Institutional

1115 W. Chapel Hill St.

11.24.13 One of the few surviving originally-residential structures along the once-predominantly-residential blocks of WCH between Five Points and the curve of Kent Street (originally Chapel Hill Road.) This house has been a rental and later some sort of institutional home. As of late 2013, Self-Help plans to move this structure somewhere to make...

Maplewood Cemetery

(Courtesy University of North Carolina Library, North Carolina Collection) Maplewood Cemetery was established in 1872 by the purchase of an empty field of land to the west of the city limits. William H. Willard was paid $1500 for the land. Prior to establishment of the cemetery, people had been buried in the churchyards of their particular church...

613 Mobile Avenue – Dr. C.D. Grandy Office

October 1962 (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection / Durham Urban Renewal Records, Box 3 - online at DigitalNC) Built and opened in 1947, this was the office of physician Clemuel Durham Grandy, Sr. Trained at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee - which had been the first school in the south for African-American...

YWCA

Looking south/southeast from the north side of W. Chapel Hill St. (Courtesy Durham County Library) Copyright Sanborn Fire Insurance Company The Durham chapter of the YWCA was established in 1920 at 303 1/2 West Main St. (the Sparger Building,) upstairs from the Charles Department Store. Mrs. IF Hill was at the forefront of the drive to establish...

312 East Umstead Street - Harriet Tubman YWCA (Second)

(County Tax Record photo) Segregated from facilities serving Durham's white community, the Harriet Tubman YWCA was a major site of organizing for civil and women's rights activism. Built alongside the John M. Avery House, which it had used since relocating from its first address on Fayetteville Street in 1937, the Tubman Y's new building opened...

Trinity Avenue YMCA / Duke Diet Center

When William Erwin (Jr?) decided in 1955 to give a large parcel of land just north of the Pearl Mill (across West Trinity Avenue) to the YMCA so that they could built a 'modern facility' to replace the original YMCA downtown, there remained one earlier structure on the site - the (Pearl Mill) Lyceum. "Erwin Gives Land to YMCA - 08.08.55" (Courtesy...

J.J. Henderson Housing Center

Looking northeast from Proctor and S. Duke - site of the old George Watts home / Durham Academy, 01.01.08 Eugene Morehead and George Watts were pioneers in the area that would become Morehead Hill when they built their houses on the western side of Lee (later Duke) St. in 1880. As the activity in the neighborhood increased, WT Blackwell sought to...

YMCA - East Main St.

Looking southwest from Roxboro and East Main. The southwest corner of Roxoboro and East Main St. initially was the location of a home, although I don't know the original inhabitant. This house was still in place when the first courthouse was built immediately to its west. Looking southeast from East Main St., 1880s. The first county courthouse is...

Hanes House

Looking west at the intersection of Trent Dr. and Erwin Rd., 1950. (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper) The erstwhile dormitories clustered around the intersection of Trent Drive and Erwin Road were built between 1942 and 1951; for a period of time, this cluster was known as 'North Campus' - an appellation it appears to have shed at this point.

Durham Water Company - Eno River Pumping Station

The original source for Durham's potable water.