Last Updated:  November 8, 2003

Compiled by Alan Smith with help from Mary Bellamy, Sue Boney Ives, Langdon Anderson, Larry Hovis and Robert Warren.

Origins and Legacy

Helping to Shape Some Wilmington Traditions

Early Involvement in Preservation and Development Issues

Money for Downtown Improvements

Continuing Financial Support

Policy Initiatives since the Late Nineties

Policy-Related Activities during 2002 and 2003

Social Events

Origins and Legacy

A group of activists within the Historic Wilmington Foundation (HWF) established the Residents of Old Wilmington in 1973 to focus on the problems and opportunities that simultaneously bedeviled and beguiled downtown residents.  So much has changed since then, that it's hard for us who've come later to appreciate their concerns.  These people, who now refer to themselves as "pioneers," were personally invested in a downtown renaissance - despite the then-current blights of commercial decline, a decaying housing stock, racial confrontations and the aftermath of a misguided program of urban renewal:

• Many long-term residents had fled to Forest Hills and beyond.  The central business district was full of bars and "adult" establishments.
• Although the first historic district had been created in 1962, any serious preservation efforts were largely fantasies.  The 500 block of South Second with 15 houses was entirely vacant.  Buildings wee being town down on weekends without permits or the City's knowledge.
• The residents had experienced a tumultuous school integration program attended by deaths threats, an attempt by an organization called Rights of White People (ROWP) to burn the Bellamy Mansion and the jailing of the Wilmington ten.
• The City had just finished destroying some 140 downtown buildings during the federally sponsored urban renewal of the 1960s.  Solomon Towers had just been erected at Front and Castle Streets and a half-block of historic homes razed for its parking lot.

Back in this time of ROW history, the only civic organizations for downtown residents were the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society, which began work in 1956 and resided in the Latimer House, and the Historic Wilmington Foundation, which was created in 1966 and at the time was meeting in the Governor Dudley Mansion.  Residents found that, while they shared with both earlier organizations a passion for preservation, they wished also to gain political visibility on the issues of zoning and development downtown and on saving residential property from destruction or conversion to multifamily rental and commercial units.  The object of these measures was to promote a sense of neighborhood that would encourage young families to settle here.  So the initial 40 or so ROW founders wrote up a charter and started meeting in the Governor Dudley Mansion independently of the HWF.  Their new organization gave them a way to voice their concerns and channel people empowered to act on them.  Almost immediately they began to support several new Wilmington community-building efforts and affect City policy.

Helping to Shape Some Wilmington Traditions

In 1974 ROW members offered their homes in support of the first "Old Wilmington by Candlelight" tour.  The tour itself was organized by ROW mayor Robert Warren under the auspices of the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society as a fund raiser for that organization.  1800 people participated.  Money collected initially funded restoration of the slave quarters behind the Latimer House.  The Historical Society has since conducted the candlelight tour largely on its own.

In 1979 ROW joined with Downtown Area Revitalization Effort (DARE) organizers Gene Merritt and Mary Gornto in holding the City's first Riverfest.  It was complete with balloon rides over the river and well-attended home-built, self-powered boat races.  As Riverfest evolved through the Eighties, with vendor booths and a special Riverfest T-shirt concession run by ROW, it became a moneymaker and ROW's treasury soared to around $50,000.  In 1992, the City decreed that Riverfest would become a "public" event, took over management and licensing of the effort, and banned use of the Riverfest trademark by anyone else - ending ROW's active involvement in this fall festival.

ROW initiated the Azalea Festival Tour of Homes during or before 1980 as a community-building and fund-raising activity.  It was a huge success.  Much of the money raised in this enterprise went to the St. Thomas Society and some went to rebuild the brick wall at the Tileston School.  In 1992, ROW looked for help in running it and turned to the Historic Wilmington Foundation, who partnered with us that year.  ROW surrendered the event to HWF in 1993.

ROW and HWF have remained intertwined in co-sponsoring a spring cleanup and preservation program that began in the early 1980s as Mayfair.  It initially featured a downtown cleanup campaign and a nice awards ceremony and reception when it was over.  Today, this tradition lives on as Preservation Week.  It's run in the main by the HWF, but ROW still participates in the cleanup work, the awards ceremony and the reception that accompanies it.

Early Involvement in Preservation and Development Issues

ROW's most prominent role in the Wilmington community has been to provide a focal point for citizens' concerns about problems in the broad downtown area.  One of ROW's early tangles in the Seventies arose over its opposition to a plan to remove the medians and monuments from the 300-500 blocks of downtown Market Street - specifically the George Davis statue and the Kenan Foundain.  The City wanted to improve traffic flow and UNCW wanted to take the Kenan fountain out to its growing campus on College Avenue.  The City also wanted to put the George Davis statue off on a side street.  ROW worked with HWF and the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy to keep everything in place - and convinced the City Council to leave them alone.

In 1975 ROW joined with the HWF and the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society in sponsoring the first and only statewide convention of Preservation North Carolina to be held in Wilmington.  During the convention, attention was focused on the decrepitude of the Bellamy mansion - which had point only on the front side.  Subsequently, the Bellamy Foundations - initially headed by Hugh McRae - was established to preserve the mansion.  Later the Bellamy Foundation joined forces with Preservation North Carolina (headed by Robert Warren), the organization that today administers the Bellamy Mansion museum.

As part of our national bicentennial celebration in 1976, ROW's former Mayor Robert Warren arranged a reenactment of Wilmington's call for the first Provincial Congress.  The ceremony was held in the garden of the Governor Dudley Mansion (courtesy of the HWF) and featured a reenactment of William Hooper - Wilmington's signer of the Declaration of Independence - by professional actor William Whitehead.

In 1979, ROW supported the formation of DARE.  ROW's early members saw DARE's efforts to save or recruit business for downtown as directly supportive of their own goals.  Without a diverse, vibrant central business district, adjoining residential areas became less appealing.  Since the founding of DARE, ROW has populated its committees, participated in its downtown beautification efforts, and partnered with them on issues like crime and noise.

Money for Downtown Improvements

In 1981 ROW added to money raised during the Azalea Festival tour of homes through raffles and rummage sales to help in restoring the brick walls around Tileston School.  (The school at the time was surrounded by a hold-filled cyclone fence.)  Muriel Piver and her mother, Dolly Pearson, helped in this fund-raising effort by donating Mrs. Pearson's hand-made quilts to the effort.  The restoration of the brick wall was an attempt by ROW to keep Tileston open as a public school.  At the time, it was the oldest public school still open in North Carolina.

Although ROW lobbied hard at school board meetings to keep Tileston and other downtown schools open, the school was closed and taken over by the City, with the idea that it would become a community arts center.  Two years later this idea failed to attract supporters and the school building required $18,000 in roofing repairs.  ROW worked with St. Mary church and donated $8,000 to assist it in taking over the school from the City for preservation as an extension of its own campus.  This was a big win for our historic district.  And as payback, ROW got the promise of a meeting room to use in perpetuity.

As the Nineties began, ROW helped by giving money to other major preservation or restoration projects:

• Thalian Hall Restoration - about 1991 - ROW helped pay for new curtains.
• Bellamy Mansion Renovation - ROW's donations helped pay for carpets.
• Landscaping of the 200 block of Market Street.  ROW's donation of $37,000 in 1991 transformed an ugly, empty block with parking in the median to one with a landscaped median bordered by trees with brick cross walks and buried utilities.
• The Urban Park project by the downtown library - ROW donated nearly $2,700 in 1992 to help convert a vacant gas station into the park that fills the corner formed by the library, Chestnut Street and the new county parking deck.
• Street brickwork Restoration.  This is a great example of how inter-organizational cooperation and smart work can change City policy.  Most brick streets were put in 100 years ago and in the 1970s still were quite serviceable.  The City, in the 1980s or earlier, argued that it was too expensive to replace or repair brickwork and that the bricks were no longer available.  Thus, City maintenance crews shifted to an asphalt patching or covering program when doing street repairs.  (In one episode in the late 1970s, ROW members, in an act of defiance, raked up the asphalt being laid over bricks at the corner of Fourth and Orange Streets.)  In the early 1990s, ROW members - led by Ben Jacks - personally surveyed how many blocks of brick streets remained in Wilmington, what types of bricks were needed to repair them and where these brick could be obtained.  ROW teamed up with the Historic Wilmington Foundation to pay the $1,000 needed to hire a noted brick consultant, who came to the city, held a workshop for residents and city employees, and demonstrated on one block of South 2nd Street how to replace asphalt with bricks.  The City learned that it cost no more to replace bricks with bricks than to install asphalt patches and that it probably was easier.  ROW's efforts created a turnaround in policy so that now the patches are slowly being replaced with bricks.  The rebricking in 2002 of asphalt patches on Church Street and the conversion in 2003 from asphalt to brick of the entire western (river) end of the street after a water main replacement show two results of this changed policy.

Continuing Financial Support

Row has made donations to the Railroad Museum and to the Downtown Community Watch to support their current operations in servic of the downtown community.  ROW members contributed or raised several thousand dollars per year for the City's Tree Program.  The City matches our donations at $75.00 per tree and we usually get about 15-20 trees planted each year.

In 2003, ROW Mayor Ex Officio Catherine Ackiss organized an instantly popular bed and breakfast tour.  It was held on the second Sunday in September and raised approximately $5,000 for Wilmington beautification projects - beginning with the "adopt an alley" program then planned by the City's Parks and Recreation Division.

Policy Initiatives since the Late Nineties

• Revision of the Wilmington Design Guidelines.  ROW members participated in the complete revision of the Wilmington Design guidelines in 1009-00, volunteering hundreds of hours of time in the community coordination, review and rewriting of this critically important document.  The results were vetted through a series of membership meetings in 1999 and incorporated in the final product, printed and approved by City council in 2000.
• Parking.  The first active phase of this effort began in 1996.  The problem then was bar patrons parking in and disrupting adjoining residential neighborhoods.  After a year of lobbying, researching statutes, ROW cajoled the City into creating the current restricted parking zone over 15 blocks adjacent to the CBD.  Non-residents are not allowed between midnight and three AM.  This system is complaint-driven, but seems to be a satisfactory deterrent to late night parking by bar patrons.

The problem that remained, however, was that of an unbalanced parking system.  A balanced system would include satellite parking or free places for city workers and minimum wage workers, decks for those who can pay, and fair restrictions in residential areas so residents aren't denied parking near their homes.  When the parking meters went in, workers leapfrogged them and started parking on our streets, completely jamming the close-in blocks.

After two years of intense work with the Parking Advisory Commission, the Mayor and three different City Managers, ROW was successful in April 2003 in gaining approval of a Residential Parking Program - despite the opposition of many merchants, some residents and many City officials.  The resulting program offered residents an opportunity to purchase parking stickers for $25 per car per year and restricts non-residents to three hours of free parking between 9 AM and 5:30 PM daily.  In order to qualify for the program, a block must be, on average, 70 percent occupied, have 25 percent of those cars be owned by non-residents and show that a majority of the residents in the affected block support the program.  As soon as the measure was adopted, the residents of the 200 block of S. 2nd Street, and the 200 block of Ann Street approved the program for their blocks.

• During the summer of 2001, ROW initiated a successful revision of the City's noise ordinance - which was first enacted in 1996 in response to complaints about the Ice House.  Initially, only decibel levels wee specified as criteria for noise ordinance violations and they only applied inside the originating buildings.  Offenses were criminal misdemeanors - which usually meant no fines or court appearances.  Battles of the bands had begun to ensue downtown among businesses competing for crowds with loud, amplified outdoor music.  The residents, bar owners and police were at odds with each other.  So ROW joined with DARE, met with the Wilmington Police Department and city staff, had focus group meetings with bar owners, and by August 2000 became party to a revised ordinance.  The revisions included new time limitations for amplified outdoor music, a "reasonable person" test for noise levels, the coverage of public areas outside the entertainment centers, and treatment of violations as civil offenses with fines.  Despite the downtown protests that the ordinance limiting the freedom of expression, it was approved by city council and brought peace of a sort on this issue.
• In December 2001, ROW go Wilmington's Mayor to promise that there would be a public review of downtown city construction proposals.  The promise provided some assurance that the projects in the CBD - an area not part of any historic district and hence, not overseen by the Historic Preservation Commission - would not be done in secret or without public comment.  This promise same after a proposal was made to expand the city office annex at Third and Chestnut Street - across from Thalian Hall - by building an aluminum and stucco "shoebox on stilts" structure at Third Street.  The City spent over $300,000 on this project without a public hearing - and planned to build it by administrative fiat.  The uproar when the project became public knowledge - fueled by a special meeting of ROW and a near-unanimous decision to oppose the project - cause Mayor David Jones to promise that future city projects of this sort would be subject to public review.
• Expansion of the Historic District.  In 1999 ROW supported a northward expansion of the historic district to a perimeter running to roughly Walnut and 6th Street.  ROW supported this expansion because its membership believed that intelligent oversight of change by the HPC is to the common benefit of residents, developers, and downtown businesses.  Since the approval of the northward expansion of the HD in 2001, ROW has supported the creation of new historic districts on the south side of the city - in effect extending the HD to Queen Street.
• Candidates' forums.  In September 2001 and 2003 ROW partnered with the Downtown Wilmington Association - a business group led by John Hinnant - to sponsor candidates' forums at Level Five of the City Stage.  Each forum highlighted downtown policy issues and forced all candidates for city council and mayoral positions to respond to specific questions about each one.
• Speed limits.  In November 2002, after two years of lobbying and petitioning, ROW persuaded the City Staff and City Council to lower the speed limit to 25 MPH (vice 35 MPH) on city streets within the downtown historic districts.  ROW's reasons for this change were preservation of historic buildings and monuments, pedestrian safety, protection of horse-drawn vehicles, and preservation of our urban quality of life.  During the approval process, ROW met with astonishing resistance, including editorial opposition in the Star-News.  ROW continued to push for a similar speed limit reduction on downtown segments on Market and Third Streets.
• Riverfront development.  ROW consistently has spoken before the HPC and City Council in favor of Riverwalk South and North and against high rise condos and a large entertainment center under Memorial Bridge
• Support of DARE.  ROW members traditionally have supported efforts to sustain a vital, diverse downtown business climate and thus, have promoted the Downtown Area Revitalization Effort (DARE) and its initiatives.  In November 2001, ROW lobbied for DARE's funding by the City and New Hanover County and applauded the award of $60,000 per year for five years.  In 2002 ROW paid for the traveling "Storefront of the Month" award, which is given by DARE, promoted by DARE's cleanup campaigns, and provided members or leaders for DARE's Economic Development and Central Business District Services Committees.

Policy-Related Activities during 2002 and 2003

• ROW members Marge Hurd and Herman Smith were seated on the Parking Advisory Commission to represent downtown residents in January 2002.  ROW delegates participated in Mayor Harper Peterson's fact-finding trip to Charleston and others supported a large, first-ever DARE luncheon that raised over $50,000.  ROW members Tom Mitchell and Mary Ann Keiser were appointed to the Historic Preservation Commission.
• ROW voted to support the City's acquisition of riverfront land held by John Voet and Linda Carroll and communicated this resolution to Mayor Peterson.
• ROW voted to support plans for an 1898 memorial park rather than a grocery store at the northern entrance to the city and communicated this position to State Senator Thomas Wright, who favored a grocery store.
• ROW supported a bar moratorium and made presentations to that effect to the Wilmington Planning Commission and City Council.
• ROW opposed the rebuilding of the Governor's landing.  A letter was sent to the bankruptcy judge overseeing Governor's landing settlement urging its demolition and conversion to public use.
• ROW opposed the rezoning of the St. John's museum property at Second and Orange streets from HD to CBD - an attempt to evade parking requirements and open it up as a guest-lodging site.  Even though ROW eventually "lost" on the St. John rezoning, it "won" a very restricted special use permit and forced an extended examination of what the HD stands for.
• ROW repeatedly opposed the relocation of County employees out of the downtown area.  ROW representatives made two presentations to City Council Commissioners on the abandonment of the county's administrative building and later, the Law Enforcement Center.

Special Events

From the outset, ROW members enjoyed a pair of social activities that helped balance the organization's focus on policy activities, promote a sense of neighborhood and attract new members.  One of these events was the June picnic held originally in the yard of the Surry Street home of "Buzzy" Jones on the Cape Fear River.  It was later held across the street from is house in the park behind Solomon Towers.  In the late 1990s, Doug and Margi Erickson and then Catherine Ackiss hosted the June picnics in their gardens.  The event continued to mark the beginning of ROW's break from membership meetings during July and August.

A winter holiday social, held on the second Wednesday in December, became a fixture in ROW's calendar early in its history.  These gatherings originally were held in members' homes, but as the organization grew, were moved to larger facilities including the Greystone Inn and the Bellamy Mansion

(This story will continue to unfold as ROW members, who care deeply about Wilmington and its future a blessedly benign and distinctive community, engage the problems and opportunities that growth, time and human nature constantly create.)