Rivera House Demolished?
Hat tip to AW for passing along the news that Central has demolished the Rivera House. Has anyone else been by there, and does anyone know if they got permission to do so? Last word was that the demolition was denied after NCSHPO declared the house of statewide significance.
Between this, the 500 block of East Main, and the Graybar Building, the past year has not been a boon for preservation in Durham. All demolitions were by public/publicly-funded entities as well - which has always been the big problem in Durham, and evidently always will be.
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They were knocking down the top floor when I drove by on Monday afternoon, but I don't know anything else about the demolition. It probably didn't help that Rivera himself was in favor of it being demolished. Sad, nonetheless.
I drove by there on Tuesday and seen that it was still standing and intact. Boarded up indeed...Maybe things have changed in the 48 hours??
It's gone. I emailed Gary a picture.
Drove past today, you'd never have even known it was there.
With the house gone it becomes apparent just how narrow the lot is, which makes me concerned for the rest of the houses in that block of Fayetteville. Two more are boarded up, and the university couldn't possibly do anything with just the one lot...does anyone know what the plans are, and if the Rivera house's neighbors' days are numbered as well?
I was a member of the Durham Historic Preservation Commission when NCCU first made the request to tear down this structure. The HPC normally cannot deny a demolition request unless the State Historic Preservation Office finds the property to be of statewide significance, which is what happened here.
Apparently the opinion of the local, state, and national preservation experts who felt strongly that this property should be preserved was no match for the legal maneuvers of NC Central. According to this morning's Durham News, NCCU obtained a ruling from a "Special Deputy Attorney General" that the house could be demolished because it required expensive renovation and "had no historical significance". I'm not sure what qualifications Mr. Special Deputy has that equip him to make determinations of historical significance that trump those of local and state historic preservation authorities, and I find it ironic that the expense of the renovation - due mostly to long term neglect by NCCU - is cited as a valid reason to demolish.
I also find it obscene that our tax dollars have been put to use by NCCU and the State of North Carolina to skirt preservation ordinances that the rest of us are required to follow. Perhaps the school should have fought the establishment of the local historic district in the first place if they had no intent of abiding by the rules when it became inconvenient to do so.
Look for NCCU to use this as a precedent to continue eroding the historic fabric of the neighborhood surrounding their campus.
All of those trash houses need to be knocked down and redeveloped, except the Scarborough House. Please let's stop hanging on to
those trash shacks of no value that keeps the area a ghetto.
I'm curious why not the Scarborough House? If the rest of these are trash shacks, including the FK Watkins house, the Charles Shepard House, the Napoleon Mills house, why not the Scarborough House? It was a mess until the owners finally started renovating it a few years ago. Maybe it's still a mess inside - I don't know.
GK
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