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Moore Square’s “Elevated Ground” is a 2013 master plan for keeping Raleigh’s oldest public square useful without severing its historic identity. Christopher Counts Studio prepared the plan for the Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department, and the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) gave it a 2013 Professional Awards Honor Award in Analysis & Planning. Its central move was a civic landform that reorganized a four-acre block into a sequence of spaces for gathering, play, performance, shade, habitat and quiet observation.
The title’s 300-year vision describes a planning horizon, not three centuries of completed performance. “220-year-old square” was the award-era description of a place established in Raleigh’s 1792 plan. The City of Raleigh still describes Moore Square as a place of gathering, reflection, entertainment and recreation, and its current program lists markets, music, movie nights, performances and games. The plan is therefore best read as a method for carrying civic use forward while making carefully controlled physical change.
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What the Elevated Ground plan is
Moore Square is one of five public squares shown in William Christmas’ 1792 plan for Raleigh. The site occupies four acres in the center of the city. In 2013, the project team proposed a landscape framework rather than a single monument or a cosmetic renovation: a gently shaped central landform would organize circulation, views, planting and activities across the entire block.
The plan responded to a practical urban problem. A small downtown park has to host incompatible conditions at once: a festival crowd, a child’s unstructured play, an office worker seeking shade, a performance audience, a person moving quickly across the block and a visitor looking for a quiet place. The landform was intended to create those different experiences without breaking the square into isolated rooms.
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ASLA’s award jury called the proposal “a fascinating proposition for such a small one-block site” and said its analysis was “immediately clear and usable” for community groups. That comment recognizes the plan’s explanatory quality as well as its physical concept.
Why the square carries so much history
The square’s civic meaning did not begin with the 2013 plan. The ASLA project narrative describes successive uses including livestock grazing, a military parade ground, barracks for African-American Union soldiers during Reconstruction, a church and school site, and a gathering place linked to historic Black Main Street and City Market. These layers matter because preserving Moore Square cannot mean selecting one period and treating every later use as damage.
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The project was framed as work on a cultural landscape: a place whose significance accumulated through public use. The plan considered Moore Square’s National Register of Historic Places status and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for changes to designated properties. That approach treats preservation as a set of design constraints and responsibilities while allowing contemporary civic life, rather than freezing the block in a single historical image.
The central landform and the spaces it creates
The landform is the plan’s organizing device. Instead of allowing conventional crisscross paths to divide the square into leftover pieces, the raised and sloped ground was intended to make each route and destination legible. The result is a range of settings that can be occupied simultaneously.
Open lawn and prospect
Open lawn provides the flexible surface needed for informal play, temporary events and everyday sitting. Higher ground creates prospect: a place from which visitors can see activity elsewhere in the square while remaining outside the busiest zone. The project narrative says the plan sought open views through 95 percent of the site, a figure that describes the design proposal rather than a later survey.
Refuge and social gathering
Planting, shade and changes in grade can make smaller refuge spaces without creating visual dead ends. Other edges are deliberately social, supporting conversation, waiting and people-watching. The point is not to assign one behavior to every corner; it is to offer choices within a compact block.
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Natural play and performance
The plan included natural play opportunities alongside more conventional recreation. The gentle northern slope could function as an informal amphitheater, a sitting bank or a viewing place for performances. Because the slope is part of the landform rather than a separate stadium, it can return to everyday use when no event is scheduled.
Circulation, paving and tree protection
Historic entry paths were retained. The stated reason was practical as well as symbolic: keeping established approaches reduced disturbance to mature tree roots. Where paths had to be removed, the plan called for reusing their material in the paving pattern of a flexible plaza. Reuse preserves a physical trace of the earlier square while avoiding the waste and visual discontinuity of discarding all existing material.
Tree protection was treated as a construction-detail problem, not just a planting goal. The environmental measures described in the award record include elevated paving details and a pier-stabilized edge intended to protect tree areas. These systems can limit excavation and soil compaction near root zones, but the award narrative does not provide construction drawings, maintenance records or independent measurements of tree health. They should therefore be understood as specified strategies in the plan.
Long-term tree management was included alongside the initial construction work. That matters in a historic park because canopy value depends on decades of care, replacement planning and protection during later utility or event work. The plan also included an above-ground infrastructure core, consolidating necessary services so that the rest of the square could remain more adaptable.
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Water, habitat and the working landscape
Rain gardens, stormwater collection and reuse, native habitat planting and careful grading were proposed as parts of the public-space experience. A rain garden can slow and filter runoff; collection and reuse can reduce demand for treated water; native planting can provide habitat while reducing reliance on species poorly suited to local conditions. In this plan, those functions were integrated with circulation and gathering rather than hidden as back-of-house utilities.
The award narrative reports a projected 345 percent increase in native habitat. That percentage is a comparison of plan conditions published by ASLA, not a post-completion ecological survey. The same qualification applies to the other numerical benefits below. Current performance would require field data on soil, water, vegetation and maintenance over time.
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What the published numbers actually mean
ASLA’s 2013 project narrative compares the proposed plan with existing conditions. The figures are useful for understanding the design team’s objectives, but they are not independently reported measurements after construction. “More” also refers to the category defined by the plan, such as formal seating opportunities or occupiable shaded area; it does not mean that every visitor experiences the percentage in the same way.
| Plan comparison | Published figure | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Paths | 36% more | Projected increase in path provision in the ASLA award narrative. |
| Occupiable shaded areas | 250% more | Projected shaded places designed for people to sit or stay. |
| Canopy trees | 39% more | Projected increase in canopy trees, not a later tree census. |
| Formal seating opportunities | 1000% more | Projected comparison of designated seating locations. |
| Native habitat | 345% more | Projected habitat category used by the plan. |
| Open views | 95% of the site | Design objective for visual openness across the square. |
| Planning participants | More than 30 city and state agencies | Extent of the reported planning dialogue. |
The narrative also says Raleigh’s population grew by “more than 40,000%” since its founding and that the originally planned public-space network diminished by “almost 50%.” ASLA reports those figures without a separate underlying dataset or method on the project page. They are best treated as the award narrative’s historical framing, not independently validated statistics.
How preservation and public process shaped the proposal
Changes to a listed cultural landscape require more than an attractive drawing. The project narrative reports extensive dialogue with North Carolina’s State Historic Preservation Office and more than 30 city and state agencies. It also says that initial reluctance and concerns developed into broad public support. No survey results or separate measure of that support is supplied, so the statement should be understood as the project team’s account of the process rather than a quantified consensus.
For construction and design teams, the process illustrates a useful sequence: establish the historic values, identify which physical features carry those values, test contemporary requirements against them, and explain compromises in terms residents can evaluate. Retaining entry alignments, reusing paving and protecting trees made the preservation argument visible in the built details, while new grades and infrastructure made room for current use.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Plan intent versus verified conditions
A master plan is a set of intentions, relationships and performance targets. It is not proof that every proposed element was built, remains intact or performs at the stated level. The ASLA record documents the 2013 proposal and its award; it does not provide a current audit of the completed park. Consequently, claims about present-day tree numbers, stormwater volumes, habitat area, seating counts or exact paving construction should not be inferred from the plan percentages.
The City’s official Moore Square page, updated August 12, 2026, confirms that the park remains an active four-acre public space and lists ongoing programming. That current activity supports the broader civic-use goal, but a program listing alone cannot establish that each 2013 design feature was delivered exactly as drawn.
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What visitors can do at Moore Square now
The City identifies Moore Square at 201 S. Blount Street, Raleigh, NC 27601. Its visitor information lists music festivals, markets, movie nights, performances, lawn games and other programs, along with event and rental information. Schedules and seasonal offerings can change, so visitors should check the City’s current Moore Square page before planning a trip or reserving space.
The range of activities is significant in relation to the design concept. A market, a movie audience, a child using lawn space and someone seeking a shaded seat require different spatial conditions. The continuing program demonstrates that the square functions as an event venue and everyday park; it does not, by itself, verify the plan’s numerical forecasts.
Construction lessons from the case study
Design around existing assets
Keeping original entries and mature trees can reduce both cultural loss and construction risk. Before excavation, map root protection zones, utility conflicts, soil compaction and access routes. A path alignment that looks minor on a plan may be the feature that preserves a tree or maintains a historic approach.
Make temporary and permanent work compatible
Reusing removed paving in a flexible plaza turns demolition into part of the material palette. The same principle can guide salvage inventories, mock-ups and sequencing: identify what can be cleaned, stored and reincorporated before ordering replacement material.
Use grade to multiply limited area
On a four-acre block, a gentle slope can provide seating, viewing, drainage and spatial separation at once. Grading should be coordinated with accessibility, maintenance, erosion control and tree roots from the start; treating it as a late decorative layer forfeits most of its value.
Show environmental systems to the public
Rain gardens, native planting and stormwater reuse can be legible civic features when paths and overlooks are designed around them. Visibility helps visitors understand why a detail exists and gives maintenance teams a clearer public standard for keeping it healthy.
Why the 300-year horizon is useful
Long-horizon planning does not predict exactly what Raleigh will need in three centuries. It asks which relationships should remain adaptable: access from the surrounding streets, room for gathering, protection of mature canopy, capacity for ecological functions and respect for the square’s accumulated stories. The Elevated Ground proposal answered by making the landform, circulation and planting framework robust while leaving individual uses flexible.
That is the lasting value of the case study for public construction. A historic square can change physically without abandoning its civic role when preservation is translated into alignments, soil protection, material reuse, grades, habitat and maintainable infrastructure. Moore Square’s history supplies the reason for care; the plan’s details supply a way to act on it.
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