Ninth Street

Deed records indicate that J.B.Warren built this house around 1905. It was one of a row of simple gable-and-wing Victorian transitional houses Warren built along Ninth Street at the turn of the last century. The area on the west side of Durham was booming with new growth stimulated by the creation and rapid expansion of Benjamin Duke’s Erwin Cotton...

Hillsborough Road and Ninth St., looking west, ~1958 (Courtesy Barry Norman) The service station at 771 9th St. / 2001 Hillsborough Road was initially the Council Service Station, built during the early 1930s. The building became Moore's Texaco, and, by the late 1950s, the McAfee Service Station. It then had a stint as a drive-in shoe shop, and idea whose time has surely come again.

806 Ninth St., 09.12.09 Looking west from ~Iredell, ~1950. (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper) The east side of the 800 block of Ninth St. was residential through much of the 20th century. A frame structure at the north end of the block housed the West Durham Wet Wash Laundry, which became the White Star Laundry, during the 1920s - before that...

Looking northeast, 12.18.69 (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper) The only frame building remaining on Ninth St., the store at 712 Ninth St. appears to have been built around 1930 as Paul's Place restaurant. By the 1950s, the business had become O'Briant's Restaurant. O'Briant's, looking south, 12.18.69.

By the 1950s, the growth of population westward, the envelopment of West Durham into the City of Durham, and the scaling of fire equipment necessitated a new fire station for Company #2, which had been located amongst the Liggett Warehouses on West Main St. since 1906 The Ninth Street property was purchased by the City from the heirs of Mrs. Ida...

One-time West Durham branch for the Fidelity Bank, headquartered in downtown Durham, this Rose and Rose designed neoclassical structure became a Wachovia branch when Wachovia absorbed Fidelity in 1956, and, after the construction of a new Wachovia branch across the street, long-time home to Bruegger's Bagels.

Looking southeast, 1940s. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection) 762-764 Ninth St., the bookend to the two-story structures at the Perry St. end of the Ninth St. commercial strip, appears to have been built in the late 1920s. It initially housed Whitmore’s Bakery at 762 and Mack’s Food Shop at 764. Upstairs tenants appear to...