Architectural Wanderings: Wilmington’s newly opened Fort Fisher Visitor Center

I live in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I love it. However, as an architectural photographer, I think it is fair to say Wilmington is limited in its architecture. It’s probably not fair as I’m directly comparing it to having lived in New York City and London, where you could take photos of beautiful architecture every day for your entire life and never get bored. As a smaller city, Wilmington simply won’t have the amount of incredible architecture that I crave, and that’s okay. Not to say there’s not beautiful architecture - downtown has some lovely historic buildings that I love taking photos of. It’s more a lack of variety that frustrates me. The modern, striking or simply interesting architecture is MOSTLY (there are exceptions but very very few) single family homes - which I of course can’t just walk in to on a photo walk and take photos of. This just comes with the size of the city - a lot of existing cultural buildings are housed in older buildings, and I’m sure that as the city grows, more effort will be put into creating beautiful public spaces for people to interact with. ‘Project Grace’ is on the way, the new development downtown which will hold both the updated Cape Fear Museum and New Hanover County Library, and I can’t wait to take photos of it once it’s completed! But another fantastic new building opened here recently, and that is the new Visitor Center at the Fort Fisher State Historic Site.

The new visitor center, viewed from across Fort Fisher Boulevard S.

The building was designed by architecture firm Clark Nexsen, and opened in October 2024. I had a pleasure of visiting the site just for fun on a VERY chilly and windy afternoon in December to explore the new building, and I had such a great time! As I said, Wilmington is lacking in modern, public, free to visit buildings, so I was in heaven for a couple of hours tickling my architecture photo walk itch. I’m sure I will be back here many times taking photos at different stages throughout the year, seeing how it holds up against the rather brutal environment where it sits. If you know my shooting style, you’ll also know I love using and playing with the natural light and shadows, and this building provides some very satisfying shadow casts. I’d love to shoot this building for the firm themselves - manifesting that here. Clark Nexsen team, I’m ready when you are. But for now, here are some photos from my initial explore.

I’ve also recently added Tilt-Shift lenses (although the ‘Shift’ is all that we care about) to my workflow, and I am loving the extra creativity it provides in composing shots. I hope to do a post or video about using shift lenses vs not soon, so keep a look out for that.

The approach, driving from Kure Beach

The entrance from the parking lot, with views through to the renovated earthworks and bunkers

Beautiful SE facade, viewed from across the road.

Material detail shot - all detail shots taken with the Fuji 56mm f1.2

The SW Facade

Beautiful wind-swept oak trees line the road, separating the Visitor Center from the ocean.

The Visitor Center peaking out above the earthworks on site.

Thanks for getting to the end of this post, I hope you enjoyed the photos. Until the next one!