Mystery Photo - New Red Cross Building

New Red Cross Building, 05.24.57
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Mystery Photo - Making Way for Parking Lot

Making Way for Parking Lot, 07.03.63
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


Making Way for Parking Lot, 07.03.63
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Perhaps Strangest, Definitely Creepiest Photo I've Found in 5 years of researching Durham History

John Hodges, First Man Hung in Durham County, 1907 - and, presumably, his cat.

(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

RALEIGH-DURHAM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

RDU - undated, presumably 1950s
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

I've written previously about Durham and Raleigh's separate struggles to each get an airport, um, off the ground. Durham made efforts to establish a field north of town, with its most concentrated effort around the former county home site on North Roxboro Road. Each floundered in their attempts, until eventually entering a marriage of convenience to get 'er done.

In a full-page ad in area newspapers, Eastern Airlines President Captain Eddie Rickenbacker urges Wake and Durham counties and the cities of Durham and Raleigh to build an airport together. “Do not allow civic jealousies or selfish motives to creep into a project that means so much to all of you,” says Rickenbacker in 1940.

While under construction, RDU is taken over in 1942 by the federal government for use during World War II. The base is designated Raleigh-Durham Army Air Field in January 1943 with barracks and three runways becoming operational on May 1, 1943. The base serves as a training facility for the Army Air Corps until January 1, 1948.

Eastern Airlines is permitted use of the airfield and begins service from RDU to New York and Miami in 1943. These flights stop in Richmond, Washington , D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia during the four-hour flight to New York. Stops were made in Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando, Vero Beach and West Palm during the six-hour flight to Miami.

1,223 acres of land acquired and used by the federal government during WWII at Raleigh-Durham Airport is formally returned to the four local governmental units in 1946. An initial investment by RDU of $65,000 is now worth $2,225,000.

Capital Airlines (later renamed United) begins service at RDU in 1947

Piedmont Airlines begins service in 1948 at RDU bringing the total daily flights to 22. RDU's first terminal opens in 1955.



RDU, undated, likely 1959-1965
(Courtesy Barry Norman)


RDU - undated, likely 1959-1965
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


1959
(Courtesy Barry Norman)


1959-1965
(Courtesy Barry Norman)

Terminal A opens to great fanfare in 1981.

American Airlines opens its north-south hub operation at RDU in the new Terminal C in June 1987, greatly increasing the size of RDU's operations with a new terminal including a new apron and runway. American brought RDU its first international flights to Bermuda, Cancun and Paris Orly.

In 1996, America n Airlines ceased hub operations at RDU due to difficulty competing with USAir's hub in Charlotte and Delta's hub in Atlanta for passengers traveling between smaller cities in the North and South. American began downsizing its RDU operations and eventually discontinued almost all of its mainline flights there, although it still runs a daily service to Gatwick and a number of commuter flights through American Eagle.

In the first half of 2000, RDU opens a new $40 million terminal area parking deck providing a total of 2,700 new parking spaces between the terminals.


Most recently, the airport has built a very large modern "Terminal 2," replacing Terminal C.

Although the original Terminal still stands, hidden behind a lot of blue and brown stuff, impending renovations may remove all traces of what a podunk little airport RDU was ~50 years ago.


Original terminal, 06.19.11


Original terminal, 06.19.11


Fancy new Terminal 2.0 , 06.19.11


Find this spot on a Google Map.


35.879697,-78.788581

ANGUS BARN

The Angus Barn on Endangered Durham? For all of our Durham 'foodiness' these days, it wasn't long ago that special event dining in the Bull City meant a trip to Hartman's or across the county line to the Angus Barn. Even when I first came here in 1988, the Angus Barn was one of the first and only places I heard of to go out for a special occasion.

It's also in part a rejoinder to the various restaurateurs I hear complain about insufficient foot traffic for restaurants/cafes downtown. My general response is to say "the walk-to-a-restaurant culture in Durham is about 6 months old." The other is that, if your food was any good, people would find a way to get there - as below from the Angus Barn website. We've been driving to restaurants in Durham for 50 years.

In 1959, Eure and Winston bought 50 acres of land on Highway 70 for $6,750. The pastoral setting originally believed by many to be misguided, halfway between Raleigh and Durham, proved critics wrong because it was convenient for business people who needed access to what would become Research Triangle Park and Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Although it is hard to fathom today, in 1960 RDU International Airport was little more than a landing strip where fewer than 20 flights arrived and departed each day. In fact, the area where the Barn exists was so desolate that Highway 70 was merely a two-lane road with phones stationed every few miles. The Barn was built 12 years before bustling Crabtree Valley Mall existed. Thankfully guests who traveled the distance paid far less attention to the distance and much more to the memories they made.

The original restaurant seated 275 and cost approximately $200,000 to build. Who would dare extend credit of that amount to two young dreamers whose dreams far exceeded their limited assets? Acquiring the necessary capital to pay for construction challenged the young hopefuls. Bank after bank declined Eure and Winston, politely referring to their venture as “impossible” and “a poor risk.” Borrowing from every person who had a modicum of faith in them, Eure and Winston raised money. Finally in desperation, Eure turned to his father, the late North Carolina Secretary of State Thad Eure, Sr., for the majority of the capital. In good faith, the senior Eure mortgaged his home to guarantee the loan, proclaiming, “I believe in those boys!” Construction began immediately. The restaurant opened on June 28, 1960

On the morning of February 7, 1964, Eure and Winston stood powerlessly as they watched fire reduce their dreams to smoke and ash.


02.07.64


02.07.64
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


02.07.64
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


02.07.64
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

The partners immediately began planning the new Barn, doubling the seating capacity of the old Barn. In order to open within one year of the fire, shifts were created to rebuild around-the-clock. Teams of workers labored tirelessly to meet and beat the one-year deadline. On January 27, 1965, just eleven months after “Big Red” fell, the red double doors of the new Angus Barn swung open to welcome the public again.


Angus Barn, 06.19.11

Find this spot on a Google Map.

35.899259,-78.763541

Mystery Photo - Housing Development on Chapel Hill Road.

"Housing Development on Chapel Hill Road" 07.15.53
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Mystery Photo - House Being Moved Down Green Street

House Being Moved Down Green Street, 03.25.64
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


House Being Moved Down Green Street, 03.25.64
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Where did it come from, where did it go?

Mystery Photo - Homes and Stores in Urban Renewal Area

"Homes and Stores in Urban Renewal Area" - 01.21.71
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

LOWES GROVE SCHOOL

Lowes Grove School, 1910s
From Durham Illustrated

Text in italics below is from the Durham County historic inventory.

Shortly after Durham County was formed in 1881, a rural community named for descendants of Stephen Lowe, a bricklayer who had come to Wake County in the 1770s, grew up in its southeastern sector. In 1889, Lowe’s grandson, Edmund, and his wife, Patsy, were instrumental in organizing informal church services held at the Lowe’s farm because Patsy was partially paralyzed. A small group of people met first in the house but later found a farm building in a nearby grove of trees more to their liking. The community subsequently took its name, Lowe’s Grove, from their meeting place.

In 1896 a one-room log and frame school building was brought on rolling logs pulled by mules from the Nelson community several miles away. This building, called the Little Red Schoolhouse, was replaced in 1903 by a more substantial structure, also known as the Little Red Schoolhouse, which [stood] near the north end of the Lowe’s Grove campus. The community voted for an extra tax to improve the facilities and a larger building with three classrooms, an auditorium, and a library was added in 1910.


Classroom, Lowe's Grove School, 1910s.
From Durham Illustrated


"Domestic Science Exhibit, Lowe's Grove School" - 1910s
From Durham Illustrated

In 1913, the state legislature passed the Farm Life Bill, setting aside $2500 for “expert instruction in domestic science and agriculture.” A period of six months was then fixed by law as the minimum annual schooling period. The Lowe’s Grove School, already on a nine-month schedule, was one of two schools to receive a farm life grant from the state of North Carolina. The campus was expanded and a demonstration farm begun at the school to teach students practical farming technology and farm and household management as well as mathematics, Latin, history, physics, chemistry, and English. In 1922, when two hundred students were enrolled at the school and it received national publicity in Colliers Magazine, extensive renovations were made to the 1910 structure and construction of three additional buildings was undertaken. Completed by 1925, these four buildings made up Durham County's first all-brick school complex.


Lowe's Grove School 1950s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


"Lowe's Grove Community" 1950s
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


Little Red Schoolhouse, 07.24.73

Six handsome buildings [bordered] a curved drive at the edge of a spacious lawn. At the north end, a south facing, brick, two-story, Colonial Revival structure with a gable roof and projecting end bays, dominat[ed] the campus. Its central block is enhanced by a pair of symmetrical neoclassical entrances framed with Doric pilasters carrying full entablatures. Designed by the Durham architecture firm of Rose and Rose, this building was added to the complex in 1928 as an elementary school.

A large rectangular brick cafeteria wing with a pyramid roof was joined to its east elevation ca. 1960. Immediately south and set back from the drive beneath large oak trees [was] the Little Red Schoolhouse, a frame, one-room, gable-front structure with an attached hip-roofed porch. South of it, the four brick farm life school buildings [bordered] the drive; they [were] one-story Spanish eclectic-style structures with hip and mansard roofs. The northernmost, the renovated 1910 building, served as the grammar school. [Later] a large T-shaped structure with a hip and mansard roof of metal tiles, it ha[d] a projecting central entry pavilion ornamented with diamond-shaped tile insets.

Next to it a rectangular structure with an asphalt shingle mansard roof and a neoclassical entry portico was the home economics building. Beside it, a small and plain rectangular building with a high mansard roof of metal tile was the vocational agriculture building.

At the far south of the complex, the high school, a large one-story T-shaped building with a metal tile mansard roof and a prominent central entry bay divided by four pilasters, face[d] the elementary school across the campus. Except that windows and doors throughout the complex are replacements and the roof of the home economics building ha[d] been covered with asphalt shingles, most original architectural details ha[d] been preserved [as of 1990], and the Lowe’s Grove School [was] an outstanding example of an all- grade public school that dates primarily from the 1920s. When the campus was closed in 1989 and its functions moved to a modern facility across the road, the Little Red Schoolhouse was among the oldest continually operated school buildings in North Carolina.


1990


1990


1990

The buildings of the old school were abandoned by 1989; sometime between 1993 and 1998, the Little Red Schoolhouse was moved across South Alston to be adjacent to the modern Lowe's Grove Junior High School, which had been built in 1976.

After deteriorating for ~15 years, the county purchased the 16 acre property from DPS for $1 million in April of 2004, stating their intention to demolish the building to build a new regional library. The city was originally to share the cost with the county and use some of the acreage for a new city park. However, the cost was deemed too high, and a move by some of the community to try to save the buildings dissuaded the city from participating.

The county was not persuaded to retain the majority of the buildings of the Lowes Grove school by the community; I'm not sure exactly when all of the buildings except for the large building, but it was likely in ~May of 2006.


(Courtesy Robby Delius)


(Courtesy Robby Delius)


(Courtesy Robby Delius)


(Courtesy Robby Delius)

When I went to photograph the site in October of 2007, all that remained was the elementary school building, the drive, and the entry to the drive off of South Alston.


10.13.07


10.13.07


10.13.07

The County started construction of their new fancy 'green' Freelon-designed library on the site in ~2008.


Bird's Eye view of the site being graded for the regional library.

The library opened in July of 2010. The southern part of the site is being graded for the construction of a State Credit Union as of June 2011


South Regional Library, 06.04.11


Credit Union Construction, 06.04.11

The old elementary school building is still standing, but deteriorating badly. I'm not sure if they have any intention of renovating this building, or just letting it get bad enough that they're 'forced' to tear it down.


The former elementary school, 06.04.11


From inside the South Regional Library, 06.04.11


The Little Red Schoolhouse at its new location, adjacent to the parking lot of the 1976 Lowes Grove Junior High School.

As would be expected, I think the county should have and could have preserved the Lowe's Grove campus. They'd claim it was too expensive, too far gone, etc., but there simply isn't the commitment to historic preservation at the county level that encourages anyone to make the effort to think creatively about how to accomplish more than one thing with a capital improvement program. See justice center, human services building, etc. Everything has one purpose, and opportunities to leverage improvements in such a way to create positive externalities, economic development, etc. are ignored.

Although I'm just generally not a fan of Freelon buildings, I like the regional libraries, and particularly think the interior experience is nice (I've only been in this one and the East Regional.) If they do have some intention to save the still-standing elementary school building, the site planning is just dumb. Why hide the beautiful facade of that building behind this one? The opportunity to build something that transitions from the historic to the modern elegantly, rather than just plopping it down in front of the old building, was wasted.

I'm particularly not a fan of the cloying attempt to 'embrace' the history of Lowe's Grove through little exhibits and inlaid timelines in the lobby. Like the breathless self-congratulatory bs of touting a 'sustainable' building - after demolishing 5, it seems like a cynical attempt to gloss over the reality - which is that our and future generations' ability to experience the history of this place has been irretrievably damaged, and it will take at least a generation for the energy savings of this building to offset the energy wasted by demolishing the existing buildings. I can at least respect when people simply and honestly don't care - they want their modern fancy building, and they want to get rid of the ugly old ones. I disagree, but sometimes that's just how it is. But pretending it's historical and and the save-the-planet choice is just insulting.

Find this spot on a Google Map.


35.902588,-78.8881

HOPE VALLEY

Area of Hope Valley, 1914, showing farmstead owners' names.

I've written previous posts about Durham' early automobile-centric suburbs - Forest Hills and Duke Park, in particular. Book-writing historians have tended to lump these suburbs, along with Rockwood and Duke Forest, together with Hope Valley as one class of development - with some variations as to whether they had golf courses, who the architects were, etc. I see Hope Valley as fundamentally different, and perhaps unique for its time period within a much larger geographic denominator. I would argue that Hope Valley was built as the area's first regional suburb, a branding that wouldn't gain additional adherents until the 1950s.

The land upon which Hope Valley was built was farmland prior to the 1920s. The road which would become Hope Valley Road does not appear on the 1890s map above, but it does appear on the later, 1914 map. The farm owners through this area - George Shepherd, Jim Beavers, Hugh Markham, Durham Markham, HL Green, etc. - appear on either side of the road on this map.

Robert J. Mebane (of Greensboro) and Walter E. Sharpe (of Burlington) formed a partnership in 1925 and began planning a development along the road to form the nucleus of a new suburban development that would assume automobile ownership among its intended audience. Real estate developers of the 1920s were acutely aware of the trend in the graphic below (from the 1926 comprehensive plan for Durham) which demonstrated the massive adoption of automobiles over a very short period, and accurately predicted that the adoption rate would continue to increase dramatically.


1926 Durham Comprensive Plan

But automobiles were still primarily owned by those with some degree of wealth; the other wave that the developers sought to ride was the rise of the professional class, and that the aspirations of that professional class were to attain the trappings of the previous generation of landed gentry. I've profiled the country estates/gentleman farmsteads of EJ Parrish, Julian Carr, BN Duke, RH Wright, etc., built during the late 19th and early 20th century. As lawyers, doctors, etc., the growing professional class had nowhere near the wealth of those industrial giants, and, for the most part, could never have afforded to build their own massive farmsteads with employees/staff, etc.

The trick of the purveyors of the new park/golf course-centered development was to create and market a product that gave the professional class the sense that what they were purchasing was entry into the exclusive realm of country manse owners - at a price they could actually afford.

None of this was unique to Hope Valley - it was the model followed by all such developers - create exclusivity and a sense of luxury at a price high enough to dissuade the riff-raff (along with other covenants) but low enough that you didn't need to be a tobacco baron to buy. This pattern had been done before - Hope Valley wasn't the first in Durham, and Mebane had been previously involved with the development of Greensboro's Irving Park in 1914.

What was unique about Hope Valley was an attempt to create a regional suburb - one that would draw the professional classes from both Durham and Chapel Hill. Most other automobile suburbs were contiguous with earlier development - using twisty little roads, etc. to wall themselves off, but also close enough to hedge their bets on distance from downtown.

Hope Valley wasn't contiguous with anything. It was located on the road between Chapel Hill and Durham (now Old Chapel Hill Road) and framed itself as accessible from either of these locations.


From the 1926 Chamber of Commerce book about Durham.

With original plans for a commercial/institutional center along Old Chapel Hill Road (the 'front door' of Hope Valley,) the developers envisioned some degree of self-sufficiency for the development.


Mebane and Sharpe advertisement in the Herald-Sun

The plat map below shows this concept in more detail; "Trail 13" would have been Sussex Drive, the entrance the Westminster Church on Chapel Hill Road.




As such, Hope Valley drew more heavily on the influences of the original Garden City movement and preceded development of other 'new towns' such as Radburn, NJ. Unlike most new town conceptions, the developers and architects did not seem to be under the illusion that people would abandon their cars at the periphery and walk around a commercial/institutional center. They correctly anticipated that people would want to take their cars everywhere they would want to go. What good is it purchasing entree into the sphere of wealth if you have to walk?

Mebane and Sharpe proffered in January 1926 that, if citizens could gather together a country club membership of 250 members, they would build a golf course at the center of the development, give the course to the country club, and pay half the cost of construction of a $50,000 clubhouse. In addition, they would sell parcels for residential development to club members at reduced prices. The club organized quickly; the Hope Valley Country Club was incorporated on February 18, 1926.

In March of 1926, July 1926, and August of 1926, Mebane and Sharpe devised development agreements that created a partnership agreement between land owners - including themselves, Piedmont Improvement Co. (headed by H. Smith Richardson,) and LS and Katherine Booker. With First National Bank acting as trustee. The ten year agreement outlined the following conditions: 1) price-$285/acre for land, 2) one fourth of all funds from sales go to land owner, three fourths to HV, Inc., 3) interest at 6% annually on depreciating balance, 4) all unsold property to be returned to land owner in 1936, upon termination of land contract, 5) development and maintenance to be done at expense of HV, Inc. The July agreement codified the relationship between HVCC and the land owners, allowing development of the clubhouse and golf course to move forward on all parties' land.

Mebane and Sharpe hired for success in building their development; they hired Donald Ross, who had designed Pinehurst #2 to acclaim as their golf course designer. They hired Robert B. Cridland of Philadelphia as landscape architect. Cridland had designed the landscape at the Vanderbilt estate in Hyde Park, NY, authored a well-known book ("Practical Landscape Gardening") and designed several neighborhoods. Mebane and Sharpe hired Aymar Embury, II of New York to design the clubhouse. Embury taught architecture at Princeton and had designed houses in New York - he would go on to be involved in the design of a bevy of public projects in New York City, and, interestingly, designed the Distinguished Service Cross and Distinguished Service Medal for the Armed Services while serving in World War I.

The team put together a development plan featuring curvilinear roadways surrounding an 18 hole golf course. The original development focused on the area between (Old) Chapel Hill Road and Hope Valley Road.


Development map of Hope Valley

Mebane and Sharpe announced the Hope Valley Country Club Development in a two-page ad in the Durham Morning Herald on May 23, 1926. The development was described as "a country club community for Durham, Duke, and Chapel Hill." In keeping with the exclusivity that they were marketing, they went on to state in the ad- "this annoucement means that Durham in soon to have a country club and suburban residential park - sensibly restricted - completely serviced - and large enough to be protected forever from encroachment by undesirable elements."

The first parcels were put up for sale on June 25, 1926, while the course and roads were still under construction. Embury was working on plans for the clubhouse and the entry gates off Chapel Hill Road by July, 1926.

Mebane moved the George Shepherd farmhouse from the 3700 block of Hope Valley Road to what became 2814 Chelsea Circle. He enlarged and modernized the house, then moved his family from Greensboro and occupied the house.

Mebane and Sharpe hired George Watts Carr, who had gotten his start in Durham designing the clubhouse and houses for the New Hope Realty Company's somewhat similar Forest Hills suburb. Mebane and Sharpe asked Carr to speculatively design at least ten houses for Hope Valley.

By September 1926, Mebane an Sharpe had sold roughly 125 of the 250 building parcels available for purchase. In November, Yancey Milburn, who had taken the helm of Milburn and Heister after the death of his father Frank, was supervising the construction of Embury's clubhouse design (Embury likely lacked a NC architect's license to stamp drawings for construction.) The clubhouse grand opening was July 22, 1927


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)


Hope Valley Country Club, ~1927.
(Courtesy Special Collections at Syracuse University, Aymar Embury Collection, via Tad DeBerry)

Despite an extremely aggressive advertising campaign, Mebane and Sharpe were in financial trouble by 1927. Smith Richardson, heir to the Vick Chemical Company in Greensboro, moved from a land investor to a capital investor as well. With Richardson as a partner, Mebane and Sharpe, Inc. became Hope Valley, Inc.

Hope Valley Inc. continued Mebane and Sharpe's aggressive advertising campaign; the opening of Duke Hospital in 1927 was boon to the development, creating a synergy between a school looking to recruit physicians from other locales (most notably Johns Hopkins) and the newly available Hope Valley product aimed directly at that market.

One of my all time favorite Mebane and Sharpe advertisements is below; I love it simply because it's so honest in its messaging - it's the same fear that suburban developers are still using to sell gated communities and the like, but no one would ever admit to it, or they'd couch it behind a bunch of implication.



Although Hope Valley was not designed with public transportation in mind, it was still important enough that the introduction of bus service (replacing the streetcars) in the mid 1920s was a big deal.


Hope Valley bus at Five points, prior to 1930.

Houses were built at a good clip during the late 1920s, although this slowed considerably during the Great Depression. Mebane and Sharpe would not do another real estate development. Mebane eventually moved back to Greensboro and became a salesperson with American Enka, he moved to Beaufort, NC, where he died in 1955. Walter Sharpe moved to Roanoke, VA, where he started an insurance company and died in 1951.

Neither would live to see the next big phase of Hope Valley's development, during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably the development of the so-called "Watts-Norton" section of Hope Valley.

Hope Valley isn't a Durham neighborhood that I would typically think of as threatened - because it isn't threatened by the same forces at play in, say, East Durham. There isn't economic disinvestment, or abandonment. I don't think NIS cars are circling the fairways.

But it is threatened by the same forces I highlighted in what is, to date, still my most commented-upon post - Trinity Park, You Have a Teardown Problem. Although this threat has abated a bit with the the recession, there are still, by comparison, relatively modestly sized and styled houses that are being torn down for absolutely ginormous monuments to ostentatious wealth (which unlike their predecessors, aren't even decent architecture.)

So it was good news last year that neighborhood advocates prevailed upon the state historic preservation office and the National Park Service to make Hope Valley a National Register district. As we know from Trinity Park, this doesn't stop anyone from tearing something down. But economic incentive is something.

So much has been built around Hope Valley in the last 50 years, that it's hard to see how unique it was when built - a regional suburb/town/bedroom community out in the middle of farmland between Durham and Chapel Hill.


Shepherd-Mebane House, 06.09.11, the oldest house in Hope Valley.


Teer House at 2825 Chelsea Circle, 1980


04.03.11


One of two original main entrances off (Old) Chapel Hill Road, at Windsor Way, 06.09.11

The country club has lost a lot of its original exterior charm with additions over the years. It's best from the north side, but pretty ug from the south (golf course) side.


HVCC, looking northeast, 06.09.11


HVCC, looking west, 06.09.11

Find this spot on a Google Map.


35.947144,-78.951946">