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At this busy spot beside South Eugene, near a loitering crowd that gathers at all hours of the day, there’s not much left of this place called Five Points.

There’s a tiny portion of sidewalk, a tiny portion of an old street and, on this particular day, an empty 40, on its side, drained of beer.

Other than that, there are just memories of what was: five streets intersecting at the epicenter of Warnersville, Greensboro’s first black community, the first home for freed slaves after the Civil War.

Gary Gresko  saw that very same shadow of blacktop. Yet, with his artist eye, he saw something more. He talked to residents, walked the nearby streets of Ashe and Ireland, and heard about the importance of history and religion, the pride of home ownership, the perception of neglect.

From that came an idea: five benches, his Five Points benches, all broad and strong, not little and thin. He’s turning steel and African teak into five benches that will be within a few dozen steps of Five Points.

He’ll bolt them in a semi-circle, slide five boulders behind them and have burned into the backrests, carved by a 5,000-degree  flame, five words: endurance, triumph, faith, strength and hope.

“You got it,’’ Warnersville resident Angela Harris told Gresko when she saw the first sketches. “You got it.’’

This working-class neighborhood has big history. You see it at the corner of Ashe and South when you spot a big boulder and read the plaque attached in memory of Yardley Warner  — lawyer, teacher, preacher and Quaker. He created Warnersville. He was called the “Freedman’s Friend.”

His dream, which sprouted from 37  acres of land, became a self-sustaining community of doctors and barbers, preachers and civil rights fighters, and it stoked education, entrepreneurship, athletic excellence and the need for equality.

Then, in the 1960s, urban renewal bulldozed the bad — and the good — of Warnersville, its residents say. And now, those very same people who saw urban renewal firsthand — and still live there — feel forgotten by our city.

“To me, it’s total neglect,’’ said Otis Hairston Jr., 63, a leader of the Warnersville Community Coalition. “Promises made by the city to revitalize our community and bring back what was once here — that was never done.’’

You sense that distrust when you walk through Warnersville. Along many streets you see a smattering of front-yard signs that read “No Sports Park.’’ It’s a reference to the plan by Greensboro College to turn J.C. Price School, the educational home of many Warnersville luminaries, into an athletics complex.

Yet ask a few residents, particularly the younger ones, about Gresko’s benches. They seem to believe this sculpture of steel and African teak could start a symbolic rebirth of a community that wants badly to rebound.

You hear about history: the marching band from J.C. Price, the movie theater called “The Gem’’ and St. Matthews United Methodist Church, once perched at a  corner of Five Points. Bennett College started in the church basement.

You also hear about neighborhood characters. Like Lola Gant . She was the “Candy Lady.’’

That’s what Angela Harris called her. As a little girl, no more than 7, Harris would jingle the change in her pocket, walk two doors down, buy candy from the “Candy Lady’’ and watch her tongue turn purple, red, green and pink.

 Now, Harris has moved back to Warnersville, back to the place where she was raised — a three-bedroom, one-bath house, the house plan found everywhere in Warnersville — to take care of her 70-year-old mother, Mae Ruth .

She also wants to help take care of her neighborhood, her home, the place she chose to live after leaving Durham.

“I moved away and came back because this has always been home,’’ Harris said as she walked along Ireland Street the other day. “Warnersville has a rich history, and I want that history to grow, not stagnate.

“And these benches will help people get rid of those preconceived notions of Warnersville, based on what they heard,’’ she said. “They think, 'Don’t go over there. Don’t cross the railroad tracks.’ But they come and they see the new houses, see us gardening and planting flowers and they think, 'This is not bad.’ ’’

It’s all about connections. Gresko’s benches begin the 4.8-mile trail known as the Downtown Greenway, a path 12 feet wide that will ring the center city and connect a dozen neighborhoods and four colleges with one another.

The $26 million  project will take between five and 10 years  to build and needs another $13.5 million  in funding, some of which could come from the federal government sometime this year.

A kickoff celebration took place Saturday at Five Points.

Construction on the greenway is expected to begin Monday. And in two months, as flowers in Warnersville begin to bloom, Gresko will bolt in his benches for everyone to see.

“They could buy a bench and plop it in there and put some flowers around it, and it’ll work,’’ said Gresko, 55, a sculptor from Oriental who was paid $5,000  for his bench project. “But there is not that other quality that people can relate to: the rocks, the words, the materials, the feelings that are in there.’’

“It’s like music. It works on our emotions. And we need to remember these words because without hope, there is hopelessness; without strength, there is weakness,’’ he says. “And right now, I think there is too much of that.

“So, we need to examine these things. It gives us food for our soul.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com