Public Art & Local History

Downtown Fayetteville’s streets carry layers of public art and pre-Revolutionary history. This page documents the named murals, sculptures, and landmarks you’ll encounter on the Downtown Guide walking trails — every fact is footnoted to its source so anyone can verify (or correct) it.

Murals

J. Cole “Welcome to Fayetteville” Mural

Painted on the wall behind Back-A-Round Records at 1 Market Square, this large-scale monochrome mural honors Fayetteville-raised rapper J. Cole. Each letter of “FAYETTEVILLE” contains imagery referencing the city’s history and J. Cole’s Dreamville label, and the piece carries the phrase “The Real Is Back. The Ville Is Back” — a lyric from his track “January 28th” off 2014 Forest Hills Drive.¹²

• Artist: Andaluz the Artist (Efren Andaluz), of Queens, New York. Andaluz is known for hip-hop portrait murals; he has spoken about his pivot from posthumous tributes to celebrating living artists.³⁴
• Painted: April 2024 (5 days of painting, 2 days of planning) ahead of Dreamville Festival 2024.³⁴⁵
• Significance: J. Cole, born January 28 (the song’s namesake), grew up in Fayetteville on Forest Hills Drive — a house and a song he later turned into his third studio album.²

Painted Path Mural Trail

Distinctly Fayetteville maintains the curated “Painted Path” — a self-guided tour of downtown’s growing mural collection. Notable stops include:

• Captain of Your FAYte — a ship-wheel mural with a nautical empowerment quote; the name puns on Fayetteville + fate.⁶
• Lady Muriel — a striking portrait mural; one of the most-photographed murals in town.⁶
• Stevie’s Butterfly Wings — interactive wings at human scale on the storefront of Stevie’s on Hay Street; part of the global “angel wings” trend that began with Colette Miller’s 2012 Los Angeles project.

Sculptures

The cluster of sculptures along Hay Street and Ray Avenue forms an outdoor gallery curated through the Cool Spring Downtown District.⁷ Headline pieces:

Blackbird Circle — Sally Myers (301 Hay St., Art Park)

A circular sculptural grouping by North Carolina artist Sally Myers.⁷ Myers’s artist statement explicitly credits her interest in birds and natural places to Wallace Stevens’s 1923 poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” — a modernist work composed of thirteen short stanzas, each a distinct “way of looking” at a blackbird.⁸⁹¹⁰ The poem appeared in Stevens’s debut collection Harmonium (1923).⁹

If you walk Sculpture Stroll on Downtown Guide, the Blackbird Circle riddle (“How many ways did Wallace Stevens describe a blackbird in the poem that inspired this sculpture?”) is keyed to the poem’s structure. The answer is 13.

Other Art Park & Hay Street sculptures⁷

Sculpture	Artist	Location
Pop Fly	Christian Happel	Hay St. & Ray Ave (near Segra Stadium)
Dancer	David McCune	301 Hay St., Art Park
Dog and Goat	Paul Hill	301 Hay St., Art Park
Flowers (Red Bear)	Jonathan Bowling	201 Hay St.
Winged Glory	Jack Howard Potter	Bragg Blvd. & Hay St.
Natural Embrace	Paul Hill	Person St. Plaza
Two Witnesses	Shawn Morin	117 Dick St., New Courthouse
Tree of Good and Evil	Charles Pilkey	Maxwell St.
Penum Ord	Donald Gialanella	117 Dick St., New Courthouse
Sweet Hearts	Craig Gray	300 Hay St.
Celebration	Cecilia Lueza	433 Hay St., City Hall
Drop	John E. Bannon	121 Hay St., Sky View
Neutron Star 1	Hanna Jubran	335 Ray Ave., Festival Park
Pair of Deer	Jonathan Bowling	325 Franklin St., Transportation Museum
P C Column	Carl Billingsley	281 Hugh Shelton Loop

Historic Landmarks

Liberty Point Monument (Bow & Person Streets)

A walled garden park marking the site of the Liberty Point Resolves, one of the earliest pre-Declaration independence resolutions in the American colonies.

• Signed: June 20, 1775 — predating the Declaration of Independence by just over a year.¹¹¹²¹³
• Signers: 55 Cumberland County patriots, signing as “The Cumberland Association” at Lewis Barge’s tavern in Cross Creek (now part of Fayetteville).¹¹¹⁴
• Notable line: The signers vowed they would “go forth and be ready to sacrifice our lives and fortunes to secure her freedom and safety” — though they also voiced hope for reconciliation with Britain “upon constitutional principles.”¹¹
• The monument: Unveiled the first week of July 1933 by the Liberty Point Monument Association, originally inscribed with 39 names. Sixteen additional signers’ names were added to the back of the monument on February 17, 1976.¹¹¹⁴

The political context is worth knowing: in 1775 Cumberland County was deeply divided. A large portion of the population — particularly the Highland Scots who had immigrated beginning in 1739 — remained loyal to the Crown.¹³ Signing the Resolves was a public, named commitment in a county where loyalty was not assumed.

Market House (Market Square)

The 1832 Market House sits at the center of downtown at the original “Cool Spring” intersection. Cool Spring Tavern operated in the same district as early as the 1780s–1790s, anchoring downtown’s earliest commercial corridor.⁷

Hidden Gems

Love Locks Wall at Cursive (223 Franklin St.)

A metal mesh panel on the wall of Cursive, a downtown gift shop on Franklin Street where visitors attach engraved padlocks. Cursive’s founder named the shop for her love of cursive handwriting; the storefront was previously known as “White Trash & Colorful Accessories” for 17 years before the rebrand in 2023.¹⁵¹⁶ The Love Locks wall itself is a community-organic tradition — locks are added by visitors over time, with no formal curator.

Cape Fear Studios (148 Maxwell St.)

A working artist cooperative and gallery — over 20 local artists maintain studios on-site. Unlike a traditional gallery, walk-ins can watch artists at work behind open studio doors and chat directly about the work in progress.

Art Alley (Hay Street block)

A rotating outdoor gallery in a Hay Street alley curated by the Cool Spring Downtown District.¹⁷

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How to use this page

If you spot an error, the source list below is your starting point — every numbered claim ties back to an external link. To suggest an addition, open an issue on the Downtown Guide repository or contact the Downtown Alliance directly.

References

Footnotes

1. Fay NC Magazine, “‘The Real Is Back. The Ville Is Back’: New J. Cole Mural in Downtown Fayetteville.” https://www.fayncmagazine.com/post/the-real-is-back-the-ville-is-back-new-j-cole-mural-in-downtown-fayetteville ↩

2. Song Meanings and Facts, “January 28th by J. Cole — Lyrics Meaning.” https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/january-28th-unraveling-the-profoundness-in-hip-hop-narratives/ — see also J. Cole Fandom Wiki on “January 28th” from 2014 Forest Hills Drive (2014). https://jcole.fandom.com/wiki/January_28th ↩ ↩²

3. WRAL, “Meet Andaluz The Artist: The visionary behind Fayetteville’s J.Cole mural.” https://www.wral.com/story/meet-andaluz-the-artist-the-visionary-behind-fayetteville-s-j-cole-mural/21362616/ ↩ ↩²

4. CBS17, “J. Cole mural goes up in downtown Fayetteville ahead of Dreamville 2024.” https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/cumberland-county-news/j-cole-mural-goes-up-in-downtown-fayetteville-ahead-of-dreamville-2024/ ↩ ↩²

5. X102.3, “New J. Cole mural unveiled in hometown ahead of Dreamville Festival.” https://www.x1023.com/new-j-cole-mural-unveiled-in-hometown-ahead-of-dreamville-festival/ ↩

6. Distinctly Fayetteville CVB, “The Painted Path: Fayetteville’s Must-See Mural Trail.” https://www.distinctlyfayettevillenc.com/the-painted-path-mural-trail/ ↩ ↩²

7. Cool Spring Downtown District, “Parks, landmarks, and public art.” https://visitdowntownfayetteville.com/landmarks/ — the authoritative listing for downtown sculptures and their artists. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

8. Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (1923), Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird ↩

9. Wikipedia, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Ways_of_Looking_at_a_Blackbird ↩ ↩²

10. LitCharts, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird — Summary & Analysis.” https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/wallace-stevens/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird ↩

11. Wikipedia, “Liberty Point Resolves.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Point_Resolves ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

12. NCpedia, “Liberty Point Resolves Declaration of Independence.” https://www.ncpedia.org/monument/liberty-point-resolves ↩

13. NC America250, “The Cumberland Association & the Liberty Point Resolves.” https://www.america250.nc.gov/blog/2025/06/10/cumberland-association-liberty-point-resolves ↩ ↩²

14. UNC Libraries, Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina, “Liberty Point Resolves Declaration of Independence, Fayetteville.” https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/31 ↩ ↩²

15. Cool Spring Downtown District, Cursive press release (2023). https://visitdowntownfayetteville.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Press-Release-Cursive.pdf ↩

16. Up & Coming Weekly, “Shop Cursive celebrates 20 years in Fayetteville.” https://www.upandcomingweekly.com/entertainment/11475-shop-cursive-celebrates-20-years-in-fayetteville ↩

17. Cool Spring Downtown District, “Art Alley in Downtown Fayetteville.” https://visitdowntownfayetteville.com/art-alley-downtown-fay/ ↩