521 North Mangum Street

By "Little Five Points" do you mean the Mangum/Corporation/Cleveland intersection?

For some reason, I rarely use Mangum Street, despite living two blocks from it. I still like the stretch you photographed: perhaps it's all the open space. :/

Exactly. I think the stretch I photographed for today is helped a lot by the mature trees (despite the giant hole in the middle of one for the power lines). A lot of the areas that interest me are in the "moat" between more established neighborhoods and downtown - areas that have sustained damage from various sources and continue to sustain damage. I'll talk more about LFP tomorrow, but the city recently tore down a house on Corporation, and wants to tear down buildings at LFP.

Do you have any old photos of 909 North Gregson? Joe and I used to live there.

Also, I'd be very interested to see any pre-fire photos of Epworth dorm on East Campus you may come across.

Love the site!

Thanks Eric. I haven't seen any old photos of 909 N Gregson; it is a cool house. I used to pass it every day on my way home from work.

The only old picture of Epworth I know of is in Joel Kostyu's Durham book, originally from the Duke Manuscript Dept., but not part of their digitized photography. It isn't a great picture, but it gives a sense of the scale of the original building.

One thing that's struck me about Durham is lots of the city seems to be transitional zones. It seems like Durham has lots of neighborhoods where going 3 or 4 blocks in the "right" (or "wrong") direction will put you in an area of a totally different character. Maybe it's my imagination, or perhaps I haven't traveled enough.

Joe

I think you are very right about Durham's variation; I think, historically, Durham grew rapidly in the period from 1880-1920, but still needed to be relatively compact for transportation reasons. The economic and racial divisions tended to occur geographically based upon terrain rather than distance. Wealthier residents built on higher, flat ground while poorer residents built on hillier/lower terrain. You can see this as you move directly east from this part of Mangum St. to Queen, Oakwood, and Primitive. This area, known as 'the Bottoms' , was fairly equidistant from downtown, but altogether different economically. (Interestingly, this didn't always fall along racial lines - Hayti, centered at Fayetteville St. and Pettigrew was economic high ground for the segregated African-American community.)

While this overall pattern isn't exactly the kind of 'mixed-income' neighborhood planners might hope for, it is certainly spatially more mixed than Treyburn vs. East Durham.

Changes since the 1960s have destabilized this pattern though, by 'suburbanizing' neighborhoods such as Old North Durham and Morehead Hills.

Thanks for your comment, and I really appreciate you linking my blog.

The two remaining houses on the block are owned by Nehemiah Christian Center, who apparently had some interest in renovating them, but discovered that both had experienced electrical fires. Both are highly salvageable, but require significant work that was too much for the church to take.

I've spoken with Nehemiah, and Pastor Herb Davis indicated that he would be happy to have someone move them off the site to restore them elsewhere.

@Gary: I don't understand why you think they should be moved. Why can't they be restored on site?

@Michael: Did you ask this church why they didn't just put these houses up for sale if restoring them is too much for them?

John

I'd love for them to be restored on site. But they are owned by the church across the street, which means they'll be a parking lot someday. They are abandoned and deteriorating, and even if the church agreed to sell the land (which they won't,) nobody with enough money to bring these back from the point they've been beaten to is going to invest in them as two houses surrounding by all of that vacant land, parking lots, and unknown.

Whereas, on Cleveland St., one block away, they would help bolster a group of slightly less abused houses which are few in remaining number, but enough to remain a neighborhood.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but I feel confident that eventually either the church will take them down or NIS will, given how long they've been abandoned/run down. I don't suggest it lightly.

GK

John -- the church is interested in the property, not for parking, but for (I think) eventual church expansion. Nehemiah has expanded to take all of the old storefronts in the building it occupies, and at the very least wants to build fellowship space across the street, and would in fact I think prefer to build a new edifice including sanctuary and fellowship space on that side of the street and leave the storefronts entirely.

Pastor Davis told me that they had looked at renovating the buildings for sort of church-owned housing for their members, but because of the lack of a historic district along Mangum, there were no tax credits to be had, and the financials were simply impossible.

Expecting them to stay extant and residential in that spot is, to me, unreasonable. I don't think that if Nehemiah sold them that they would end up becoming single family houses. I'm pretty sure that would just lead to them getting leveled faster. (Nehemiah has at least secured them to the point that they aren't deteriorating quickly.) They are the last two detached houses south of Corporation, and even if they stayed up, they'd get chopped up and turned into offices.

I'm trying to sort it out, but I *think* if they're architecturally appropriate, moving them to Cleveland would trigger historic tax credits, making them much more financially viable.

The church Did own Public Hardware, and smart of the owner of Public Hardware to buy another property before the church desided to level the building. If you go to Public Hardware they have a few News Paper clippings of the store, or you can check out their Facebook page for these Pictures. At the time Public Hardware moved there was not enough time or money to make a building look old and non commerical industrial.

Looks like demolition on these two started either today or yesterday. It's a shame.

As of today the house on the corner is now a big pile of ruble aned the second house is next. SMH I just hate to see things like this!!