I hope everyone has a very, very happy holiday season. Endangered Durham will return on January 6, 2009.
"But hey ED, what did you get me?" you say?
Well, I did what I could - I finally fixed and updated the Big Map of Endangered Durham, also conveniently linked in the sidebar. This Google-based map allows ED browsing by geography, if you are so inclined.
502 Ramsey St. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Scanned by Digital Durham)
The Jones Hotel, one of the two early hotels of Hayti (the other being the Warren Hotel on Proctor St.) was established sometime prior to 1907, and was run by Ms. Josie L. Jones.
There is no history that I can find with regard to the hotel. By the 1940s, it appears to have been out of business, and its signature double front porch gone.
Above, an aerial picture (mid-1940s) showing several locations I'm posting on this week.
Yellow - Original Lincoln Hospital Red - Site of original Whitted School / Park Orange - Berry Company Green - Jones Hotel Blue - Original Mt. Vernon Baptist Church
(Original photo courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
By 1965, when it was being sized up by the Redevelopment Commission for demolition and eminent domain via urban renewal, it was barely recognizable.
This land sat abandoned for many years after being plowed under in the late 1960s. In 1993, it was redeveloped as Rick Hendrick Chevrolet. The site of the Jones Hotel is now part of their parking lot.
East side of the 400 block of Henry Alley, 1950s. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
There is nothing particularly exciting about the 400 block of Henry Alley - I've struggled a bit with how to present, or if to present, the mass of small dwellings that once existed in Hayti, now destroyed. This block is relatively typical of most of the houses in Hayti - there was certainly worse than this, and, as I've shown previously, better. What makes this at least somewhat different is an apparent early attempt to 'fix up' this block. I found these loose photos, above and below, unmarked, in a pile that the county was donating to the library. It appears that it documents before and after - mostly the application of brick to the exterior walls. I don't know if any other improvements were made to the houses.
East side of the 400 block of Henry Alley, 1950s. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
These houses, along with all of the other buildings around, were taken and razed through the urban renewal program. This space is now occupied by the Durham Freeway.
Site of the 400 block of Henry Alley, looking north 12.18.08.
Looking west at Mt. Vernon and South Queen Sts., 1922 (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Digital Durham)
The Mount Vernon Baptist Church was established in 1880 on 'Ramsey Hill' by Pastor JBK Butler.
An aerial picture (mid-1940s) showing several locations I'm posting on this week.
Yellow - Original Lincoln Hospital Red - Site of original Whitted School / Park Orange - Berry Company Green - Jones Hotel Blue - Original Mt. Vernon Baptist Church
(Original photo courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
I have little information about the history of the church - it appears that the wood frame structure at Mt. Vernon and South Queen Sts. was abandoned by the 1940s, when a new brick masonry structure, still in use, was built at 1007 Pine (South Roxboro) St. in 1940.
The original church became one of those ruins that may be called romantic or blighted, depending upon person, day, mood, and what's at stake.
The Berry Company was a construction company founded in 1946 by LM Berry, YJ Grigsby, TE Ruffin, and JR Peddy.
LM Berry was born in Lexington, KY and graduated from the Hampton Institute in Virgina, but came to Durham to teach 'trades' in the Durham City Schools from 1929-1933, when he became construction lead for North Carolina Mutual, overseeing the physical expansion of the company into multiple states. He left that position in 1946 to found his own company.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
The company distinctive, gambrel-roofed building was located on a lot stretching between Branch Place and Ramsey St.
From Branch Place, July 1966. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
From Ramsey, July 1966. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
An earlier aerial picture (mid-1940s) showing several locations I'm posting on this week.
Yellow - Original Lincoln Hospital Red - Site of original Whitted School / Park Orange - Berry Company Green - Jones Hotel Blue - Original Mt. Vernon Baptist Church
I'm not sure when the Berry Company went out of business - it doesn't appear that they were very operational in the 1966 pictures above. By 1967, this area was taken the city Redevelopment Commission using urban renewal funds. I had trouble getting a great view of the location of the building, as part of the east facade would be inside Rick Hendrick Chevrolet, and these dogs also wanted to eat me.
Looking southeast at the location of the Berry Co. builing, 11.16.08
Dr. Aaron Moore was instrumental in the establishment of Lincoln Hospital, the first hospital in Durham to provide care for African-Americans. When George Watts built the Watts Hospital in 1895, it had excluded African-Americans. By the turn of the century, Watts was considering adding a wing for African-Americans.
Moore persuaded Watts that this was not in the best interest of the African-American community; what the community needed was a hospital in which African-American physicians and nurses could care for African-American patients - which they would not have been able to do at Watts Hospital. Watts and Dr. AG Carr (Julian Carr's brother), the Dukes' physician, prevailed upon the Duke family to fund the hospital construction, as did John Merrick, WH Armstrong (Washington Duke's butler), and Addie Evans, his cook.
Ben and James Duke agreed to fund the hospital construction; the building was built at the corner of Cozart St. (Alley) and East Proctor St. The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1901. Per Jean Anderson, President Kilgo wrote to Ben Duke about the occasion:
"Your father and I had a big time with the Negroes on the fourth. They were laying the cornerstone of the Lincoln Hospital and asked them to make them a speech, which I did. I gave your father credit for the hospital, and everyone shouted over it; but afterwards he told me 'Ben and Buck are building this.'"
Washington Duke's name was included with Ben and Buck's on the cornerstone. For the African-American community, the price of the Duke's patronage was to accept their insulting paternalism, which was inscribed in the cornerstone, which read:
"With grateful appreciation and loving remembrance of the fidelity and faithfulness of the Negro slaves to the Mothers and Daughters of the Confederacy during the Civil War, this institution was founded by one of the Fathers and Sons: BN Duke, JB Duke, W. Duke. Not one act of disloyalty was recorded against them."
The original structure was a wood frame building that could house 50 patients.
Lincoln Hospital, looking northwest, 1922. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Scanned by Digital Durham)
John Merrick was president of the Board of Directors, and Moore Superintendent of the hospital. A 1902 annual report by WG Pearson, secretary, showed that the hospital had treated 75 patients and 8 had died of pneumonia. By 1910, a nurses' training school had been added as a rear wing to the original building.
By the end of World War I, the hospital was completely inadequate to provide health care to the African-American population, and in 1922, it suffered a fire, which damaged but did not destroy the structure. A fundraising drive spearheaded by John Sprunt Hill, George Watts, and the Dukes led to the purchase of the old Stokes farm on Fayetteville St. in 1917 and the construction of a new Lincoln Hospital in 1924.
The original buildings were donated to the Black Ministers' Alliance for use as a home for the elderly and an orphanage in 1925. Through the patronage of JC Scarborough the facility became the original Scarborough nursery school.
By 1932, Mrs. Clydie Fullwood Scarborough, who had attended Talladega College and the North Carolina College became the executive director. In 1946, the school became a member agency of the community fund, which supplemented funds from Durham County and the Scarborough Foundation. In 1959, a $50,000 addition made possible by the Scarborough Foundation was added to the original building.
An earlier aerial picture (mid-1940s) showing several locations I'm posting on this week.
Yellow - Original Lincoln Hospital Red - Site of original Whitted School / Park Orange - Berry Company Green - Jones Hotel Blue - Original Mt. Vernon Baptist Church
(Original Picture Courtesy The Herald Sun)
I've been told that this is the Scarborough Nursery, although there is no narration.
(From "Negro Durham Marches On" - 1949.)
In 1967, the Redevelopment Commission utilized urban renewal funds to acquire the property, and the Scarborough Nursery moved to temporary facilities until their new facility was completed at Holloway and N. Queen. The nursery/former hospital was destroyed by 1968. The property is now part of the Fayetteville St. exit ramp off of the Durham Freeway.
The first graded school for African-American children was built on Ramsey St. in 1893. Named the Whitted School after the first school principal, the school had operated out of temporary venues prior to construction of its new building, first using the Primitive Baptist Church and then a prize house on Red Cross St. The school was built one year after the first graded school was built for white children in Durham, later known as the Morehead School.
1913 Sanborn Map showing the location of the Whitted School. (Copyright Sanborn Map Company)
Unfortunately, no pictures seem to survive of the original Whitted School. Like another African-American school, the West End School, the original Whitted School, described as "decaying and rat-infested," burned in 1921. Leslie Brown quotes Pauli Murray as saying that the Whitted School was burned intentionally - purportedly by the African-American community itself, angered over the disproportionate funds dedicated to white versus African-American Schools. Regardless, the school was replaced by a new Whitted School on Concord St. in 1935 and Hillside Park High School on Umstead St. in 1922.
The land on which the school sat became a park - there is some reference to John Sprunt Hill donating funds to make this land a park for the African-American community. I have no decent pictures of the park, but what I do have make it appear rather bleak.
Park from Ramsey St., looking east, 1966. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
An earlier aerial picture (mid-1940s) showing several locations I'm posting on this week.
Yellow - Original Lincoln Hospital Red - Site of original Whitted School / Park Orange - Berry Company Green - Jones Hotel Blue - Original Mt. Vernon Baptist Church
Looking east on East Proctor Street from South Mangum/McMannen St., mid-1960s (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
East Proctor St. is a bit of a hard area to capture in by my usual way - these blocks would cut diagonally across the current freeway, and pictures of the street seem absent from the urban renewal records.
So I offer up the one vista above, looking from the ridgeline of McMannen/S. Mangum St., down the hill towards Pine St. and the small waterways that drained the area just south of the railroad tracks to Third Fork Creek. The smokestack in the distance is actually across the tracks, at the old Kingston Mills/Durham Hosiery Mill No. 6
And present day, or as close as I could get to it:
Looking east-southeast down Jackie Robinson, 11.15.08. The actual same vantage point would likely be from a bit further south, out on the freeway overpass, but the trees blocked the view.
Looking north from the present-day location of Rolling Hills, ~1910. The St. Mark Church is visible in the foreground. Other prominent structures visible in the distance include (left to right) the Trust Building, the Hotel Carrolina, First Baptist Church, Fire Station #1, Union Station, the original Durham County Courthouse, Trinity Methodist, the Lyon Tobacco Co, Pine St. Presbyterian, the Venable Tobacco Company, and First Presbyterian. The street running diagonally from the left foreground to the right background is Pine St. (present day South Roxboro.) (Courtesy John Schelp)
The St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion church was founded in February 1890 by Reverend C.H. McIver and members Gaston Bynum, William and Flora Colley, Derbie and Jerry Richmond, Jordan Wilson, and Sarah Marsh in the Colley home, located on Willard Street. By the early 1900s, a frame church was built at Pine and Pickett Streets, the current location (although the street names have changed.)
By the 1922, a brick sanctuary had been erected at the current location.
St. Mark's AME Zion, looking east, 1922. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Scanned by Digital Durham)
Looking east, 1940. (Courtesy Library of Congress)
Looking southeast, 1940 (Courtesy Library of Congress)
An aerial shot showing the rear of the 1920-1950s structure in the left foreground, with American Tobacco in the background. (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
In 1954, this structure was replaced with a new neoclassical sanctuary. A nursery school, kindergarten, and first grade were established in the new facility.
A mid-1960s not-so-great shot, looking south on South Roxboro. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
In 1967, the Durham Freeway ('East-West Expressway') was knifed through Durham immediately to the north of this church. By the mid-1970s, all of the surrounding structures of Hayti had been demolished.
Looking southeast at St. Mark's, 1970, in what I think of as a 'missing link' shot - freeway is complete, much of the north side of the freeway has taken on a post-urban renewal form, but many of the structures surrounding the church, including those demolished for the ill-fated Rolling Hills, remain. (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
The church remains active today, a vibrant, if lonely, remnant of Hayti.
Looking northeast from Lakewood Ave. and South Roxboro St., 08.20.08
Hillside Park High School, 1922. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. Scanned by Digital Durham)
Hillside Park High School, 1924 (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)
The original Hillside Park High School was built in 1922 on the northern edge of land donated by John Sprunt Hill for Hillside Park. Hillside Park High School was the first high school for African-Americans in Durham; prior to 1922, the Whitted, East End, and West End Graded Schools were the only educational facilities for African Americans - these schools only taught up to 8th grade. Even then, Hillside did not have a 12th grade until 1937, and the 12th grade offered solely vocational training until the 1940s.
Below, Hillside Park High School, 1949.
Around 1950, the need to expand the high school, and the lack of land to expand into at this site, prompted the School Board to switch Whitted Elementary School and Hillside Park High School (which became simply Hillside) with one another. This building then became Whitted Junior High School.
It remained Whitted into the 1970s, at which point it was abandoned. The building housed Operation Breakthrough in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and has housed several other programs since that time. It has been completely abandoned for several years now.
I believe that as the first high school for African-Americans in Durham, it is essential that this building be preserved, particularly given the loss of so many other original school buildings.
Fire Station #4 under construction, 06.21.57 (Courtesy Herald-Sun)
Fire station #4 near completion, 1957 (Courtesy Durham Fire Department)
The station was staffed by an entirely African-American crew - the first African-American firefighters in Durham since the volunteer Excelsior Fire Company of the 1900s.
In 1999, this station closed, and the fire company moved to Riddle Road. The building was taken over by North Carolina Central University, which remodeled the building to house their campus police.
Dr. James Shepard, founder of what is now North Carolina Central University, moved to the house at 1902 Fayetteville St. in 1923. Shepard, son of Augustus Shepard, well-respected minister of White Rock Baptist Church and brother of Dr. Charles Shepard, first lived in a house at 508 Fayetteville St.
After the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua was built, he moved into a small frame house on the campus. A fundraising drive by J.B. Mason, president of the Citizens Bank garnered enough funds to construct a new President's House on the corner of Brant St. and Fayetteville St. by 1923.
The house is and was Prairie Style architecture - common in the midwest, but not a common architectural form in Durham. Shepard lived in the house, and served as president of the university, until his death in 1947.
The State of North Carolina purchased the house in 1949, and it served as a residence for presidents and chancellors of NCCU until 1974. By 1980, it was in use as the admissions office for the university.
1902 Fayetteville, late 1970s
By the early 2000s, when I first went in the house, the university had abandoned the house, which was in very poor shape.
A concerted effort by Carolyn Green Boone, great-granddaughter of Dr. Shepard, resulted in NCCU restoring the house rather than demolishing it; the university received $680,000 in donations from a multitude of sources to fund the restoration in 2004. It is now fully restored, and serves as a campus building.
The 400 block of Brant Street was developed in the 1920s and 1930s with single family houses - many built by residents affiliated with the North Carolina College (Central.)
At 406 Brant St., Dr. Stanford L. Warren built his house. Dr. Warren was born in Caswell County in 1863 and moved to Durham at age two. He attended Kitrell College and the Leonard Medical School at Shaw before returning to Durham to practice medicine at Lincoln Hospital.
Dr. Warren served as a member of the board of Mechanics and Farmers bank as well as that of the Durham Colored Library. He began serving on the latter board in 1923.
In 1930, he built his Tudor-style home at 406 Brant St., reportedly to be near his daughter Selena Warren Wheeler. Dr. Warren lived at 406 Brant St. until his death on January 31, 1940. He gave land that he owned to the Durham Colored Library for a new facility; that new library was named the Stanford Warren Library in his honor.
The house was also home to Albert Turner, the Dean of the North Carolina College School of Law, and the Harrison family, who lived in the house at 409 Brant Street for 42 years. Mr. Harrison was an executive with Mechanics and Farmers Bank from 1953-1990.
In the early 2000s, North Carolina Central University decided to expand westward, demolishing multiple historic houses in the two blocks between Formosa Ave., East Lawson St., Concord St., and Fayetteville St. - as well as Hillside High School. These houses were demolished in 2003 - including such houses as the RN Harris house at 409 Formosa - RN Harris was the first African-American to serve on the city council (1953), the first African-American appointed to the board of education, one for the founders of the Committee on Negro affairs, and a trustee of Lincoln Hospital. The R. N. Harris Elementary School was named in his honor.
The blocks, 1950s (Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
Through no particular assistance from North Carolina Central, the Stanford Warren House was saved. Back in 2003, when I chaired the Endangered Properties program for Preservation Durham, we moved the house, at PD's expense, from Brant St. to Pekoe St. in order to save it from demolition. This involved a rather frustrating, but slightly humorous (in retrospect) episode in which we had to move the house to a triangle of land in the middle of the intersection of Pekoe, Formosa, and Concord temporarily to get it out of the way of Central's bulldozers, but before the new lot was ready. Eventually, it made it to its new home, and it was eventually sold and renovated.
Stanford Warren house, formerly of 409 Brant, now of 302 Pekoe St., 12.07.08
The Brant St. site became the location of a large - I believe - dormitory building for NC Central.
Former site of the Stanford Warren house, 12.07.08
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