roanoke loves its Gothic churches. We have built them in Gainsboro, in northeast, in southeast, in old Southwest, in Raleigh Court, in Crystal Spring. There is Gothic in Vinton. Gothic in Salem. Gothic in between.
You've seen them. When it comes to churches, Gothic still says it best. Gothic is damp hard stones and high bell towers and big stained glass windows and pointed arches. A good Gothic church is somehow dark and cold, even in the middle of a summer. It's a place to recall the old God, the one who had a temper - and to remember that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are still out there somewhere, biding their time in the dark.
The old First Baptist Church in Gainsboro was Gothic, and in a way it seemed even more Gothic after it burned, leaving behind a craggy ruin that would have made a perfect setting for an Emily Bronte novel.
Alas, the building was razed. But others remain.
Indeed, sometimes the Gothic churches here come so thick and fast they are all you can see. Stand on the steps of Christ Episcopal Church (Gothic) on Franklin Road, look across the road and the rolling grass of St. Mark's Lutheran Church (Gothic), and in the distance you will see - not houses, not office high rises, no, not even another hospital - but the rough-hewn Gothic bell-tower of the Second Presbyterian Church.
Gothic, Gothic, Gothic. And nothing in between but asphalt, grass and sky.
Why so many?
In part it was simply fashion; Gothic Revival architecture was hot in the 1800s when Roanoke was born. W.L. "Tony" Whitwell, who co-wrote a book on Roanoke architecture and teaches at Hollins College, said the style that swept Great Britain and America last century came late to Roanoke. "We tend to lag behind, which is not always bad," he said.
Perhaps the first Gothic building in the Roanoke area was actually in Salem, said Whitwell. Roanoke College's quaintly Gothic Bittle Hall, completed in 1879, is hardly St. Andrews. Still, its wood spires and pointed windows make it a good example of the early Gothic Revival style, according to Whitwell's book, "The Architectural Heritage of the Roanoke Valley."
Also mentioned in the book is the First Presbyterian Church - built in 1929, and characteristic of the "English Perpendicular Gothic" - and, of course, St. Andrews.
Despite the recent popularity of things Gothic, it has been decades since anyone actually built a Gothic church in the Roanoke area, according to Whitwell. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a [Gothic] Revivalist architectural firm today."
If the signs are right, Roanoke's architects may have to start boning up on their pointed arches.
Tech's Graham, for one, believes the anniversary of the publication of "Dracula" could lead to a brand new Gothic Revival.
"Not," he added, "that it's ever completely gone away."
Look around.
LENGTH: Long : 146 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON STAFF. 1. The bell tower of Firstby CNBPresbyterian Church in South Roanoke reflects the English
Perpindicular Gothic style. 2. Detail (top) of a finial from Bittle
Hall at Roanoke College, perhaps the first Gothic building in the
Roanoke area. 3. A carved rosette (above) in an arch from Roanoke's
First Presbyterian Church. 4. This pensive gargoyle in a window
greets diners at Macado's restaurant on Church Avenue in downtown
Roanoke. 5. Lion-head gargoyles grace a cornice of the First Union
building on Campbell Avenue at Jefferson Street in downtown Roanoke.
color.