Gilbert Street

(Courtesy Duke Archives) The Durham Gas Company was formed in 1888 by George Watts and Julian Carr, and would later become the Durham Light and Power Company. The Durham Traction Company and Durham Light and Power split the electricity and gas franchises, with L&P taking the gas franchise in 1905. The company built the Gilbert St. plant shortly thereafter, constructing a facility able to hold 40,000 cubic feet of gas.

Scanned from 1924 Durham City of Industry book. Another of my favorite buildings in Durham, the John O'Daniel Hosiery Mill building, was built at 801 Gilbert St. in the late 1910s as the Paragon Hosiery Mill. It changed names rather quickly thereafter to become the Bowling-Emory Knitting Mill before being acquired in 1919 by Julian S. Carr as a...

(Photo by Gary Kueber) The modern CCFX feed mill was built on the site of the former Durham Gas Company in 1965 - either replacing or supplementing the capacity of the old feed mill operation behind (to the north of) 801 GIlbert. The gas plant had been located on the site previously - since 1905. An early picture of the gas plant, below: (Courtesy...

Built as a central Dye House for the Durham Hosiery Mill Company in 1921-1922, 708 Gilbert closed during the Great Depression (1934,) but reopened in 1941-1942 as part of the Durham Farmers Mutual Exchange - serving as a seed cleaning and inoculation facility and "service store"

Looking north from Gilbert St., 1970s. (Durham HAI) Yet another one of my favorite buildings in Durham, the Durham stables were built around 1925 by the City of Durham for the teams of horses utilized in the construction of streets. The building replaced the earlier City Stables, located on the southwest corner of Pine and E. Pettigrew Streets in...

The intersections of (moving south to north/bottom to top) Holloway and Elizabeth, Carlton and Elizabeth, plus Gilbert and Elizabeth) 1950s. (Courtesy Herald-Sun) As I mentioned previously, the entire 300 block (east side) of Elizabeth St. was demolished to widen Elizabeth to 4 lanes for 1 block north of Holloway. Very useful.