The following images come from a collection I recently came across that I truly enjoyed. The photos were taken in the early ’70s in Raleigh, North Carolina, and offer much to see in regard to period traffic. Being the ’70s, American iron is the norm; from PLCs to station wagons, to sports cars, and compacts. But there’s also a decent number of European and Japanese samples scattered around.
All of the images in this brief gallery come from the State Archives of North Carolina.
Interesting to compare the different rooflines of the two ’70 Impala coupes, seen together in the third-to-last photo (with the silver Corvette parked in between). Definitely prefer the sportier look of the dark-colored one in front. Of course the lack of vinyl top helps, too.
And that pale yellow Datsun 510 in the Holiday Inn lot… yes, please.
A few cars ahead of dark Impala, check out how the Beetle is shoe horned ahead of the AMC Ambassador wagon and that big Mopar coupe!
In the last photo, parking lot, we have the three most popular (front engine) small cars in a row: Vega, Pinto, and Corolla.
I like that Raleigh more than mid 1990s Raleigh.
Great photos, great CC!
So many beauties there .
-Nate
Simca and a Volvo 164 in the third photo.
Where is that `63 Ford Galaxie police car? Maybe in Mayberry?
My favorite is the white ’71 Cougar parked in front of the red VW in the first picture. I think that the tunneled back window suited this car very well. I also like how the owner of the red Pinto in the eighth picture named his car and wrote it on the deck lid.
My two favs as well. Overall, lots a “beetles”, some “Corvairs/Pinto’s/Vega’s”. Found a “Corolla” too!
Just lot’s a smiles all through the read.
So many stores as well as cars are now gone 😫
Yeah, how about that Radio Shack!!
It’s hard for me to believe that I was actually alive when these pictures were taken. All the cars shown are familiar to me, and everything looks “normal”–the way I remember it. What we call “the passage of time” is actually a mysterious thing . . .
Holiday Inn:
Holiday went crazy with these circular buildings in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Another Holiday Inn design were the HoliDomes where they enclosed the swimming pool and the room that faced the pool.
Most fell on hard times as the neighborhood changed. Yet, there is one circular building not too far from my home. Each time I pass it, I get a laugh!!
And $1.95 buffet!
In 1990, my youngest cousin had her wedding reception in that Holiday Inn. It’s two blocks west of the handsome Old Capitol, so hopefully the neighborhood won’t decline as far as her marriage did (separated husband went to prison for shooting (wounding) her boyfriend).
Looks like some of the facades on Fayetteville St. have been restored to their original glory, which is nice to see. (Compare to 1st photo)
I am really happy to see that. I was worried many of those older commercial buildings ended up getting demolished in the 1980s-90s to make way for the glass and steel high rises that dominate that area now. (It still wouldn’t surprise me if that was the fate of some of the buildings in the other photos).
Photo #8 (the one with the “Little Red” Pinto) looks to be the State Archives building itself. It really doesn’t appear to have changed very much.
That circular Holiday Inn is still there, and is still a Holiday Inn.
Wow. Sorry to come to this late, but I have to say that this set of photos is perhaps the most personally relevant set of these photos from the past I’ve seen on CC.
I lived in Raleigh from about 1971 until 1975. All of these images bring back a flood of memories. From Memorial Auditorium (photo #4), the site of my 6th grade graduation, to the Holiday Inn round tower (photo #5) which was the site of a fantastic Sunday Brunch that my family frequented…as well as summer swim lessons in 5th grade. Oh, and the office building my dad worked in (photo #6) and the hotel (photo #7) where we went nearly weekly for a Friday fish dinner.
Amazing (to me…for personal history). These are the images that usually only come to me in dreams where I’m not entirely sure if they are real or not.
Jeff – thanks for the recollections. Very neat, especially that this shows your dad’s office building!
The Holiday Inn photo that shows the buffet offering puzzles me. Is the first word supposed to be “CHEF”?
I’m not sure, but I remember a long white table with a guy with a big chef toque carving the roast beef.
The $1.95 part would have been reason enough for my family in the mid-1970s.
By the way, the Simca in photo #3 could well have been my dad’s. I know that parking lot well…and there really weren’t that many Simca 1000’s in Raleigh at that time. Ours was that exact color.
Also, note the city plate – required at the time – on the Mustang parked next to (our) Simca. “Raleigh”. I loved those plates.
I was trying to figure that sign out too. At first I thought it said CAFE, but now I think the whole thing advertises “CHEF KNIGHT’S DELICIOUS BUFFET.”
I bet that was good.
You corrected the two misspellings in the sign: CHFE and DELCIOUS
Someone hit the cooking sherry before working on the sign.
Great pictures! The third picture is interesting – I believe it’s the former Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Company headquarters. It was built in 1861, and is Raleigh’s oldest commercial building.
The building was still used as a railroad company office in the 1970s, but the State was set to demolish it to build the public mall around the state office buildings. Fortunately, preservationists were able to save the building, and the state moved it down the block and restored it (the portion on the right in this picture must be an addition; I think it was removed).
Buildings of this age are very rare in central North Carolina. But the Italianate design was popular at the time. I attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina, and our department’s building was built at about the same time and looked very similar.
In the 80s, my grandmother (b. 1898) was dozing while watching a book promotion interview of Civil War historian Burke Davis when she heard him say her uncle’s name. My dad wrote him and found out the 19 y.o. uncle had driven the train sent by NC Gov. Vance in April 1865 with two elderly former governors (one of whom was my mother’s ancestor) to surrender the city of Raleigh to Sherman so it might avoid the fate of Atlanta and Columbia, SC. While they were behind the lines, word came that Lincoln was dead.
The uncle had begun working for the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad at 15 when the War began.
Great story!
Mom’s great-grandfather (a Unionist before NC’s secession and briefly a Confederate senator) spent the night in Sherman’s tent! It just occurred to me how amazing it is that that level of trust remained after four years of our bloodiest and massively destructive war.
Any “Raleigh ites”? Who can tell us bout some buildings? Streets?
I just love these photographs. There is something so comforting and familiar about these images, even if I grew up far away from Raleigh.
Pic 3 with a Volvo (144? I’m not good on the pre 240 and post 122 models), and the Holiday Inn with a white Spitfire out front are neat cars to see in the wild. Funny how in the retro pic posts how few and far between British sports cars are. Where I grew up in the mid Hudson Valley of NY, MGs, Triumphs, Austin Healeys and Jags were everywhere. I thought it was like that everywhere (I was born in 72) but these pics prove how much of an anomaly my youth was RE British cars.
The white XL parked at the Holiday Inn looks a little rough for only being 3 or so years old.
These car photos would have been quite at home in an episode of “The Wonder Years”, “That ’70s show” and “F is for Family”.
https://imcdb.org/movie_4326894-F-is-for-Family.html
I dig seeing the ambassador movie theater downtown! And the old Holiday Inn hotel.
I grew up in Raleigh from 1962–72 then went to college, but of course came back to visit parents friends & the old homeplace many times over the decades afterward
Ah CC is hitting close to home in these series of photos(by me living in Fayetteville) and these are some nice photos and brings back memories when I was a kid.