April 30, 2008
Lynnsy Logue The Real Estate Lady and Condo CanDo in Charlotte, NC
A Tribute to Warren
May 1st, tomorrow, at Queens Art Gallery, 1212 The Plaza, in Charlotte, NC
Artevation, A Celebration of History Through Art will begin. An art show and tribute to Warren Burgess, an influential city planner, urban designer and talented artist who worked many years for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission and the Town of Davidson. Warren died in 2005.
The following is an editorial written by Mary Newsome:
Sat, May. 14, 2005URBAN OUTLOOK
Planner, artist understood the power of placeWithout power or wealth, he left a legacy rich in humanityMARY NEWSOM
It's conventional wisdom to believe today's Charlotte is a creation of titans -- the likes of Hugh McColl and D.A.
Tompkins, the Big Guys, who have Big Money and wield Big Power and leave Big Footprints.
But in truth cities are more complex than that. Other people with less fame, less power and a lot less money leave important footprints, too.
Warren Burgess, who Tuesday died unexpectedly and far, far too soon at age 56, was never powerful, never famous and most definitely never rich -- at least not in money. He'll probably never get his due in any history books on Charlotte . But Burgess left his fingerprints all over this city, in the plans he drew, the enduring vision he had for his city and the people and places he touched.
Cities need catalysts, and Warren was a catalyst. He was always putting one person in touch with just the right other person, and dropping a good idea in just the right place, and in doing so altering the course of the planet.
I met him almost 11 years ago. I had written a column lamenting the lack of community gathering places in most Charlotte neighborhoods.
A few weeks later the phone rang and some guy said he was a city planner and he had my column posted on the wall of his office and would I like to have lunch? I figured it wouldn't hurt to know a city planner, especially someone who liked my columns.
He was one of the thinnest people I had ever met, walked with a limp and handed me a book he had bought for me on a hunch -- Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" -- which fed my curiosity about cities and pretty much changed the course of my career.
We shared an interest in art and cities, in mountain streams (he loved fly fishing for trout) and, most important, in neighborhoods and how their buildings and streets shape the lives of the people who live there. He was a planner who understood that real places and people are always more important than theories and statistics.
He was an urbanist, rare for a late 20th-century, Southern city. He filled notebook after notebook with drawings of neighborhoods where he did plans. He would walk the streets in a wide-brimmed straw hat, talk to people and just hang out until he absorbed a sense of the place into those thin bones of his.
That's one reason dozens -- no, hundreds -- of Charlotteans met Burgess over the decades and treasured his friendship. I was forever finding out that friends of mine had already known him for years. He lived his life like a one-man community center, always getting people together in his own quiet way.
And though Burgess' feet may have been planted on city sidewalks, his imagination was soaring. On the wall at my desk is his pen and ink version of North Davidson Street , looking toward the towers of uptown. But it differs subtly from reality. Burgess, in his drawing, buried the power lines, as he did in most of his sketches. He once drew a plan for a European-style boulevard along N.C. 49 at UNC Charlotte.
Next time you go down West Trade Street near Johnson & Wales University , look around. In the 1990s Burgess was the city's urban designer for a Third Ward Plan that -- to its everlasting credit -- Bank of America pretty much followed in developing Gateway Center . The low-scale buildings with stores below and homes above, hiding the parking decks, those were Warren 's vision.
Another of his visions is the drawing shown here, part of the 2001 Central Avenue Streetscape Plan. Notice how the Central Avenue bridge over Briar Creek has become something beautiful, reminiscent of Rome or Paris , with flags, a stone balustrade and an arch over the creek. On the creekside greenway is a bicyclist.
Burgess suffered from arthritis and had walked with a cane ever since I had met him. Look closely at his drawings, and almost always you see someone with a cane.
In the bridge drawing, a thin figure in a wide-brimmed hat appears to stand in the creek, holding a cane in one hand and what looks like a fishing rod in the other. Miraculously, if you know Briar Creek, he is landing what can only be a trout. Talk about the power of dreaming.
Warren Burgess was a gifted planner and a visionary. He translated his vision via watercolors and his work is impeccable. Warren brought us the gift of his vision with sketches of Uptown Historic and watercolors of various neighborhoods, Dilworth, Wesley Heights, Plaza/Midwood, NoDa and others.
We have built a special website for Warren within AtHomeCharlotte.com.
Lynnsy Logue The Real Estate Lady and Condo CanDo in Charlotte, NC
A Tribute to Warren
May 1st, tomorrow, at Queens Art Gallery, 1212 The Plaza, in Charlotte, NC
Artevation, A Celebration of History Through Art will begin. An art show and tribute to Warren Burgess, an influential city planner, urban designer and talented artist who worked many years for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission and the Town of Davidson. Warren died in 2005.
The following is an editorial written by Mary Newsome:
Sat, May. 14, 2005URBAN OUTLOOK
Planner, artist understood the power of placeWithout power or wealth, he left a legacy rich in humanityMARY NEWSOM
It's conventional wisdom to believe today's Charlotte is a creation of titans -- the likes of Hugh McColl and D.A.
Tompkins, the Big Guys, who have Big Money and wield Big Power and leave Big Footprints.But in truth cities are more complex than that. Other people with less fame, less power and a lot less money leave important footprints, too.
Warren Burgess, who Tuesday died unexpectedly and far, far too soon at age 56, was never powerful, never famous and most definitely never rich -- at least not in money. He'll probably never get his due in any history books on Charlotte . But Burgess left his fingerprints all over this city, in the plans he drew, the enduring vision he had for his city and the people and places he touched.
Cities need catalysts, and Warren was a catalyst. He was always putting one person in touch with just the right other person, and dropping a good idea in just the right place, and in doing so altering the course of the planet.
I met him almost 11 years ago. I had written a column lamenting the lack of community gathering places in most Charlotte neighborhoods.
A few weeks later the phone rang and some guy said he was a city planner and he had my column posted on the wall of his office and would I like to have lunch? I figured it wouldn't hurt to know a city planner, especially someone who liked my columns.
He was one of the thinnest people I had ever met, walked with a limp and handed me a book he had bought for me on a hunch -- Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" -- which fed my curiosity about cities and pretty much changed the course of my career.
We shared an interest in art and cities, in mountain streams (he loved fly fishing for trout) and, most important, in neighborhoods and how their buildings and streets shape the lives of the people who live there. He was a planner who understood that real places and people are always more important than theories and statistics.
He was an urbanist, rare for a late 20th-century, Southern city. He filled notebook after notebook with drawings of neighborhoods where he did plans. He would walk the streets in a wide-brimmed straw hat, talk to people and just hang out until he absorbed a sense of the place into those thin bones of his.
That's one reason dozens -- no, hundreds -- of Charlotteans met Burgess over the decades and treasured his friendship. I was forever finding out that friends of mine had already known him for years. He lived his life like a one-man community center, always getting people together in his own quiet way.
And though Burgess' feet may have been planted on city sidewalks, his imagination was soaring. On the wall at my desk is his pen and ink version of North Davidson Street , looking toward the towers of uptown. But it differs subtly from reality. Burgess, in his drawing, buried the power lines, as he did in most of his sketches. He once drew a plan for a European-style boulevard along N.C. 49 at UNC Charlotte.
Next time you go down West Trade Street near Johnson & Wales University , look around. In the 1990s Burgess was the city's urban designer for a Third Ward Plan that -- to its everlasting credit -- Bank of America pretty much followed in developing Gateway Center . The low-scale buildings with stores below and homes above, hiding the parking decks, those were Warren 's vision.
Another of his visions is the drawing shown here, part of the 2001 Central Avenue Streetscape Plan. Notice how the Central Avenue bridge over Briar Creek has become something beautiful, reminiscent of Rome or Paris , with flags, a stone balustrade and an arch over the creek. On the creekside greenway is a bicyclist.
Burgess suffered from arthritis and had walked with a cane ever since I had met him. Look closely at his drawings, and almost always you see someone with a cane.
In the bridge drawing, a thin figure in a wide-brimmed hat appears to stand in the creek, holding a cane in one hand and what looks like a fishing rod in the other. Miraculously, if you know Briar Creek, he is landing what can only be a trout. Talk about the power of dreaming.
Warren Burgess was a gifted planner and a visionary. He translated his vision via watercolors and his work is impeccable. Warren brought us the gift of his vision with sketches of Uptown Historic and watercolors of various neighborhoods, Dilworth, Wesley Heights, Plaza/Midwood, NoDa and others.
We have built a special website for Warren within AtHomeCharlotte.com.
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