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Pave Paradise, 1968

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Staff

A Thousand Words
By Jock Lauterer

Back before there was a Bank of America building, the James Wallace Parking Deck, the BB&T branch and Bub O’Malley’s, old Rosemary Street was a quiet residential backstreet filled with rambling boarding houses, neat private residences – and yes, this spacious flower and vegetable garden at 141 E. Rosemary St. I do not remember the gardener’s name, but her gracious nature and towering hollyhocks are unforgettable. In this scene directly across from the present-day Bank of America building, we are looking toward North Street. As a youth, I delivered her paper, and during the summer of 1968 she granted me this photo for Jim Shumaker’s Chapel Hill Weekly. Alas, her garden is now a parking lot, causing those readers of a certain age to perhaps recall Joni Mitchell’s 1970 environmental call to arms, “Big Yellow Taxi,” with the lyrics: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone … They paved paradise and put up a parking lot …”

A THOUSAND WORDS
Do you have an important old photo that you value? Email your photo to jock@email.unc.edu and include the story behind the picture. Because every picture tells a story. And its worth? A thousand words.
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