By Jeff Havener
March 2026
Editor’s note: Raleigh is currently undertaking a Nash Square Public Realm Plan to guide future stewardship of the square. This essay reflects on the history of Raleigh’s original public squares and how Nash Square continues to evolve within the civic structure of the city.
The Question
What became of Caswell Square?
Raleigh’s original grid included five public squares. Four remain part of the city’s civic landscape today.
One quietly disappeared.
To understand why, it helps to start at the beginning.
Raleigh was not discovered along a river or trade route. It was one of the first purpose-built state capitals in the United States, located near the geographic center of North Carolina. Like Washington, DC, the city itself was planned. Surveyor William Christmas laid out the grid and embedded civic meaning into it: streets honoring early leaders and Revolutionary War figures, and public squares named for governors, a Supreme Court justice, and other figures of the young state.
In Raleigh’s original 1792 plan, Christmas reserved five public squares within the city grid. One anchored the center and was reserved for the Capitol. Four others were distributed symmetrically around it. The squares were all exactly four acres each and eventually named: Union, Burke, Moore, Nash, and Caswell. Public ground was part of Raleigh’s structure from the start. In early American cities, public ground often took the form of a civic square.
A square is not simply a park. It is public space set in the structure of the city, framed by both institutions and daily life. Historically it served many purposes: a place for commerce, militia drills, public announcements, celebrations, or community gatherings. A square existed because communities needed a place to come together within the fabric of the city itself.
Divergence - What the Squares Became
At their founding, Raleigh’s squares were similar in both design and purpose. Over time, they developed distinct identities as reflections of the communities in which they are situated and those specific needs. They began to mirror the communities and institutions at their edges.
Union Square has always been the seat of government. The North Carolina State Capitol sits at its center today, but it is not the first capitol to have been there. The original burned in 1831 and was replaced with the current building, completed in 1840. Originally, the square was intended to remain largely open public ground. The broad, tall canopy that exists today developed later as the square was landscaped and formalized. Until 1963, the General Assembly met in the Capitol building itself. The square has become the site in the city for political rallies, protests, public speeches, and celebrations.
Burke Square was the intended site for the executive mansion, and ultimately fulfilled the role imagined in Raleigh’s original plan. In the late nineteenth century, the North Carolina Executive Mansion was constructed there, establishing a permanent residence for the governor a block from the Capitol. Completed in 1891 and designed by architect Samuel Sloan, the red-brick Victorian building was constructed largely by prison labor, with bricks produced at the nearby state penitentiary.
Moore Square, now known for events, festivals, and the arts, was once a commercial hub anchored by City Market, built in 1914. Farmers brought produce, meats, dairy, and other goods into Raleigh to sell directly to the community, forming the city’s early market ecosystem. East Hargett Street, adjacent to Moore Square, was Raleigh’s “Black Main Street”, home to banks, theaters, and businesses that served a thriving African-American community. At its peak, it was one of the most significant concentrations of Black-owned businesses in North Carolina. Historically, Moore Square has been Raleigh’s most programmed square, hosting speeches, band concerts, markets, and festivals. The square has been reshaped several times including three major redesigns, the most recent in 2019, to adapt the space for new civic uses.
Nash Square retained a quieter presence beneath its canopy of oak trees. Not every square evolved through activity or ceremony. Some endured through stillness.
Caswell Square followed a different path. Richard Caswell, for whom the square was named, began his career as a surveyor before becoming the first governor of the new state. The square sat in the block bounded by Lane, Jones, Dawson, and McDowell Streets, northwest of the Capitol, and historically appears to have played the quietest role among Raleigh’s public squares. Perhaps for that reason, and its proximity to a state government complex, it was the easiest to be lost to and absorbed by development. During the mid-twentieth century expansion of the state’s infrastructure, it gradually gave way to institutional buildings reflecting the priorities of the era.
Of Raleigh’s four perimeter squares, only two - Moore and Nash - are public green space today. Burke is fulfilling its intended role as the house of the governor and Caswell gradually gave way to state government uses as the capital city grew.
The form of the city remained. The uses shifted.
Public space has never been fixed. It has always been negotiated.
The Edges - How Nash Has Evolved
Nash Square’s identity has long been shaped by its edges.
For decades, the News & Observer building stood along Nash Square’s eastern edge. From its windows, journalists looked out across the canopy while doing their work. In a capital city, the press has always been part of the civic landscape - observing, questioning, and recording the work of government. In that sense, the square sat at an intersection not only of streets, but of institutions: government nearby, journalism at its edge, and the public gathering beneath the trees.
In a capital city, the press and the public realm often occupy the same ground - one reporting on civic life, the other quietly hosting it. Now with the building vacated and planned for redevelopment, the edges are changing.
In 1983, Raleigh’s Municipal Building opened along the northwest edge of the square, reinforcing the city’s civic presence. Four decades later, new public investments are rising next door. The city is building a new municipal building on the site of the old police headquarters. The new 17-story building will bring departments such as planning, permitting, and housing back under one roof. The design also integrates a more public-facing experience for residents interacting with city government.
The blocks around Nash Square still carry layers of Raleigh’s history. Brick commercial buildings along Martin Street reflect the scale of the city’s early twentieth century downtown. Just beyond them, the rail corridor that once anchored Raleigh’s western edge continues to shape the surrounding streets and development. Today that same corridor is seeing renewed civic investment. Raleigh’s Union Station sits just a block away to the west, and just north of it, the GoRaleigh Bus Station has recently opened. Older infrastructure, historic fabric, and new transit investment now sit side by side, forming the evolving frame around the square.
In 2022, the city approved a rezoning application at the corner of Dawson and Martin Streets, on the south of the square, allowing for up to 40 stories of mixed use. Projects like these support compact, walkable growth as envisioned in the city’s 2030 Comprehensive Plan. When done well and in consideration of one another, this type of development can enhance the square while realizing the benefit of such an important civic amenity.
In 1792, Raleigh’s plan embedded public squares directly into the city’s grid. More than two centuries later, new infrastructure continues to gather around those same civic anchors.
Squares are defined as much by their edges as by their interiors. The public and private redevelopment planned around Nash Square presents an opportunity to thoughtfully integrate housing, retail, and civic amenities. Public restrooms, for example, could become part of the square’s everyday experience rather than an afterthought.
The form of the square remains constant.
The city around it continues to evolve.
The Square Itself
Step inside Nash Square and the tone shifts.
The noise of the surrounding streets fades beneath a dense canopy of mature oak trees. Light filters through the leaves and settles across the paths that cross the four-acre block. The square remains open and shaded. Surrounding streets carry traffic and activity, yet beneath the trees the pace slows.
Nash Square today is shared by many. If you work downtown, it is a place to enjoy lunch beneath the shade of oaks that are more than a century old. For the children of Exploris, it becomes a playground at recess. For members of Raleigh’s unhoused community, it can be a place of rest and refuge. The square offers shade and relief from the summer heat for all.
Where Union Square is ceremonial and Moore Square is programmed, Nash Square is quieter. It functions less as a stage and more as a pause within the grid.
For decades the square was little more than open ground - a place where livestock grazed, militia drilled, and Raleigh gathered for celebrations, speeches, and baseball games. Starting in the 1870s, the square began to take the shape that we know today; the city graded and fenced it, made the diagonal paths, and planted approximately 200 trees. In 1867, during a major Radical Republican rally, lanterns and American flags were hung in one of the square’s oak trees above the speaker’s stand, an early example of the square serving as civic stage beneath the canopy.
The square we experience today was largely shaped in a 1939 redesign led by Raleigh landscape architect Arnold Peterson and constructed through a Works Progress Administration project. The presence of large deciduous trees, particularly oaks, forming a dense canopy has been a defining feature of the square for more than a century.
Through every change, the essential structure has endured: strong edges, crossing paths, and a dense tree canopy anchoring the center of the block. There is a sense of enclosure created by the canopy. The square has endured not because it demanded attention, but because it held space.
Recently, the city lost one of its mature oak trees in Nash Square. Age, infrastructure, and weather eventually damaged the tree beyond saving. Part of the square’s stewardship must be a plan to replace aging trees in Nash Square, so as we begin to lose them naturally, we are already well on our way to the next generation. Raleigh’s Leaf Out plan envisions this work at scale, both in Nash Square and more broadly across the city.
Intensification Without Expansion
Downtown Raleigh is intensifying. As growth concentrates rather than expanding outward, fixed civic space carries increasing responsibility. The canopy becomes climate infrastructure. Accessibility becomes expectation rather than enhancement. Public ground must serve environmental, social, and civic roles simultaneously.
That responsibility is not abstract. Raleigh has begun the work through the Nash Square Public Realm Plan, which looks carefully at accessibility, landscape health, and how the square can better serve the city that has grown around it. With ongoing development around Nash Square, this is an opportunity to view the square more broadly, including the infrastructure and buildings around it. A chance to think about the square and its edges together, stewarding its history and dense tree canopy while allowing it to serve the city in new ways.
Public art offers a visible example. The mural Green City, USA on the AT&T building along Hargett Street rises eight stories above the intersection, an abstract canopy of geometric leaves that echoes Raleigh’s identity as the City of Oaks. It was commissioned in 2021 by Raleigh Murals Project with support from the Downtown Raleigh Alliance and the City of Raleigh and is a wonderful example of using an edge as a palette and making it a part of the square.
The goal is not to reinvent Nash Square.
It is to deepen it.
The task is stewardship.
1792 to 2032
As Raleigh approaches its 240th year in 2032, the planning now underway at Nash Square is less about redesign than stewardship. Public space was foundational in Raleigh’s original plan. It remains foundational today.
One of the original perimeter squares, Caswell Square, quietly disappeared as the city evolved and state government expanded. The reminder is subtle but important: civic space lasts only when each generation chooses to care for it.
In 1792, Raleigh’s founders embedded public squares directly into the structure of the city, distributing civic life across the grid. More than two centuries later, that structure still holds.
The task now is not to freeze these spaces in time, but to steward them so they continue to serve a broader and more inclusive public in the decades ahead.
Nash may be the closest surviving expression of the civic ground imagined in Raleigh’s original 1792 plan.
Nash Square has endured not because it demanded attention, but because it quietly held space.
Caswell reminds us what can disappear. Nash reminds us what can remain.