Service Station

771 Ninth Street / 2001 Hillsborough Road

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.

Clark And Sorrell Garage / Triangle Biotechnology Center

(Courtesy Scientific Properties) The Clark & Sorrell garage had its origins in an auto repair shop at 214 E. Parrish St. opened by LeRoy Clark in the late 1910s. Donnie Sorrell had left Durham to attend business school in New York ~1920, and returned to Durham intending to establish a business. Clark was interested in expanding his repair shop, and the two partnered as Clark and Sorrell, Inc. on January 1, 1922.

613 West Chapel Hill St. - Pure Oil / Phillips 66

A rather elaborate Pure Oil, cottage style station stood at the southeast corner of Vickers Ave. and West Chapel Hill until the 1960s; between 1960 and 1969, the Pure Oil station was torn down and replaced by another mid-century modern classic - the Phillips 66 station with the large triangular awnings.

402 Morgan Street

1940s (William Franklin Warren Collection, Durham County Library) The north side of the 400 block of Morgan (between Morris and Roney) and the north side of the 300 block of Morgan (between Roney and Foster) contained primarily small, commercial structures. Morgan St., even more so than Chapel Hill St., contained fewer retail establishments and...

Lucky Strike Service Station

Lucky Strike Service Station, 1966 (the back of the tobacco warehouses at 207 Morehead are visible at right) First listed in city directories in 1932, this filling and service station operated for roughly 35 years where Blackwell Street ended at Morehead Avenue, across from the southeastern corner of the American Tobacco factory complex. The first...

902-904 West Main

(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

Public Service / Ice Company - West Durham

Looking west from Crabtree St. (later Trent) and Hillsborough Rd., 1920s (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

1200 W. Chapel Hill St. – Former Pure Oil Service Station / Grub Restaurant

The former Pure Oil service station at 1200 W. Chapel Hill Street had become a neighborhood liability and a likely candidate for demolition. Long-term leakage from underground fuel storage tanks and incidental surface spills had contaminated the soil around three sides of the building. Asbestos, peeling paint, and damage from years of water...

421 North Mangum Street - Williams Pure Oil Service

(From "Images of America: Durham" by Stephen Massengill) Prior to the 1920s, 421 North Mangum Street was the site of the in-town TJ Rigsbee house (as opposed to his farm where Duke's West Campus now sits.) After TJ Rigsbee's death in 1917 and TJ Rigsbee, Jr.'s death in 1924, the house was sold, demolished, and the site redeveloped as a service...

Ne Corner - North Mangum And East Geer

I have no picture of the frame house that stood on the northeast corner of North Mangum and West Geer Streets prior to the 1930s - by 1937, it had been replaced with a simple 'filling station' in the common style of the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1950s, this station had been expanded to include garage bays to the rear. Looking northeast, 1952 (Courtesy Wayne Henderson)