I.F. AND KATE HILL HOUSE - 336 EAST MAIN

I.F. Hill, a city councilman from 1905-1909 and his wife Kate F. Hill lived in this house on the southwest corner of Queen St. and E. Main St. from the early decades of the 20th century. I.F. Hill was also an officer with the Homeland Investment Co.


(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

A view of this house adjacent to the still-extant Alexander Ford and Johnson Motor Co. buildings is visible in the short clip from H. Lee Waters' film of Durham, below, circa 1937.



Although I.F. Hill held public office, Kate Hill was very involved in the community, including efforts with the women's chapter of the Chamber of Commerce and the YMCA. She was also part of the first city planning commission in Durham - if you were able to successfully download "The Durham Plan" from 1927 that I posted recently, you'll see her name on the first few pages.

This house was torn down in the late 1950s to make way for surface parking.


Looking southwest, 2007.

(Special thanks to Lynn Richardson at the Durham County Library for research help on today's post.)

300 EAST PEABODY

Some of the buildings I've most enjoyed seeing re-done in other cities are train-related - stations/depots of course, but also the kind of wholesale companies that lined the railroad tracks in many cities. A line of these type of structures were spread along the railroad tracks along the 300 block of East Peabody St.


Looking east from the First National Bank building, 1920s - the structures begin with "MV Lawrence Wholesale." (A host of other interesting structures are visible in this shot - Carr's Somerset Villa straight ahead at the end of Peabody St., the tower of Hosiery Mill No. 1 just to its right, and the tower of the Commonwealth Cotton Co. to the right of the smokestacks.)
(courtesy Duke Archives)

The earliest of these structures were built ~1901 for the Thomas and Howard wholesale grocery company, which started that same year.


Thomas and Howard, looking south from Peabody, 1910.

Below, another view of these buildings from Dillard St. at the tracks, looking northwest, ~1920s.


(Courtesy Durham County Library)

In the 1920s, the largest of these structures, EH and MV Lawrence's Wholesale & Millers burned.

Looking northeast, 1920s
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

I profiled the MV Lawrence house, which was a few blocks away on Liberty St., a few months ago.

These structures were still around in the 1960s, moving west to east.


312 East Peabody


314 East Peabody


320-326 East Peabody


328-330 East Peabody


332 East Peabody

These shots were taken for urban renewal appraisal purposes. These buildings were torn down, and Ramseur St. was extended west through their former location to connect to the Loop just west of Roxboro. You can still see a forlorn stretch of the original East Peabody here today, just north of the current Ramseur St.


Looking southwest from South Queen and E. Peabody, 2007.

The section of East Peabody just to the east of this was taken over for parking lot by the Health Department. Originally Peabody stopped (as in the above 1920s photo at Dillard St., but after Somerset Villa was torn down, it was extended east to S. Elizabeth. Ironically, this is the stretch which survives - although it is likely to be snuffed out for the county parking lot.

Close Seminary Street for Parking?

Kevin has a good piece up detailing the efforts of folks in the Tuscaloosa-Lakewood neighborhood to get the Triangle Y to stick around; in that piece, he conveys a line by the Triangle Y rep that they would like to get the city to close Seminary St. to expand parking for the Downtown Y.

I gagged on this line - evidently Barry did too - he put up a piece rebutting the idea that what we need downtown is more parking. Couldn't agree more. Hey, if you can't find a place to park at the Y, maybe you should get some exercise and ride your bike there. Or demand better bus service to downtown from your neighborhood.

But beyond this, I think the prospect of closing a street in downtown has the mark of serious backward thinking. Connectivity downtown is challenging enough without closing any streets - ever tried to travel from west to east on the north side of downtown? Seminary is one of your only options. I hope this was a throwaway line that, if pursued, gets kicked to the curb of Seminary St. without delay.

S. ELIZABETH AND RAMSEUR

The original path of Elizabeth St. still persists south of East Main, roughly equidistant between Dillard and Fayetteville St., which is now where N. Elizabeth deposits its southbound traffic. The old route was a smaller, winding street that traveled north of E. Main through the current Liberty St. Apartments housing project, connecting with the original Elizabeth St. somewhere between Liberty and Holloway.

This smaller caliber roadway supported neighborhood traffic in the residential neighborhood to the east of downtown - a variety of smaller and larger houses typical as one moved away from more prominent, often ridgeline streets.


Looking east northeast at the corner of S. Elizabeth and Ramseur Sts. Although not readable, one of the once-ubiquitous white obelisk-like street markers is visible by the brick sidewalk. June, 1954.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

The caption on this picture read "Houses being torn down." So it goes. The neighborhood began to transform as early as the 1920s, when houses on East Main were torn down (Julian Carr's Somerset Villa in 1924.)

What replaced this was a decent commercial structure. The landscape, overall, is just - I may have used this word three days in a row - bleak.


Looking northeast, 2007.

The prospect of two blocks worth of surface parking just to the west (starting at the corner on the left side of the picture) courtesy of the county certainly isn't going to help matters much.

305 SOUTH DILLARD / DURHAM FRUIT AND PRODUCE

The Durham Fruit and Produce Company was established at Ramseur and South Dillard Streets in 1926 as a wholesaler of, well, fruit and produce.



Below, the building from the rear, looking northwest, 1950s.



Through the latter half of the 20th century, the building was used for light industrial uses, including a transmission shop.

Seems like it was the latter part of 2005 that James and Michelle Lee began transforming this bleak space into a quirky, vibrant collection of oddness, music, spirit, verve, and feather boas. 305 South quickly became many people's introduction to the idea that, indeed, cool things could happen - not just downtown, but east of downtown.



I saw some great shows at 305 South, but I must say that I mostly enjoyed driving by this spot late some Saturday night and seeing a crowd of people having a great time enjoying the show - since before the club, the only crowds around this spot were the guys unconscious outside the TnT store one block away.

Unfortunately, 305 recently went belly-up. Onerous bathroom code requirements were too much for a likely low-profit operation to afford, and the club was shut down. They soldiered on for awhile, but weren't able to pull together the funds to meet the ordinance. And that's a shame. Because it quite obviously worked, and worked in a natural, funky way that the developments we court have yet to achieve. Losing 305 South is a significant loss for downtown; I wish they could have held on until HOPE VI is built out and Golden Belt is complete and been part of a larger renaissance of the east side.

PARRISH PLACE / HOOD ST.

Hood Street, originally called Parrish Place, was a street of large houses at the eastern edge of the East Downtown neighborhood anchored by mansions on East Main and Dillard Streets. Around 1900, the street was put through an area that had held JR Reams' tobacco prizery house.


1891 - the prizery house is labelled #28. Reams Ave. later became South Elizabeth St.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

Below, the street in 1937 (west is at the top) showing the outline of sizable houses mostly built between 1900 and 1920


The houses on Parrish Place were not quite as lavish as the mansions to the west, but large enough to reflect the fact that they were one block to the east of Julian Carr's Somerset Villa.

By the 1930s, this area had already begun to change with the growth of downtown. As noted last week in the post about 215 Hood the apartment buildings were a 'second wave' of sorts, accompanied by retail/commercial growth along East Main St.


Looking northwest from the railroad tracks, 1950s - the houses that line Parrish Place are visible, with Ramseur running from back left to foreground right. Also visible are a number of previously profiled locations - Hosiery Mill No. 6 in the foreground, the trolley barn, Franklin Ct. apartments, the union bus station, St. Philip's, and Sears (now the health dept.)
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)


Looking southwest from above the Golden Belt Hosiery Mill, straight down Parrish Place/Hood St. Fayetteville/Elizabeth as they exist today have not been cut through yet in this 1950s photo - East Main is the cross-street in the foreground.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)


Looking southwest from above the Durham Hosiery Mill No. 1
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

Although this area was not demolished by urban renewal, industrial change and the big Elizabeth-Fayetteville cut-through put much pressure on this neighborhood to change. By the 1970s, the only original house left on the street (then changed to Hood St.) was 209 Hood.


Looking southeast, 1970s.

Today, this is a car lot.



The area is pretty bleak - the apartment building at 215 Hood is the only residential structure left on the street.


Google satellite view, 2007.

East Chapel Hill St. Parking Deck - Where is NIS when you need 'em?

Word in the Herald-Sun and New and Observer earlier this week is that the Official Obfuscation policy all too prevalent in our city has lately attempted to keep mum that the East Chapel Hill St. parking deck has been quietly cracking away in a structurally, um, disadvantageous manner - evidently acknowledged only by some we-suggest-you-park-your-Hummer-elsewhere signs near the upper floors. Kevin posted about this earlier in the week over at Bull City Rising.

To my mind, this is the best news I've heard in Durham in awhile. Keep the place cordoned off so no one can park there or go near the thing. This has got to violate some code - I think it lacks the requisite number of feet of countertop or something - and then bring in the NIS bulldozers. It's a threat to public health, right? Structurally unsound, right? C'mon - I'm with ya on this one!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you; I hope you have a wonderful holiday.

Gary

215 HOOD ST

Looking east, 1981.
(Courtesy Robby Delius)

I've always had a particular affection for the 1920s-era, Colonial Revival apartment building on Hood St. Although as late as the 1980s, above, there was an adjacent apartment building as well, for the time that I've known the building, it has stood alone amidst the warehouses. I used to wonder what in the world it was doing there - it seems so incongruous.

The answer is that, even in the 1950s, Hood St. was a residential neighborhood of small and large houses, as well as apartment buildings. The combination of urban renewal to the north, the large-bore re-routing of Elizabeth St. to connect to Fayetteville - which severed this from points east, and light industrial expansion chewed up all of this neighborhood except 215 Hood.

I was sad to see the other day when I drove by that the house is suffering from a pervasive blight on the eastern side of town. Plastic Window Disease. The owners were ripping out all of the old windows and putting in new - yep 6 over 6 with the fake muntins - plastic windows.


Looking northeast, 2007.

Somehow the window manufacturers have persuaded people that 1)Old windows are doomed to leak energy and that 2) the only solution is to rip out entire windows and replace them all with fresh-from-the-factory full window assemblies. Ugh. Yes - at least they aren't tearing the building down. But at the rate windows are being ripped out in East Durham, we are going to have a lot of ugly looking houses that people will be even less likely to preserve.

Say Goodbye to the Garrett Farm

The City Council approved the 308 unit subdivision atop the old Clifton and Leah Garrett farm last night, and did not think it wise to push the developer to save one of the few remaining farmhouses along the Garrett Road corridor. Per the Herald's reporting (unfortunately I couldn't make the council meeting) the loss of context was one reason to not save the farmhouse. Which has a kind of perverse logic to it - after landscape horrors like Mark Jacobson Toyota have been approved across the street, it evidently makes less sense to save the farmhouse.

I thought averting the complex was a lost fight from the get go. Durham isn't about to stop building atop its farms and forests, despite our environmental woes. And there is some credence to the idea of building density near already busy corridors like 15-501 - if you then hold the line at some other location that is still un-sprawled. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that we are building useful density - the kind that promotes public health by increasing walking trips and lessening car trips. The lack of interconnectivity in these suburbs and the miserable transportation landscape just mean that the upcoming widening of 15-501 just west of this location will be full before it begins.

The loss of the farmhouse seems most avoidable to me. It's unfortunate that the developer couldn't see the economic benefit of distinguishing their product with some authenticity - and the council didn't feel that saving this little farmhouse was a worthy concession to see a bit of rural Durham preserved.

WILLIAM BRANSON HOUSE - RAMSEUR ST.

(Courtesy Duke Archives)

William H. Branson was the secretary, treasurer, and manager of Julian Carr's Durham Cotton Manufacturing Co., located at E. Pettigrew and S. Driver St, as well as manager of the Pearl Cotton Mill at Trinity and N. Duke. His house was located adjacent to the Reed House.


1891 Bird's Eye View
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

He was also superintendent of the Sunday school at East End (later Carr) Methodist Church.

Branson was killed in a boiler explosion in 1899; Commonwealth Methodist Church was subsequently renamed Branson Methodist in his honor in 1904.

His house, along with the others on Ramseur, fell to industrial uses over the course of the mid-20th century.


Looking south, 2007.

907 RAMSEUR / PRATTSBURG

As Durham is a relatively young town compared to Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Raleigh, etc., there is a great deal of history in now-Durham County (originally Orange County) prior to the existence of Durham proper. While it may sometimes be tempting to think of it in the same way we think of colonial settlements, Durham's history is more that of multiple small settlements and farms that rather quickly consolidated around the opportunity presented by a new railroad line.

One of those early settlements was Prattsburg (or Prattsburgh, sometimes) established by William Pratt in the early 1830s. Even Pratt's settlement was a successor to the previous settlement of Dilliardsville (from which, perhaps, Dillard St. is corrupted.) William Dilliard had established a small settlement around the current Dillard St. and East Main St. (on land he acquired from Absalom Alston - whose name lives on in Alston Ave.) around 1819, which became an early post office at the intersection of the Fayetteville to Roxboro Road (which retain their names) and the Hillsborough to Raleigh Road (now a combination of Hillsborough Rd., Main St., Ramseur, Angier Ave., and Highway 70.) When Dilliard died in 1824, William Pratt bought his land and established a store on the Hillborough Road.

This store was accompanied by a "grog shop" and a "tavern." (I don't know the difference.) It also had a cotton gin and press, as well as a blacksmith's shop. The post office was soon transferred to Pratt's store.

The settlement quickly gained a reputation for intemperate activity. Jean Anderson details a court case brought against Pratt in 1833 for:

"keeping a disorderly house for his own lucre and gain at unlawful times as well on Sundays as on other days [for] evil disposed persons of evil name and fame and conversation to come together [to] upset the peace and dignity of the state [by] drinking, tipling, playing at cards and other unlawful games, cursing, screaming, quarreling, and otherwise misbehaving themselves."

It's worth noting that one of the Durham area's other dens-of-iniquity, Pinhook (in the area of the Erwin Mil/9th St. in West Durham) was originally owned by Pratt as well. While debauchery along a major transportation route neither began nor ended with Pratt, he, as any good businessman, knew his customers' taste. Barter was often the transaction method of choice - exchanging bushels of corn for liquor was not uncommon.

Pratt is often treated with some derision in the common folklore for the conception that he botched the Big Deal. When North Carolina made the decision to establish a railroad line and incorporated the North Carolina Railroad in 1849, the ridgeline between Hillsborough and Raleigh (already the site of the roadway) was one chosen path. The railroad approached Pratt about purchasing a right-of-way through his land. Pratt undoubtedly set his price too high - perhaps because he already had a good thing going. The story goes that Pratt refused because the railroad would "frighten the horses" at his establishment. Sounds dubious - but perhaps it is something Pratt said in thinking he could drive a hard bargain.

But his 'miscalculation' was that Bartlett Durham, a mile to the west, was more than happy to give up part of his land for a new railroad depot. The collection of stores and houses a mile to the west became "Durhamville" and the site of the new station by the early 1850s. The post office was moved to Durhamville in 1852. Pratt hadn't realized, evidently, that he could be so easily undercut.

Prattsburg likely lived on awhile longer. Lewis Blount's map of Durham in 1867 shows Prattsburg and Pratt's house (number 9) on either side of the Hillsborough Road. The curve of the railroad line - established to avoid Pratt's property - is somewhat exaggerated on this map, but still evident today.


(Courtesy Durham County Library)

(Also visible on this map is how early "Haiti" was established - at the intersection of the Fayetteville-Roxboro Road and what would likely later be Elm St.)

But the slide was inevitable. Both Gray's 1881 map and the 1891 Bird's Eye map cover this area incompletely, but it appears that Prattsburg had disappeared by then. To some extent, this is why Pratt's miscalculation, at least from a monetary standpoint, was not as grave. He owned upwards of 450 acres on the east side of a rapidly growing city - which he sold at a higher value because of the establishment of that city. His miscalculation, if he would have cared, would be that we don't today live in Prattsburg. It seems likely, given his willingness to make money through the most expedient means possible, that he would have been happy to sell off his holdings at more than he paid for them.

By the 1880s, this section of roadway was called "Raleigh St." and by the 1890s, "Ramseur St." after CSA general Stephen D. Ramseur, a native of Lincolnton, NC. Suburbia - 1880s-style, plowed under Prattsburg and supplanted it with the large houses of the well-to-do along the horse-drawn trolley line. The strength of any direct connection between the libertine nature of Prattsburg and the moral turpitude of Smoky Holllow, directly to the north, is unknown, as Prattsburg's most accurate address was the later site of rather fancy houses.

Boyd's history of Durham - not always known for its accuracy - confidently puts the location of Pratt's store at the 1920s address of 907 Ramseur St. Wyatt Dixon faithfully reported this for the Herald-Sun in the 1950s, and took a picture of the 1890s-era house standing on that spot.


Looking north, August 1951.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

Given the quantity of different buildings and establishments at Prattsburg, it seems likely that the location of the settlement was more widespread than this, and the railroad survey from 1850 seems to show that it extended north at least to Angier Avenue. Blount's map puts Pratt's house on the south side of the main road, while Boyd states that Pratt lived farther away, near the current Club Blvd.

Regardless, the area around either side of Ramseur St. just north of the curve in the RR tracks was undoubtedly the general location.

By the mid-20th century, Julian Carr's early establishment of the Hosiery Mills just to the north, and the general increase of Durham industry changed this area - those with money had moved on to suburbs further afield. No houses from the late 19th century remain on Ramseur - which is now a light and heavy industrial strip.


907 Ramseur St., looking north, November 2007.

Durham's 1927 Comprehensive Plan

As promised (a little while ago) I have scanned the entirety of "The Durham Plan" - Durham's first comprehensive plan, from 1927. It's a fascinating read if you are into figuring out what kind of thinking guided the course of what Durham became over the middle 1/3 of the 20th century. (And if you are reading this website, you probably are.)

It is a big pdf file (84 MB), so caveat emptor - I'd suggest you right-click (option-click for Mac folk) on the link below and select "Save target as.." or similar.

Download the plan here.

Taking back a Street Corner

Kevin over at Bull City Rising notes a grassroots endeavor to "take back a corner" at E. Club and N. Roxboro tonight at 7pm by having a little 'party' on the corner - and thereby dissuade ongoing ? - illegal activity.

I love to see this happening - people of Durham asserting their rights to have safety and ownership of the public realm, rather than relinquishing it and hiding indoors/in another part of town.

Of course, I firmly believe that part of the problem at W. Club and Roxboro is physical. This intersection (and I have a great old picture of the original Fowler's Grocery there) has become a car-dominated space. When you dissuade pedestrians, you dissuade people who are up to good rather than no-good from spending time there. These are the kind of costs that don't get counted in simplistic DOT level of service models.

So kudos to these folks, and to Kevin for getting the word out. Making it a place with ongoing eyes-on-the-street will require an ongoing effort to take back public space for a diversity of users - not just people getting from I-85 to Durham Regional.

DURHAM HOSIERY MILL NO. 6

With growth in the demand for hosiery - particularly silk hosiery - Julian Carr expanded his Durham Hosiery Mill 'empire' with the Durham Hosiery Mill Number 6 (2 was on Pettigrew St., no.3 was in High Point, and Durham Hosiery Mill #4 was later called Carr Mill over in Carr-boro.)

Durham Hosiery Mill number 6 was built immediately 'behind' (to the south of) Hosiery Mill No. 1 between Walker, Henderson, S. Elm, and the railroad tracks in 1912, employing "150 to 200 additional workers." Eventually there were 14 branches of the Durham Hosiery Mills.


Hosiery Mill No. 6 is the long building (with the smokestack) behind Hosiery Mill No. 1.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)


Hosiery Mill No. 6 (between the water tower and the smokestack) looking south, 1950s.
(Courtesy State Division of Archives and History)


The two hosiery mills, looking west - no.1 on the right, no. 6 on the left.
(Courtesy Herald Sun)

In its structure, mill no. 6 appears to be quite similar to the main building at the Golden Belt Hosiery Mill, except shorter, with a long monitor roof running the length of the building.

By the 1960s, this structure was part of Kingson Mills.">


Looking west down Henderson St., 1960s.

The mill seems to have shut down during the 1970s, and quickly fell into disrepair.


Looking northwest from Henderson St., 1970s.


Hoisery mill No. 6, around 1981.
(Courtesy Robby Delius)


Hoisery mill No. 6, around 1981.
(Courtesy Robby Delius)

Unfortunately, the mill was destroyed by fire around 1980, and was therefore unable to be renovated in the beautiful fashion that Mill No. one was a few years later. Instead, a cul-de-sac of houses were built by Habitat on the location of this mill in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was Habitat of Durham's first cluster of homes.


Looking southwest from Walker St., 2007.


The location of the former Mill No. 6, 2007.

806 RAMSEUR - MW REED HOUSE

While I've previously shown how the larger houses extended east from the core of early Durham on East Main, Roxboro, Liberty, Dillard, and Holloway, there was one additional street on the east side of downtown that was a linear strip of 'sizable-house' development - Ramseur St.

Ramseur St. seems about as unlikely today to be an elegant address as Liberty St. or South Mangum (McMannen) St. But likely these streets, Ramseur was an early 'suburb' of downtown for the well-to-do.

The house at 806 Ramseur can be seen in the above drawing just southeast of where
Ramseur crosses the northbound railroad tracks (the same tracks that today run parallel to Elizabeth St. by the Hosiery Mill and Golden Belt.)It was built in 1889 by MW Reed, who ran a cigar factory with J.E. Lyon (Lyon and Reed.)

The house later became the Annie and WW Thompson house; after he died, Annie ran a boarding house out of the building. During the mid-20th century, the house became a commercial structure, which likely prevented its demolition as the area converted to light and heavy industrial uses. The "Furniture Liquidators" house was still around in 1981.


(Courtesy Robby Delius)

But by that time it was the last of the early houses on Ramseur. By the 90s, it too was gone.


Looking south, 2007.

SEABOARD AIR LINE RAILROAD STATION

Looking northwest, 1950s.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

Prior to the construction of Union Station, all of the railroads has separate passenger depots along the railroad tracks. One of these was the Durham and Northern, formed in 1887, which became the Seaboard Railroad. While Union Station consolidated these, the Seaboard continued to have a separate passenger depot at the foot of Dillard St. (at the railroad tracks.)


1891 Bird's Eye view, showing the station just south of Somerset Villa.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

It had, to my mind, one of the coolest roofs - ever, and the front overhang is odd and wonderful. Not wonderful were the segregated entrances on the east side (seen above.)


Looking northeast, 1950s
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

An aerial shot, below, shows the station at the southern end of Dillard St., directly across the tracks from Hayti. (Dillard crossed the tracks to Pettigrew, but did not go further south.)


Looking northwest, 1950s.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

There was a box of a structure here for many years (no cool roof), seemingly covered with particleboard or something similar. At the urging of the folks from 305 South, it was torn down not too long after they opened up. At the time, I wasn't aware of the station, but I've wondered since then if it was the remnant of it.


Looking northwest, 2007.

They turned the remaining concrete floor/slab into a place to skateboard.


Looking northeast, 2007.