NEIGHBORHOOD GROCERY - KNOX AND ALABAMA

1970s view of the Neighborhood Grocery.
(Courtesy Old West Durham)

A store appears on Sanborn Maps of the corner of Knox (once "C Street") and Alabama Ave by the 1930s. By the mid 20th century, the store was run by Jesse Morrow, who had a kind heart for neighborhood children; per Holly Hall's account on the Old West Durham website:

""Within a block of [my grandmother's] house was a little neighborhood store us kids would walk to in the afternoon. It was in the fork of Alabama Ave and Knox St. If we looked very pitiful and sad the owner, Mr. Marrow would give us free ice cream. At a very early age, most of us could have won an academy award from all of the 'acting sad.' Always look down at the floor and frown when he told you that you didn’t have enough money - it worked every time."

The store was in business through the late 1980s.


Jesse Morrow inside the store, 1985.
(Courtesy Old West Durham)

By the 1990s, it had been converted to a residence, which it remains today.




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36.013752,-78.930841

WEST DURHAM CHURCH OF GOD / ABC STORE

West Durham Church of God, looking northwest from Hillsborough Road, mid-1950s
(Courtesy John Schelp)

The West Durham Church of God was organized in 1937 and initially located in a small frame structure on Case Street.

Although the church had only 23 members after World War II, it grew rapidly. Under the leadership of new pastor Roland Verrico, construction of a new masonry church at 2806 Hillsborough Road was initiated. The congregation used a temporary structure on the construction site until the church was completed in 1947. In 1949, the church purchased a parsonage at 1022 Rosehill Avenue.


Easter Sunday, mid-1950s.
(Courtesy John Schelp)

Within 10 years, the congregation had grown to more than 300 members, with a Sunday School enrollment of more than 600.

In 1986, the congregation elected to move to Horton Road, where they renamed themselves the Horton Road Church of God. The State liquor salesfolk decided that the church site would be a good location for an ABC store. The former sanctuary on Hillsborough was demolished (although the cornerstone was taken to the new church.) How I wish the ABC store had engaged in some adaptive reuse!



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36.013671,-78.932099

2810 HILLSBOROUGH ROAD

The house at 2810 Hillsborough Road was the longtime residence of members of the Baucom family - Matthew T. Baucom, from sometime in 1925 or prior to ~1956, followed by Daniel Baucom in the late 1950s.

As one of the only two-story houses on Hillsborough Road (a rarity in West Durham north of the railroad tracks,) it was converted to apartments by the 1970s. It remained apartments until the mid-1980s, when it went up for sale.

It was at that point that a weekly newspaper located down the street began to look at it as a potential new home. The Independent Weekly, which had to that point been located in a window-free office behind a typesetting firm at 2824 Hillsborough Road. That concrete block structure had been its home since its inception on June 1st, 1982 (the first issue was not published until April 1983.)

Per Steve Schewel, the former Baucom house was empty, and Eugene Brown showed them the space; a group that included the Indy's founders purchased the house, and in Spring of 1986, they began their multi-block move. The most dicey moment of said move involved loading the Indy's "huge process camera" - from its former location in the office bathroom onto a "tiny hand-truck" which they carefully pushed down the bumpy Hillsborough Road sidewalk until it reached its new home, unscathed.

Although the house was large as houses went in West Durham, it was soon too small for the paper. They had knocked down a wall that had previously divided the house into two apartments, and soon thereafter Indy co-founder and "production person" David Birkhead commenced building an addition that expanded the house by 1/3 - in three weekends, no less. The space was necessary not least of all, per Schewel, because

"during the early days of the Indy, we often had babies and small children there during the day. Before the building got too crowded with our growing staff, we had set aside a room for sleeping kids which included a crib. During 1986-87, I often brought my baby, Abe, to work and hoped and prayed he'd do some sleeping in that crib so I could get something done at work. Other Indy staff did the same over the years."

The Indy used the house as its office for 20 years before moving in 2006 to the former Venable Tobacco Company Prizery building, which had at that point just been renovated by Scientific Properties.

The house at 2810 Hillsborough was sold in April 2007 to the "Church of Philadelphia in Durham" which remains owner of the building.

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36.013885,-78.932493

Mystery Photo

Okay, I hate to admit defeat. But while I've successfully identified the other 11 supermarkets in a pile of photos labelled simply "Supermarkets" - located in both Durham and Chapel Hill, the one above continues to stump me. Anyone know where this Piggly-Wiggly was?

U-Haul Starts Coming Down for Courthouse

05.22.09

Ye Olde Historic U-Haul building has started to come down to make way for the new Durham County Judicial Center at S. Mangum and Dillard.

Evidently the demolition RFP only included the U-Haul site , and not the Scarborough Funeral Home site, also owned by the county and slated to become a parking deck. That site is still being operated by the Scarborough Funeral Home, and it appears that construction of Scarborough's new Funeral Home and 'Lifestyle Center' out Fayetteville Rd. / MLK has ground to a halt. Scarborough's lease with the county has now been thrice extended from its original termination on September 6, 2007 (to June 30, 2008, December 31, 2008, and June 30, 2009.) When the second extension was approved, it was noted that it would not affect the schedule for the construction of the Judicial Center, but it isn't clear that it has not delayed the project at this point.

COTTINGHAM'S STORE

The triangular building at the corner of Hillsborough and Lawndale appears to have housed a neighborhood store from the 1930s.

Per the son of the owner, his father, Jack Cottingham, began his business in the building around 1940, with a specialization in making sausages.

To quote Charlie Carden from one of several wonderful personal histories on the Old West Durham website:

"When I was growing up, my Mama never cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas; she and my Daddy said the meat was too dry. Instead, Mama would get Mr. Wagner, from Jim Wagner's store on Ninth Street, or Mr. Cottingham, from Cottingham's Grocery at the corner of Hillsboro Road and Lawndale Avenue (depended on where we lived), to order her a fresh hen and ham."

The building had a tall Coca-Cola cutout sign perched above the vertex of the triangle, lighted, and reaching about 10 feet high, and similar to the logo below which "probably saved the building from being utterly destroyed by tractor trailer trucks too many times to count." The sign greeted travelers along highway 70, entering Durham.



Longtime manager of the store Benny Bolling was well known to neighborhood residents, and lived nearby on Alabama Avenue. In the 1960s, the store began to transition from a grocery store to a convenience store.

The roof was evidently always flat, and refrigeration equipment was visible from the ground. The siding was white clapboards; in the 1970s, architect Charles Knott designed the mansard roof (which was orange) and new siding consisting of grey vertical panels.

The store later became a "high-end wine and cheese shop" and then a camera store. Later, it became the Sock Shop; it appears to currently house the Spirit and Way Christian Church.

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36.014786,-78.933787

2700 LAWNDALE

Jeff Monsein, aluminum baron of Durham, continues his reign of house replacement in Old West Durham with the demolition of 2700 Lawndale, seen above in 2006. I don't have any immediate history available on the house, but it was obviously an attractive little ~1900-1915 house. It appears none of the original mantels or other building materials were salvaged prior to demolition, an extraordinary waste.

It appears that the success story of John Martin renovating the former 1704 Markham Ave into a beautiful little house on Edith St. was not particularly persuasive as a reproducible model to Mr. Monsein. Unfortunate.


2700 Lawndale, 05.21.09
(Courtesy Elizabeth Sappenfield)


2700 Lawndale, 05.21.09
(Courtesy Elizabeth Sappenfield)

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36.014884,-78.93194

Triangle Transit and City of Durham following well-worn path towards a vacant lot at Duke and West Chapel Hill

Triangle Transit held a "Public Information Session" on Tuesday night regarding the Graybar building - my guess would be that ~15 members of the public showed up over the two hour period, a group matched by ~10 people from TT, 2 code enforcement officers from NIS, one city council member, and one city planner.

This was not set up as an opportunity to solicit ideas for the preservation of the building, as the small room was ringed by boards outlining the historic insignificance of the building, the derelict condition of the roof that makes the building 'unsafe', a site plan showing the entire NCRR-Duke-West Chapel Hill triangle land covered with surface parking, among others. The posture was clearly that the demolition of the building was a fait accompli, and there really wasn't anything to be done about that.

The story, as gathered from several folks:

1) TT acquired the building from the city for use as part of the eventual station site. They own the building, and Cherokee Investment Partners has a five year option on the land as master developer to provide infrastructure and the like. Cherokee has ~3 years left on this option, but no particular plan to do anything imminently.

2) TT is not in a hurry to demolish the building. However, after ?20 years? of sitting empty, most of it under city ownership while being allowed to deteriorate, NIS has decided to now cite the building as unsafe, giving TT the option to repair, demolish, or be fined and sued if NIS demolishes the building for them.

3) Wib Gulley, counsel for TT, states that TT has no authority to spend public funds for the repair of the building, as it is not part of their plan for the station site. I could not get a clear sense of whose requirements these are, but it seemed to be Federal and state. They do not intend to be sued, so they will demolish the building.

4) There is no plan to do anything with the site right now, and it will likely be seeded with grass, or a garden-next-to-the-tracks will be planted. The city-approved site plan shows the entire site filled with a surface parking lot. TT's hopes are pinned on the Senate and local approval of a 0.5 cent sales tax and the STAC transit plan to allow them to, ~3 years or more from now, build rail transit.

My over-riding concern, based on 50 years of Durham history, is that we will demolish this building on the basis of dreams, and end up with yet-another weedy lot that someone like me has to call and pester someone to mow for the next 30 years. We will, yet again, squander a historic resource for nothing.

My major points to TT:

1) Explore partnership with a private developer to redevelop the building, and eventually integrate the building into the station site. The condition of this building is no worse than anything any local developers have taken on. The 'unsafe' thing is a silly 'scare' argument, in my opinion, wielded as a cudgel by the city when they want to disarm the opposition. ("Why do you hate the children that will be inevitably crushed by falling buildings....?") Unless it is going to fall on the sidewalk, we are talking about the safety of trespassers. Secure the building.

2) If a parking lot is somehow a required element right now (which I'm not sure I understand, since there is no station,) it is, by TT's admission, undersized. This will not improve if someone manages to eventually build underground parking, an extremely costly endeavor, since they plan to build a station on the site if the train dream comes to fruition.

3) The proffered notion that someone is going to build a $$$ million dollar 15-story building or buildings on the site is just silly. It is by nature a low-rise development site, highly constrained by its shape and small size. There is no way the space, parking, and $ work out to build something large on this site, unless you knock down Duke Memorial or BB Olive's building to build a giant parking deck, or Greenfire wants to share space in a massive parking deck wrapping the NC Mutual building.

4) Just because the building isn't listed on the National Register doesn't mean that it isn't historic. We cannot afford to lose yet another of our few remaining historic commercial buildings in Durham. It is possible to designate this building and for a private developer to get tax credits on it.

5) Creating a giant vacant lot here is utterly inconsistent with the goals of TT. Creating a more desolate streetscape between the Brightleaf district and Durham Station is not going to promote pedestrian activity/ridership. Yet another moat of surface parking/empty lot will further separate the Brightleaf district from Durham Station, American Tobacco, and all other points south and southwest. The notion that this important gateway into Durham would be 'anchored' by an empty lot/parking lot is depressingly retro.

6) I support rail transit. But it isn't reality right now; it is a hope. The known, budgeted future for this site, if the building is demolished is a vacant lot. That is the only real choice in front of us: vacant historic building or empty lot.

The two major things that need to happen to save this building are:

1) the city needs to be convinced to hold off from demolition / civil suit against TTA to remove the immediate impetus for demolition.

2) TTA needs to be convinced that the building can be an integral part of their long-term plan for the site.

I'll do my best on these, but I need your help. Landscape architects, contractors, architects, developers et al - if you feel like to can contribute to an alternative vision for this site, please let me, TT, and the City know about it. Wib Gulley said he was willing to listen to alternatives where someone would redevelop the building. It is possible to get the city to hold off if there is a plan in place. It's a long-shot, to be sure; but I'd argue that it's not any more of a long shot than rail transit in the Triangle, and we're faced with the strong chance of a lose-lose proposition: no train, no building.

WEST DURHAM BAPTIST CHURCH (WHITE CONGREGATION)

1910 picture of West Durham Baptist Church
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection - Wyatt Dixon Collection)

The white congregation of the West Durham Baptist Church was organized in 1894, originally located in a frame building on Ninth Street. When a tornado destroyed the original structure in June 1897, the church relocated to Alexander Avenue, where they built a new frame structure, pictured above. The parsonage was located immediately to the south of the church.


Map of West Durham showing property ownership, 1910. The church and parsonage are visible on Alexander Ave., the N-S street in the middle of the image.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Digital Durham)

From 1933-1936, the church constructed a new church at 15th Street and Hillsborough Road. The granite was mined from the same Hillsborough quarry used to supply the stone for Duke's West Campus. The church bell from Alexander Avenue was installed in the new church. In 1949, they would rename the congregation "Greystone" Baptist Church, at least in part to distinguish the church from the African-American West Durham Baptist Church Congregation, located in Brookstown.

The original church appears to have been demolished soon thereafter, and that land was still vacant as of 1959. The surrounding housing was demolished by Duke between 1968-1970 to construct low-rise apartment buildings for students. The land on which the church and parsonage sat is currently a parking lot and apartment building.


Site of the 1897-1933 West Durham Baptist Church (white), 05.15.09

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36.004691,-78.926228

Reminder: Meeting on the future of the Graybar Building this afternoon/evening at City Hall

Just a reminder that Triangle Transit will hold a "public information session" in Durham tonight on the future of the Graybar Building at 303 S. Duke Street.

The meeting will be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at City Hall, 101 City Hall Plaza, in Conference Room A, across from the Planning Department, which is downstairs / down one level from the entrance. Parking is available in the parking deck located at the corner of North Mangum Street and City Hall Plaza.

Please attend and support the preservation of the structure, which has been condemned by the city and is threatened with demolition.

2000 ERWIN ROAD

2000 block Erwin Road, looking east towards Anderson St. from just east of Southside School and Millehay's Garage, May 1938.
(Courtesy Duke Forest Collection)

The change in Erwin Road from the 1940s to present-day is dramatic, not least of all for the significantly-changed topography. Erwin Road has since been curved and raised to rise up to a raised Anderson St.


2000 block Erwin Road, looking east, 05.14.09.

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36.00719,-78.930899

2033 YEARBY

2033 Yearby, 1940s
(Courtesy Duke Forest Collection)

I can't really go through all of the mill houses of West Durham south of Erwin Road that were demolished by Duke back in the late 1960s, but some representative examples are useful to give a sense of the character of this one-time neighborhood.


2033 Yearby, 05.14.09.

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36.005091,-78.930235

GARDEN STREET GROCERY

Garden Street Grocery, 1950s.
(Courtesy Bob Blake)


(Courtesy Old West Durham Neighborhood Association)

The Garden Street Grocery was built on Suitt Alley, later named Garden Street by Connie Estes around 1924. John Tilley, a former Durham County Justice of the Peace, leased the grocery from Estes in 1926 and ran it until 1938, evidently living on the premises. Ted Smith reopened the grocery as the "Garden Street Grocery" and operated the store until 1950. Waldo Mills then took over the business, and operated the grocery until 1957, when it closed for good.

The grocery was spared, along with two other adjacent structures, during Duke's demolition of the mill village in 1968-69. All of the structures were painted to match the brown appearance of the surrounding apartment complex.


Abandoned Garden Street Grocery, 1980.

I'm not clear as to whether Duke has used the grocery for any purpose - certainly it hasn't been used for anything more active than storage. It was threatened with demolition in Duke's initial Grand Plan for Central Campus, but they later agreed to allow interested parties to move the building(s).

The plan was later shifted considerably to focus on Campus Drive, rather than the Erwin-Alexander-Anderson area. Since then, the economy has put the Central Campus plan on long-term hold.

Clearly, Duke has not embraced the revitalization of this and the adjacent mill structures, which I think is a missed opportunity to provide some actual soul to Central Campus. Here's hoping that the GSG will see life again one day.


Former Garden St. Grocery, 04.04.09

Update 9.07.09

Unfortunately, Duke decided to demolish this structure rather than reuse it or provide it to the community to move, despite their previous assurances.


Garden Street Store as rubble, 09.06.09

Update: As of summer 2010, Duke had bizarrely replaced all of these mill house structures, including the garden street store, with Disney-esque replica versions. Creepy.


"General Store" - 06.02.10


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36.004812,-78.929353

200 ANDERSON ST. / 2000 ACME ST.

West Durham, 1910, showing the quantity of houses owned by Erwin Mill (with the number of rooms in the house outline)
Courtesy of Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, via the excellent expansion of the Durham Maps collection at Digital Durham.

By the early part of the 20th century, dozens of mill houses had been constructed to the south of Erwin Mill and the railroad tracks / West Pettigrew Street. Most of the more modest of these houses were south of Erwin Road, and, as the map above makes clear, most of these houses were mill-owned by 1910.

By the 1950s, most of the houses had become privately owned; whether piecemeal or with concerted effort, Duke began to acquire properties in the mill village.


Southern portion of the West Durham mill village, 1959.

One of the more annoying things I've ever heard a Duke administrator say was during meetings regarding Duke's plans to re-develop Central Campus. I'll paraphrase, because I can't remember the quote exactly, but the gist of it was that we were really quite lucky, because Duke has all of this underused land to expand into, rather than making incursions into Durham's neighborhoods.

Which is exactly what Duke did to create Central Campus in the late 1960s; while the city government was hacking away at the downtown neighborhoods with the scythe of urban renewal, Duke was 'renewing' the West Durham mill village, tearing down dozens of mill houses to expand its campus.


200 block of Anderson St. (east side) looking south from Erwin Road, 04.03.68


200 block of Anderson St. (east side) looking north from near Yearby, 04.03.68


Likely Acme St. (south side) looking west from Anderson, 04.03.68

Central campus, a series of apartment buildings which, I believe, were originally primarily intended for graduate students, but soon came to house undergraduates as well, was built in place of the mill village during the early 1970s.


200 Anderson St., east side, looking north from near Yearby, 04.08.09


200 Anderson St., west side, looking north from near Yearby, 04.12.09

Parking predominates in this low-slung suburban-style area; "campus" is a term used loosely, a fact which Duke realizes. To their credit, at this point, they seem to understand that Central Campus creates nothing akin to community. Having unwillingly lived on Oregon St. for a year, I can say that my personal opinion is that it's a particularly depressing place to live.

(It's also oddly similar in architecture to the Liberty Street Apartments Housing Project )

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36.006014,-78.930092

DILLEHAY'S GARAGE - 2029-2033 ERWIN ROAD

Looking southwest, May 1938.
(Courtesy Duke Forest Collection)

Located directly across Erwin Road from Southside School, Dillehay's garage was likely built ~1930, and was demolished in 1950, during the construction of the Graduate Men's Dormitory in 1950.

It is currently part of a very large swath of surface parking.


Site of Dillehay's Garage, 05.14.09

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36.007435,-78.93234

Triangle Transit to Hold Public Meeting on the Graybar Building

Kudos to Triangle Transit for putting together a public meeting to discuss the future of the Graybar Building at 303 South Duke St., which has been threatened with demolition. Please attend if you can. Below is the press release:

"Research Triangle Park, NC - (May 12, 2009) – Triangle Transit will hold a public information session in Durham next week on the Graybar Building at 303 S. Duke Street.

The information session will be held on Tuesday, May 19, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Durham’s City Hall, 101 City Hall Plaza, in Conference Room A, across from the Planning Department. Paid parking is available in the parking deck located at the corner of North Mangum Street and City Hall Plaza.

Triangle Transit owns the property which was purchased for future transit needs. The information session is in response to public interest in the proposed demolition of the building.


Brad Schulz
Communications Officer
Triangle Transit
P.O. Box 13787
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709"

No posts (early) this week

I'm not sure there will be any posts this week, as my computer has
been in the shop for a week now, and I'll need to catch back up again.
Hopefully I'll be able to do so by Friday.

RICHARD D. BLACKNALL HOUSE

Blacknall House, looking southwest from Erwin Road and Anderson St., 11.07.78
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Pharmacist Richard D. Blacknall built his brick Queen Anne home in approximately 1889 far to the west of the then-city limits of Durham. Blacknall had lived on North Dillard St. prior to his relocation; both sons of Dr. Richard Blacknall, Richard D. and James, purchased large tracts west of the city on the high ground to the south of the railroad tracks. This area became known as Caswell Hill (or Caswell Heights) - the location of many of the large homes of prominent/wealthy citizens of West Durham. (The gentrification of Pinhook, as it were.)

Blacknall's Drug Store was located on the northeast corner of Corcoran and West Main Sts. R Blacknall and Sons, as it was called, appears to have referred to Dr. Richard Blacknall the elder (once a physician of South Lowell and instrumental in establishing Presbyterian churches in Durham) and son Richard D. Blacknall.

Jean Anderson states that Blacknall opened a West Durham branch in 1892 as the mill village and commercial district were established to support Erwin Mill. However, the only branch of R Blacknall & Sons I can find in the 1890s city directories was located in the West End, at 801 West Chapel Hill St.; this was later known as the West Side Pharmacy.

There is also reference to RD Blacknall as Captain of the fire (hose) company / Durham Chemical Fire Company and secretary-treasurer of the Durham Street Railway Company during the late 1880s and early 1890s.

Richard D. Blacknall died in 1900, wife Sadie bought the house at a courthouse sale to satisfy the 1889 mortgage deed, but moved to Angier Avenue shortly thereafter. In 1909, she sold the house to Erwin Mills.

R Blacknall and Sons pharmacy lived on, despite the death of its founders. Interestingly, in the early 1900s, the main store was managed by Germain Bernard, and the West Side branch by CT Council. The two would later join forces at the Five Points Drug Company to concoct BC powders. In 1914, the downtown drugstore was destroyed in a huge fire that destroyed most of the 100 block of West Main St. The pharmacy was re-established in the same location, though, once the Geer Building had taken its place. I believe the company later evolved into the Durham Drug Company.

As for the former Blacknall house on Erwin Road, it was rented out to employees by the Erwin Mill. From 1926 to 1955, EG Atkins, an overseer and foreman at the mill, lived in the house.

Duke purchased the property in 1965.

In 1986, Duke moved the house, in part due to the widening of Erwin Road, but to a site a few blocks away in order to build an immense parking lot. The house was moved to a lot on Alexander St. at Pace St. and restored at that location.


New location of the Blacknall House, 1989.
(Courtesy Robby Delius)

It is currently used as office space. The original location of the house continues to be one piece of a massive surface parking lot for Duke Medical center.


Original location of the Blacknall House at Anderson St. and Erwin Rd., 04.04.09.


Blacknall House at Alexander and Pace Sts., 04.04.09


Original Location:
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Current Location:
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36.006726,-78.930491



36.003896,-78.926976

SOUTHSIDE SCHOOL

Southside School, looking northeast from Atlas St. and Erwin Road, 1950s
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Southside School was built in 1921, replacing an earlier "West Durham School" that had been located at Swift Ave. and Thaxton Sts.


Plan of Southside School
(Courtesy Old West Durham)

I don't have much information about what the school was like, students' experience, etc. - I'd love to have that sort of information filled in. Below, students and teachers at Southside ~1940 from the H. Lee Waters film of Durham. The movie starts off at the front, then looks west across Atlas St., then looks north from the back of the school at kids playing on the playground.



Beginning in 1941, Southside acted as a city-wide nursery school for white children run by the WPA in order to allow parents a greater opportunity to seek work. Nursery schools for African-American children were set up at White Rock Baptist and St. Mark's. The school continued to provide programs for childcare before and after school hours during World War II


Aerial showing Southside School and surrounding area, 1959.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)


A tiny color shot of the Southside School, likely 1960s.
(Courtesy Old West Durham)

In the late 1960s, Southside was involved in a five-year pilot program to provide schooling and care to 'disadvantaged children' using "experimental teaching methods." This appears to have been discontinued by 1970.

I'm not sure when classes were discontinued at Southside. The school was likely torn down in the early to mid-80s, when the right-of-way was cleared for the Durham Freeway. There is a vestigial corner left here, with Atlas St. serving as an entry into a Duke parking lot. A piece of the original walkway to the school still exists in the grassy area between Erwin and the freeway.


Looking northeast at the site of Southside School, 04.04.09

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36.008028,-78.932086

DUKE NORTH CAMPUS - HANES, TRENT, HANES ANNEX (JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN CENTER)

Looking west at the intersection of Trent Dr. and Erwin Rd., 1950.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

The erstwhile dormitories clustered around the intersection of Trent Drive and Erwin Road were built between 1942 and 1951; for a period of time, this cluster was known as 'North Campus' - an appellation it appears to have shed at this point.

The oldest of the three structures was built on the northwest corner of Trent Dr. and Erwin Rd. in 1942 as a dormitory for the nursing school. The nursing school at Duke admitted its first students to a three-year program in 1931 and began awarding baccalaureate degrees in 1938. I'm not sure if the latter innovation was the impetus for the construction of a dormitory, but local architect George Hackney was retained to design a Georgian Revival structure. It seems rather an odd location to me - then a decent distance from the medical complex at Duke, directly adjacent to the rail spur that carried coal south from the main line to the Duke power plant. Perhaps the then-residential setting of Erwin Road seemed like a good location for a dormitory.

That character began to change decidedly with the construction of the Veterans Administration Hospital ~ 2 blocks to the west of the nursing dormitory in 1950-1952. Concomitantly, Duke began the construction of two new dormitories on the south side of Erwin Road.


Looking north at the under-construction Hanes House and Men's Graduate Student Center, 1952.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Hanes House, located on the southwest corner of Erwin and Trent, was named for Elizabeth Hanes, wife of Frederic Moir Hanes (1883-1946), a professor and Chair of Internal Medicine at Duke. It was constructed as a dormitory and teaching facility for nursing students, and completed in 1952. The original nursing dormitory on the north side of Erwin Road became known as Hanes Annex.

The Men’s Graduate Student Center, on the southeast corner of Trent Dr. and Erwin Road, was built in 1952 as well, and provided dormitory space for 300 male graduate students. It contained a dining room and other services for students.

By the mid-1970s, all three buildings were in use as undergraduate dormitories, and the area became known as 'North Campus'. The Men's Graduate Student Center was renamed Trent Hall. By the 1980s, at the latest, it was an entirely freshman campus.

I know this because, in 1988, I moved into Hanes Annex as a Duke Freshman; to show how seriously I take ED, I proffer the only two pictures I have of the original front of Hanes Annex with, uh, some guy in them.


Front of the nursing dormitory/Hanes Annex, August 1988.


Front of the former nursing dormitory / Hanes Annex, December 1988. I wish I could say that I was wearing a hat, but, hey - it was the 80s.

Jokes about Hanes Annex abounded - I don't know if it was really all that bad - it hadn't been renovated seemingly since opening in 1942. We were convinced in 1988 that Duke hoped to get rid of us by placing us there. If the "low-impact, break-away walls" didn't fall on us, crossing a very busy Erwin Road that then served as the connector between 15-501 and the Durham Freeway, which had its western terminus at Erwin Road next to Sam's Quick Shop would certainly do us in as we attempted to cross morning and evening traffic.

In 1993, Duke's academic council implored the university to do away with North Campus entirely, but to close "at least Hanes Annex, one of our least-desirable dormitories." It stood vacant after 1993, but a $4.5 million renovation removed the original front entrance, replacing it with a curved glass facade, and removed the original side entrance. A new side entrance was added on Trent Dr. The building reopened in 2000 with classrooms and gallery space. The building was renamed the John Hope Franklin Center after the historian and civil rights advocate.

Trent appears to have become the unfortunate destination of sophomore students in the mid-1990s, after freshmen were consolidated on East Campus. I'm not sure when it last housed students, but is now comprised of office space.

Hanes appears to have stopped housing students after the freshman consolidation on East Campus in the 1990s, but continued to house nursing and PA programs; the PA program has recently moved to the former Blue Cross Blue Shield Building on South Duke St.


Former Hanes Annex / now John Hope Franklin Center, 04.04.09


Hanes House, 04.04.09


Trent Hall, 04.04.09

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36.007906,-78.934219