519 Holloway Street

From the 2007 Preservation Durham plaque application compiled by Heather Slane (then of Trinity Design/Build, now of hmwPreservation):

Based on architectural evidence, the house at 519 Holloway Street was likely constructed between 1890 and 1900 by then owner, J. H. Gilbert.  Gilbert purchased two parcels of land from M. F. May and Martha J. May in 1882 and 1888 and likely constructed at least three houses on the street including 519, 523, and 527 Holloway.  (The house at 527 is a near mirror image of 523 Holloway, but retains its original porch.)  Without early Sanborn maps of the 500 block of Holloway Street or the earliest city directories it is nearly impossible to date the house exactly or to know its earliest residents.  However, Gilbert is listed as a carpenter in the 1880 census, so it is likely that he constructed the houses himself.

Gilbert never lived in the house at 519 Holloway; he is listed at 415 Holloway Street before his death in 1908 and his widow, Susan, continued to live at 415 after his death.  In 1912, Susan sold the properties on Holloway Street to Robert M. Jones.  The house appears to have been operated as a rental property by Robert M. Jones who, according to the National Register nomination for the Holloway Street Historic District, constructed his own residence at 521 Holloway Street in the early years of the century.  The 1919-20 city directory lists C. J. Markham as the resident.  Though the initials are reversed, this may have been the same J. C. Markham who, together with Jones owned and operated the Markham & Jones Company, a grocery company.

Jones’s health had begun to fail by the second decade of the twentieth century.  His obituary states that he sought relief from his ailments in Hot Springs, Arkansas three years before his death in 1922.  In 1919, Jones sold the house to Alonzo P. Carlton, secretary of Weatherspoon-Council Co. Inc.  Carlton and his wife, Carrie Boone Carlton, moved into the house shortly thereafter and lived there with their four sons, Eugene, Herbert, Percy, and Alfred.  During this time, Carlton formed his own business, Carlton Insurance & Realty Co.

The Carltons sold the house in 1938 to Oliver G. and Evangeline F. Spangler.  The Spangler family moved from Cleveland County to Durham sometime after the birth of their daughter 1934.  Oliver was a jewelry store employee in Cleveland County and was employed with the Piedmont Mercantile Co. in Durham.  By 1941, the city directory lists Frederick T. Baker as an additional resident of the house.  It is possible that Baker was simply a boarder with the Spanglers; however, it is more likely that the house had been divided into multiple units because in 1951, Ernest C. & Artis W. Gregory are listed along with the Spanglers in the directory.  By 1956, the Spanglers are no longer listed at 519 Holloway.  Oliver passed away in 1952, leaving his widow, “Vangie” who may have remained in the house, but was not listed in the directories.  By 1964, Vangie had remarried and sold the property to James K. and Beatrice T. Weaver.

The property was owned by nearly a dozen different parties between 1964 and 2005 when it was acquired by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.  When occupied, the house was always a rental property with tenants in up to three separate apartments.  The property remains an investment property today, but has been carefully restored.

That restoration - along with the above-quoted plaque application that dubbed this the Carlton-Spangler House - was carried out in 2005-2007 under the ownership of Faye Calhoun & Tommy Lee Broadwater.