508 SOUTH BUCHANAN - ALBERT WILKERSON HOUSE

One of my favorite houses in Durham, the Albert Wilkerson house, was built around 1910 by Albert Wilkerson, one of the first Durham building contractors who had earlier lived on what became Wilkerson Avenue (named after him.) He built this house after the earlier structure was destroyed by fire. Wilkerson is known to have built Washington Duke's home Fairview and the Epworth Inn on the Trinity College campus.



Despite the very unappealing commercial strip just north of this structure on the north side of West Chapel Hill St., this structure remains seemingly intact.



Durham doesn't have many single or 1.5 story Victorian/Queen Anne structures with anything approaching this level of detailing. I'm thrilled that this one has survived.


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IMMACULATA SCHOOL / 600-700 BLOCKS BURCH AVE.

Looking southeast, 1948.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

There aren't many pictures of the 600 and 700 blocks of Burch Avenue to go by, but the above aerial shot, with Burch the longest street running diagonally from upper left to lower right, gives you a sense of the neighborhood scale. It was much like the still-extant neighborhood to the west of Buchanan Blvd. - mostly smaller houses, mostly from the 1910s and 1920s.


(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

A direct aerial view of Burch Avenue, 1959, shows the residential character of this portion of neighborhood, excepting commercial uses increasingly present near Gregson, on the right - the large 'square' is a Liggett Warehouse - known as 'the Green Shed'.

Near Milton / Buchanan, Immaculata Catholic School decided to expand with new buildings in the mid-1950s. The original school was located on West Chapel Hill St., adjacent and just to the east of the original sanctuary. It was torn down along the the sanctuary, and a new school building and administrative building for the Sisters of St. Dominic were built on Burch Ave. The buildings were built by George W. Kane, general contractor.


Looking southwest towards Milton/Buchanan, 1957.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


Housing next to the school, 1957.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


Looking southeast from Burch Ave. and Milton Ave/Buchanan Blvd., 1957
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

From 1967-1969, the Durham Freeway was built just up to this point - it extended no further north than West Chapel Hill St., although the houses on Burch Ave. were demolished to make way for the big looping exit ramp for northbound cars to exit onto West Chapel Hill.


Looking north from Chapel Hill St., 03.07.69
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

I'm not sure what year the Freeway was extended to Swift, and then to Erwin - certainly by the 80s.


The former 600-700 blocks of Burch Ave., looking east, 1989.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Immaculata has continued to expand the school (adding a second story, and expanded into the land on the north side of Burch. The former "Sisters of St. Dominic" building on southwest corner of Burch and Buchanan is gone, replaced with the back of the Emily K. They've expanded into almost all of the remaining space between West Chapel Hill, Buchanan Blvd., and the Freeway.


Looking southeast from Burch and Buchanan, 04.23.08

Since churches and schools Must Expand, it seems, I guess I'm glad that Immaculata had this space to expand into, even as they took down the few remaining houses on this block. As little as I wanted to see them go, I'd rather Immaculata do their business over here than chomp into the contiguous neighborhood fabric - like Healthy Start plans to do a few blocks away, or NC Central will do in decimating College View.

The question is, will Immaculata be content with this campus? Or will they eventually begin acquiring across Buchanan?

To a broader point, how do 'non-profit' churches and schools have so much money for land acquisition? When we hear about money desperately needed to do good deeds, buy books, feed the less fortunate, etc., how much is actually going towards land banking to expand the Good Deed Business, Inc.? Some of the real estate holdings of churches and schools - particularly in Durham's impoverished neighborhoods - are astounding. I'm talking blocks of houses/land.


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405-407 SOUTH BUCHANAN

Looking northeast, late 1970s

Even though these houses remained in a persistently downtrodden state over the last decade or so of their lives, there was something stately about them to me - as I would drive north or south on Buchanan Blvd., the freeway overpass always felt to me a bit like a gateway in and out of the West End, and these two houses - very upright and not fancily adorned - felt a bit like sentinels.

They were likely built as rental housing, and were a bit unusual in that they had the common tri-gabled ('triple-A') roofline so common in early 20th century Durham single-story houses - but in a two-story form.

I believe that these houses were torn down sometime in the late 1990s. Whether by the city or by Immaculata, the land soon became part of Immaculata's parking and site expansion.


Looking northeast, 04.23.08


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WEST END GRADED SCHOOL

The West End Graded School was one of the first three public graded schools for African-American children in Durham's segregated school system. The first school for African-American children was the Whitted School, which located in a Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co. prize house on Red Cross Street (essentially where the DBAP is now) and the Primitive Baptist Church before a permanent structure was erected on Ramsey and Proctor Sts., in Hayti.

The subsequent two schools to be constructed for African-American children were the West End Graded School, built in 1901 and the East End Graded School, built in 1909.

The West End School was built on Ferrell Street, at the north edge of the historically African-American community of Brookstown. Ferrell was one street north of Thaxton, which is where the African-American West Durham Baptist church was located.

In 1927, the school was described as "a two-story frame building 70 by 62 feet in size on a plot 117 feet by 196 feet [with] 10 classrooms." Although I have no record of what grades were offered, it is likely that the school did not go beyond 9th grade.

Pauli Murray, who was born in 1910 and attended the West End school, describes the poor condition of the school in a fascinating oral history interview.

"I'll never forget West End School. It was a rickety old wooden built building with the paint peeling; I can see those scales now. You know how wood or shingles or paint blisters and I can see it. When there was a wind in a storm, you could just hear the wind blowing through that old building. I think that it was a two storey building, it might have been a three storey building, but anyway … And of course, the white kids school, a nice brick school sitting in a lawn surrounded by a fence. West End was up on a sort of clay, barren ground. There was no lawn whatsoever. It just sat on clay. The fact that I can remember this today and I can see that old school building there, no swings, nothing to play with when you went out …"


Above, a distant view of the West End Graded School from Trinity College, ~1905.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

(I had hoped to find a better picture of the school, but even DPS' archives - which I excitedly noted had a listing for West End Graded School - had only a copy of East End School labeled as West End.)


Sanborn Map showing the location of the school, 1913. Ferrell is now Maxwell, Milton is now Buchanan, and Spring is now Rome.


First Grade class, 1906
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

Clement Richardson's 1913 paper about African-American life in Durham notes the education and financial success of the various school principals, including

"...PW Dawkins, principal of the West End Graded school, a graduate of Hampton, [18]86, [who] owns his home, six other houses, and eight vacant lots."

Additional history about the school is scant/non-existent from my research. It appears that population shifts changed the geographic/demographic conditions for the school during the 1920s, as again in 1927, the Plan for Durham states that

"The tributary population is decreasing owing to the fact that buildings are being torn down and the residents moving elsewhere. It is expected that the school will be abandoned in the near future."

Indeed, by 1937, the West End Graded School is gone, replaced by a smaller building, labelled "City Schools Supply Depot" on the Sanborn maps. The original graded schools were supplanted by an elementary/high school system, with Hillside finally offering education through 12th grade to African-American children by 1944.

Brookstown was mostly destroyed by the Durham Freeway in the 1970s, when the freeway was extended from Chapel Hill St. to Swift Avenue. A few houses remained on the north side of the freeway on the former Ferrell (now Maxwell St.) until just a few years ago, as Duke has slowly acquired and demolished the remaining housing. The entire area between Ferrell and the Freeway is now dirt parking lots for sundry Duke vehicles.


Site of the West End Graded School, 04.23.08.


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And once again...

The Alston Ave. item has been pulled from today's agenda. Note that this isn't really a good thing - as the council doing nothing to stop the road being built is equivalent to endorsement. I.e., the default position of NCDOT is to build the road.

And in other disheartening news...

... the NCCU Board of Trustees approved their campus expansion plan, which will destroy 36 houses in the historic African-American neighborhood of College View by 2010, and acquire an additional 145 parcels for demolition/new development over the following 10-15 years. Man, it is urban renewal throwback day today: urban highways and the demolition of historic African-American neighborhoods.

Alston Avenue - The Final Chapter?

And so the Alston Avenue widening appears to be, after several delays and last minute let's-pull-it-from-the-agenda moves, staying on the city council agenda for today's work session. The discussion revolves around whether or not the city will reject the NC DOT design for Alston Avenue. Were the city to do nothing, the NCDOT design will move forward (i.e. the default is to widen the road to 4-6 lanes.)

It doesn't look good, unfortunately, for a better solution for the road. It appears that Bell, McFadden, Clement, and Ali will likely endorse the NCDOT design, allowing the widening to move forward.

I find this terribly, terribly depressing. Not just because of the negative repercussions of this roadway - and it will have those - but because the vote will have very little to do with finding a road design that is best for the community, and a lot more to do with people staking out their territory for mayoral campaigns to come: to be viewed as the person who 'brought $28 million to East Durham' and sate the desires of a handful of East Durham power-brokers who have the ear of the mayor because of the voting blocs they can mobilize.

Never mind the opposition of residents from Angier Avenue/Uplift East Durham, residents from Cleveland-Holloway, residents from Edgemont/Morning Glory, residents from Eastway. Their concerns must be irrelevant, because they are represented by some unelected folks that 'speak for East Durham.' Never mind that the aforementioned neighborhoods are actually the ones that feel the negative effects of this road. Such is the fallacy of lumping "NortheastCentral Durham" or "PAC 1" together as one giant monolithic group. The reason that the boundaries keep expanding for groups like NECD? Power - pure and simple.

Never mind the opposition of the city's Economic and Workforce Development department - who know this won't bring economic development. Never mind the opposition of the city's Transportation Department, who know that this will do nothing to improve travel time, and do much to create hazardous conditions for pedestrians, including mass transit users.

Never mind the kids that will be hurt or killed trying to cross a 6-lane intersection. Never mind the kids that become obese because their parents, wisely, won't let them walk to school across a highway.

Never mind the people that won't buy and refurbish old/abandoned housing in the Golden Belt / Morning Glory historic district or Cleveland-Holloway because when they ask a realtor where the nearest park and school are, the realtor will say "across Alston Avenue."

Never mind the houses and business that will be destroyed. Never mind the loss of the neighborhood grocery store that the owner says he would invest $30,000 in tomorrow if he knew he wasn't going to be kicked out.

Never mind that East Durham is already on the upswing - with new businesses and new/renovated housing, with people excited to explore a neighborhood they didn't know, and longtime residents excited to see new businesses, people, and housing. Never mind that this is happening because investment in a human-scale landscape is already occurring - by the public and private sector - without Alston Avenue being turned into a freeway.

From the first point I saw this design, I advocated for a compromise design solution. Perhaps that was a mistake - perhaps I should have just advocated to kill this project from the start, before it, and neighborhoods, could become pawns in a local game of who-brung-the-money.

For the councilmembers who will endorse this project - I hope that this highway is your legacy. That every kid who can't cross the street without fearing for their life, every bicyclist run off the road, every speeding vehicle that runs off the road across a sidewalk on Alston Avenue reminds people that you voted for this boondoggle to feed your own political ambition. Thanks for showing that the politician's invocation of the oft-lamented destruction of neighborhoods by the Durham Freeway is absolute pandering b.s. - that, given the same choices, you would make the same exact mistake for the exact same reasons.

CARY LUMBER COMPANY

The Cary Lumber Company was established in 1894 and moved to Durham ~1900, originally locating at 101-107 West Chapel Hill St. at Five Points. In 1913, the company moved to the 'edge of town' near Milton Avenue and the railroad tracks to "get out of the congested area."

The company built a sizable complex of buildings, including a mill and large dry kiln.


Cary Lumber complex, 1937

Throughout the 20th century, the company continued to purchase timber lands in North Carolina to log and brought felled trees to Durham. The company was run by several generations of the Satterfield family.


The woodworking warehouse, looking southeast from Milton Ave. (S. Buchanan Blvd.), ~1930.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, Chamber of Commerce Collection)


Cary Lumber Office, from Milton Ave/Buchanan Blvd., probably facing northeast, likely 1950s
(Courtesy Robby Delius)


Aerial view, 1959. The office building is closer to the railroad tracks, the woodworking warehouse is the longer north-south oriented building.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)


Bird's Eye aerial view, looking east, 1950s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)

The main office for the company stood on the west side of the street, on the northwest corner of Milton and Spring St. (now Rome Avenue.)


Looking northwest, 1950s. I'm quite amused by the big virgin cypress log with a sign pointing out all of the historic events it lived through in its 1100 years before being felled and placed in the front yard of a lumber company office with a toy house on top of it.
(Courtesy the Forest History Society)

Cary Lumber shut down in 1956 and the buildings became a Lowes in 1957. Lowes was here until the late 1960s. By the late 1970s, the buildings, including a tobacco warehouse to the southeast, had been acquired by Duke University.

The northernmost frame structures, late 1970s - looking southeast.

The northernmost buildings were demolished at some point after the warehouses were purchased by Duke University. By the 1990s, part of the facility had become the Duke Surplus store. This venture later moved to the former Center theater at Lakewood Shopping Center, and the Lumber Company buildings became part of the Duke Transit complex.


Former Cary Lumber Company warehouse, 03.18.08


Site of the Cary Lumber Company Office, 07.19.08

There's a cool building behind the bricked in windows of the warehouse, as well as what appears to be a currently-enclosed monitor roof. In keeping with my sentiment about the Smith warehouse next-door, I'd like to see a higher-and-better use of this land and the buildings between the railroad tracks and the freeway through this area, particularly to reconnect West Pettigrew near the Center for Documentary studies with West Pettigrew just west of South Gregson St. In an area where the connectivity between neighborhoods is severely limited by the freeway, creating a usable and pleasant corridor between West Durham and West End, near the CDS, and West End and Brightleaf/West Downtown - from Buchanan to S. Duke would diminish the present barriers.


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SMITH WAREHOUSE

The Smith Warehouse, built in 1906, was the largest of the Duke & Sons tobacco warehouses, used for the storage of tobacco prior to processing.

Below, a view from the Washington Duke building at Trinity College (now East Campus) looking south, prior to the construction of the Smith Warehouse across the railroad tracks. The sizable two-story structure visible across the tracks is the West End Graded school.


Looking south, ~1900.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

Below, the same view, ~1910


(Courtesy John Schelp)


The Smith warehouse during the 1920s - the direction (whether this is the west or east face) isn't immediately clear, although I suspect it is the east face.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)


More definitively the west face of the warehouse from construction on Campus Drive, 1920s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)


A smidgen of a glimpse of the warehouse during the funeral procession for Ben Duke - people are marching across West Main St. south on Milton Ave.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

The Smith Warehouse remained in operation during the Liggett years, becoming, at least in part, a printing facility for cigarette cartons/packaging. After being cast off by Liggett, the warehouse was purchased by Duke, which has converted it to office space and arts space.


Looking west, 03.18.08.

I wish Duke would do more to make the facade of this warehouse inviting - it's as beautiful as any of the others. The site still appears to be some semi-industrial, seemingly-abandoned space. It's really a lost opportunity to create a vibrant connection between this part of Buchanan (and the West End/West Main) and Campus Drive, the very cool old East Campus power plant building, and the re-commencement of West Pettigrew to the west of the warehouse near the Center for Documentary Studies. Why not treat this as an opportunity to connect Duke to the urban realm?


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COCA-COLA BOTTLING PLANT - WEST MAIN

The Durham Coca-Cola bottling plant, originally located on the southeast corner of N. Church and Liberty Sts., relocated to the southeast corner of Milton Ave. (now Buchanan Blvd.) and West Main St. in 1930. A flat-roofed industrial wing extended off the western and southern facades of the building to accommodate machinery.


1959 aerial showing the hipped roof Coca-Cola plant at the intersection of Milton and W. Main, near the center of the picture.

In 1966, the bottling plant moved to Hillsborough Road, and transfered the former plant to Goodwill Industries.


At the time of property transfer, 08.11.66
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper


View of the east side of the building during a fire, 03.29.68
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper

Goodwill opened up a store in Edgemont sometime during the 1970s or 1980s, in a former Colonial Stores supermarket. They operated out of the former Coca-Cola building until the early 80s as well, before consolidating in Edgemont. By the late 1980s, the Coca-Cola plant was a Kinko's.

Sometime during the 1990s, Kinko's moved to 9th Street, and the former Coca-Cola plant became offices for Duke, which it remains today.


Looking south, 03.17.08

Although I didn't take the above picture from the right angle to show it, I really love this building; and that is almost entirely because of siting - the way that it sits at an oblique angle to the road - a gateway to downtown after leaving West Durham and passing through the oaky portion of West Main in front of Duke's East Campus. It's good architecture, but it's amazing how powerful a reasonably simple building can be just by how it addresses the street.


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RINALDI'S

I don't know a lot about Rinaldi's restaurant - except for a few lines I've found how Duke students and others used to go to Rinaldi's for the burgers in the 1950s. I've only got a partial shot of the building, from 1953, located on the southeast corner of Peabody and West Main, adjacent to the Hall-Wynne funeral home.


Looking east from Milton St. (now Buchanan Blvd.) at half of Rinaldi's facade, 12.15.53.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper

Traffic patterns were a bit different around here, as the corner of now-East Campus (then the Women's College) was not yet cut off to connect Milton directly with Buchanan Blvd.


Aerial shot 1959 - Rinaldi's is near the center of the picture, with Hall-Wynne and its chapel on its right.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

Rinaldi's doesn't seem to appear in the annals of the 60s - I don't know if this was the same Pete Rinaldi who went on to run the Kentucky Fried Chicken further west, on 9th Street.

The building appears to have been torn down by the 1970s to expand Hall-Wynne's parking.


Looking southeast, 03.17.08



Aerial view of the area, 2007 (including McPherson's hospital across the street, which I've learned from the folks in Trinity Park is slated to have its rear wing chopped off by the friendly neighborhood extended stay hotel folks.)

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HALL-WYNNE (WEST MAIN)

The Hall-Wynne funeral home business was established in 1903 by JS Hall - upon joining with GV Wynne in 1909, they built original building on Morris Street, which connected with their stables on East Chapel Hill St..

In 1926, they moved from the center of downtown to the 1100 block of West Main Street, building a sizable brick Colonial Revival building. In 1946, they built a detached chapel just to the east of the structure.


Hall-Wynne, late 1970s.

The funeral home remains in operation today.


Looking southeast, 03.17.08


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ANNAMARIA'S PIZZA

(Courtesy Robby Delius)

A former house on Albemarle St. (which itself was formerly Jones St.) became a well-loved, and purportedly the first, pizza place in Durham. Opened in 1958 by Bartholamew (Bat) and Annamaria Malanga, the pizza joint was a regular hangout of Duke students.


(Courtesy Duke Yearlook)


Looking west, ~1985
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

The restaurant closed in 1986, and the building was torn down sometime soon thereafter for parking.


Looking west, 03.16.08


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Greenfire Switches on Switching Station

At lunchtime today, my gustatory companion saw me stop dead in my tracks, mid-conversation, and utter a "Holy Guacamole! It's gone!"*

Unlike most such exclamations by me, absence this time made the heart grow fonder, as Greenfire has removed the bile-yellow false front facade from the old General Telephone switching station building.

Although by the time I got back there late afternoonish with my camera, the last traces of the pretender facade were gone, and the original facade hidden away for 40 years (minus windows and cornice) had once again emerged.



A little investigation showed that the building, on the market for quite awhile, seems to have sold around the middle of last month, expanding the ever-expanding portfolio of our cuprous-conflagration-themed downtown development partner. How it fits in the Rogers' Alley plans remains to be seen.

*(Actual language may have differed.)


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912-914 WEST MAIN

Replacing residential structures built in the 1910s-1920s, the commercial structures at 910-912 West Main Street were built in the late 1930s or early 1940s. 912 appears to have been built first, and originally contained "Son's Fruit and Produce"; by 1955, the western portion (912) contained the "West Main Fruit Market" and 910 contained "Edward's Florist."

The building housed 3 businesses, with one opening onto Albemarle Street.


A blurred view from an aerial, 1948.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper

I have only some minimally-revealing mid-century shots taken at street level - all three below are from the once-regular Duke student parade from downtown to Duke - the "Joe College Parade" - 0n 04.26.57. You can catch pieces of "West Main Fruit Market" in the background.


(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper


(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper


(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper

A fuller view during the parade, from the 1960s:


Looking northeast, 1960s
(Courtesy Duke Yearlook)

By 1975, 914 West Main had become a sandwich place known as "Subway." The Subway was opened recent UNC graduates.

Per a source:

"It was the first sub shop to come to Durham and was hugely popular with the Duke students and the workers at RTP. (I had been told that it was so unique that carloads of RTP employees would come in for lunch each day during the early years.) The shop eventually expanded into the space that opened on Main Street (914 W. Main) and no longer used the Albemarle address. The Subway tenants put up the wood plank siding over the concrete block - stylish at the time. (It's since been removed as you know.)"

This name would keep the national retailer from using the name "Subway" in Durham for several years (they would call themselves "BMT Subway Deli" - although eventually, in the 1988, the national retailer paid the store at 914 West Main to change its name to "Bull City Subs". 912 West Main was "The Bullpen" - a regular hangout for Duke students.


(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)


Ablemarle entrance. Per a source, the Ablemarle storefront had been a barber shop, a leather shop (late 60's), a snack bar (though we always heard that was a cover for a bookmaker), and then the Subway.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

In, I believe, 1998, Fergus Bradley opened James Joyce pub in 912 West Main; I remember being relieved at its opening. It was one of the first places in Durham that, to me, felt like a bar-for-bar's-sake, rather than a sports bar or is-it-a-restaurant-is-it-a-bar places. Now I know James Joyce is a restaurant as well, but it felt, to me, like a bar first.

In 2003, Bull City Subs closed. In 2005 the Federal opened in its place and, again, felt like a real bar, despite the fact that it is decidedly a restaurant.


Looking north, 11.15.06

I'm not sure what it is about these places (and the dearly departed Joe and Jo's) that seem to provide that degree of public conviviality that Durham still needs more of; the front porches of these spots are great places to just hang out, beverage of choice in hand.

And we're doing better - with these two and Alivia's. But we need more people-on-the-front-porch, whether really a porch, or street dining/imbibing. I think the new courtyard at Brightleaf is great - but I'd like some Brightleaf energy on Main as well (Nikos? Hello?) Perhaps with a brighter future for the old Ivy Room across the side street, we'll begin to break the dullness extending from Federal to East Campus.



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