The Velvet Cloak checks out?

One of the most recognizable “Old Raleigh” spots along the mid-1990s Whiskeytown era’s Hillsborough Street strip is in a sad state of disrepair, and getting sadder. This is the scene right now in the front driveway of  the vacant  Velvet Cloak Inn — which is currently blocked by one of the most gigantic tree branches I’ve ever seen that’s not an actual entire tree. Seriously, these pictures don’t accurately convey just how huge it is.

We’ve had some pretty big storms here in Raleigh the past few days, and I guess one of them took this branch down (with a fearsome amount of noise, no doubt). The place was completely deserted when I was driving by and stopped to snap these pictures a little while ago. And since every door and gate appeared to be chained shut, nobody seems to be in too much of a hurry to take it away. So it’s probably going to stay there a while.

The Velvet Cloak and its distinctive New Orleans-style wrought-iron dates back to the 1930s, and it stands just a few blocks west of the soon-to-be-demolished IHOP. It used to be a pretty swank place to stay in West Raleigh; Whiskeytown’s old tour manager Thomas O’Keefe says Ryan Adams used to board there when he was “between couches” in the late ’90s. But the Velvet Cloak fell on hard times after becoming a residence hotel about a decade ago. Recently, a developer bought the property with plans to demolish the inn and turn it into student housing — the same fate that befell the Brewery.

Looks like another venerable Raleigh landmark will bite the dust before too long.

Another landmark from Ryan’s Raleigh disappears: IHOP

During the Whiskeytown era, the mid-to-late 1990s, downtown Raleigh was still pretty much a ghost town after dark. Before downtown became the place to be, the center of Raleigh nightlife was a couple of miles west, along Hillsborough street — a strip that included Sadlack’s, the Brewery, Comet Lounge and other watering holes. And for late-night munchies, there was the 24-hour International House of Pancakes at the corner of Hillsborough and Park, near St. Mary’s School.

As often as not, following a Whiskeytown or Backsliders show at the Brewery, some of us would wind up at IHOP for 3 a.m. victuals before heading home. I paid tribute to that in chapter eight of “Losering,” the one about Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac album, by having young Ryan stumble into IHOP in the midst of that chapter’s imagined dark-night-of-the-soul narrative.

But time marches on. Recent years have seen Hillsborough street undergo a radical makeover with traffic circles, while Sadlack’s and the Brewery have both fallen to the wrecking ball to make way for fancy hotels and student housing. And now a similar fate awaits IHOP, which is closing this week for a still-to-be-determined redevelopment project. The small lot IHOP occupies is worth more than $500,000 now, so this was inevitable.

With the Brewery no longer there to draw me in that direction late at night, I’ve not eaten at IHOP in years. Still, I’ll miss seeing that bright blue roof — which was one more marker of the small town Raleigh used to be.

ADDENDUM (5/2/2016): Not quite one month later, the blue is off the roof and it looks like it won’t be long before the whole thing is torn down.

 

SECOND ADDENDUM (6/17/2016): But at least the Hillsborough Street IHOP will live on in memory in a Needle Print by Caitlin Cary. This has been purchased by the mayor’s office, too.