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Commission approves new plan for cemetery memorial |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 16 August 2004 |
By Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post
Some Salisburians made a final plea Thursday for the city to resist punching a hole in the 150-year-old wall of the Old English Cemetery.
But their last stand failed.
The Historic Preservation Commission reaffirmed the opening in approving a revised design for the adjacent Freedman's Cemetery Memorial.
The commission OK'd an opening in the wall that's a bit smaller than a 10-foot-wide expanse it had approved in April.
The opening will remove two capstones, three stones from the middle course of granite and two stones from the base -- seven blocks in all.
The design approved in April would have removed 11 stones total.
It will make for an irregular-shaped opening, measuring 7 feet, 10 inches at the top, 9 feet 3 inches in the middle and 6 feet, 4 inches at the bottom.
The removed stones will stay on the memorial site, which is on the north side of the Old English Cemetery wall.
Joe Morris, the city staff member who has worked with the memorial committee for several years, said the stones will be arranged so that it's obvious they were once part of the granite wall.
They also will be numbered, documented and photographed so that they could be put back into place in the future, if that is ever a desire.
Morris said the city will bring in retired state archaeologist John Clauser in coming weeks to conduct some archaeological probes of the Freedman's Cemetery site. He will probe near the proposed wall opening and along North Church Street where a new terraced, granite wall will be constructed as one boundary to the memorial site.
Clauser is being hired to identify where unmarked human remains might be and to make sure the project's construction does not disturb those remains.
Morris said he is confident no unmarked graves on the Freedman's Cemetery side lie along the North Church Street boundary where the new granite sitting wall will go.
Morris added that there will be no construction excavation related to the project in front of the opening at the Old English Cemetery wall, nor will the opening be part of a designated path between the two burial grounds.
The revised design before the Historic Preservation Commission Thursday also changed the pattern of pavers planned to fill the intersection at North Church and West Liberty streets. A prior design was a more modern-looking West African pattern in black and white.
Now three shades of brown ceramic bricks making a more subtle pattern are proposed. The color also closely matches existing brick pavers on West Liberty Street sidewalk across from the memorial site.
Morris assured the commission that the new pink granite wall along North Church Street will have an aged look to it that should complement the Old English Cemetery wall. It will come from a Rowan County quarry and is already cut into blocks, Morris reported.
Thursday's revised design resulted mostly from a July 9 meeting in Salisbury among representatives from the State Historic Preservation Office, memorial committee members and interested citizens.
The State Historic Preservation Office had earlier recommended reducing the wall's opening to 3 feet to mitigate the damage to a historic element while keeping the memorial project's symbolism. The July 9 meeting led to the compromise approved Thursday.
Many people see the opening as a way to knock down a perceived dividing line between races -- a wall that separated white and black cemeteries. The opening is a unifying gesture, signifying the importance of both black and white culture to the city's history, supporters say.
Overall, the memorial honors the memory of blacks buried on this sometimes desecrated site, believed to include freed slaves.
A memorandum of agreement among the city, National Endowment of the Arts and the State Historic Preservation Office is still being worked out. It spells out many of the things approved Thursday and makes provisions that no additional graves would be disturbed by the memorial's construction.
The agreement will eventually go to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which judges whether projects in National Register historic districts meet federal guidelines. The federal government is involved because the National Endowment for the Arts has offered a $28,000 grant for the Freedman's Memorial.
Local historian Ann Brownlee said that while she would still prefer no hole in the Old English Cemetery wall, she believes the compromise approved Thursday is the best that can be done given all the circumstances. In a compromise process, neither side will be completely happy, she said.
Brownlee described the monochromatic brick proposed for the intersection as a vast improvement to the earlier design. She said the revised design no longer includes a "gateway" structure at the corner of the memorial and urged the commission to consider that as a significant change.
Art Steinberg, who was originally a member of the memorial committee, said he was at a loss as to why the city thinks it must "go through" a historic structure (the wall) in an effort to be politically correct.
The commission should not approve something that not everyone is in favor of, Steinberg added.
Bill Ward read from a lengthy prepared statement and cautioned the commission against rewriting history by putting an opening in the 1855 wall, the construction of which started in the 1840s.
By allowing the opening, the commission will be violating the guidelines that protect historic properties and setting a bad precedent, Ward said.
What will be the position of the city and the Historic Preservation Commission, Ward asked, if a developer proposes to bulldoze several historic properties on South Fulton Street to build an apartment complex?
Clyde Overcash expressed dissatisfaction with the thermal imaging and other research behind the Freedman's Cemetery and its adopted name, but he did agree that the commission was talking about two cemeteries that, as such, are sacred ground.
He cited three sections of N.C. general statutes that speak to the damage of fences or walls around graveyards as misdemeanor or felony offenses. The recommendation to have an opening in the Old English Cemetery wall would desecrate two sacred grounds, Overcash said..
He urged the commission to step back and look at the project more closely.
Commission member Kathy Walters said the city already had put an opening in the Old English Cemetery wall in years past when it cut the western wall to allow access for mowers.
Walters added that the commission had followed the proper legal procedure to allow for the controversial opening on the northern wall.
Michael Young, serving as chairman of the commission Thursday, said the commission had already established that there would be an opening and noted that the State Historic Preservation Office was OK with it. A plan for documenting the disruption in the wall would make sure the memorial project did not convey a false sense of history, he added.
Young disagreed with Overcash that the city would be breaking the law, "but that's an interesting point you bring up."
Commission members Young, Walters, Anne Lyles and Ronald Fleming voted for the design. Wayne Whitman voted against it.
http://salisburypost.townnews.com/articles/2004/08/13/news/13-cemetery_wall.txt |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Death is not a foe, but an inevitable adventure.” Sir Oliver Lodge
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