Southern Durham

Parkwood Branch Library August 2007

Parkwood Branch Library

Parkwood Branch Library opened in July of 1975. It was closed down in 2009-2010 and was replaced by the South Regional Library on S. Alston (the former site of the Lowe's Grove School).

McDougald Terrace

McDougald Terrace was developed on vacant land east of Hayti and NCCU as part of large-scale public housing development in Durham, funded and authorized by the Housing Act of 1949. Two major, racially-segregated projects were developed in the early 1950s - Few Gardens, for white residents, McDougald Terrace, for African-American residents. Looking...

Lowes Grove School

Innovative school provided a center for once-rural community. Now almost entirely demolished.

3406 S. Alston Ave - Hargrove House

June 2005 photograph by volunteers for the Historic Preservation Society of Durham (now Preservation Durham) This is an early 1920s bungalow built on land between Alston Avenue and the Durham & Southern Railroad - not far from the rural stop near Cornwallis known as Oyama (later renamed Few). While it appears to have been built after J. A. Clark...

Southern Conservatory Of Music - Alston Ave.

One of my favorite recently-solved mysteries involves the location of the Southern Conservatory of Music once it left the southwest corner of Duke St. and West Main St. in 1924. I knew the SCM had moved to "Alston Avenue" - but I could not figure out where. This picture from the 1920s shows their 'new' building on Alston. (Courtesy Durham County...

Few House

11.18.2017 01/18/2024

Dr. Charles H. Shepard House

1608 Fayetteville, late 1970s Dr. Charles Shepard, brother of Dr. James Shepard (who founded present-day North Carolina Central University) and son of Augustus Shepard (minister of White Rock Baptist Church) was a prominent local physician who practiced at Lincoln Hospital. He built this house at 1608 Fayetteville St. in the late 1920s. It is currently rental housing.

3921 Fayetteville St. - Dillard's Bbq

Dillard's BBQ was noted in this Indy article (thank you Indy for maintaining your URLs rather than switching them around all the time) as a "Durham staple since 1953." It certainly was among the echoes of a previous age of BBQ and Durham restaurants - a la Bullock's. The restaurant closed in March of 2011. In December of 2013, the building was...

Massey's Chapel

Located right around the corner from Southpoint Mall, the current Massey's Chapel building has hosted its United Methodist congregation for the over a century. The simple and elegant wooden structure is designed proportionally around its stock Gothic windows. Besides replacements and repairs done to the walls, the exterior of the building is very...

Southern High School

"Working on Southern High School, 08.13.56" Southern High moved to 800 Clayton Road in 1993; these buildings were purchased by Glaxo, gutted, and refurbished/rebuilt as part of GSK's campus.