803-815 Ninth

Gary, a "long John" is a choux pastry filled with cream and frosted. It's very similar to an eclair. You've got me on the "short John"; I've never heard of those.

Although, come to think of it, there used to be a bakery somehere in West Durham that (in the 1960s) sold a yeasted cream filled chocolate-iced donut that they called a "John". My uncle used to bring them to us. Maybe that is a short john?

My first grade teacher at E. K. Powe used to send various ones of us, always boys, across the playground (and across Green Street) to Royal Sandwich with a quart thermos and thirty cents to get coffee. You can see the Powe playground in several of the photos.

She was a dear. I cannot imagine that happening today.

A long john is almost shaped like a Twinkie,only rounder and longer. The dough is the consistency of a good doughnut.It is filled with a delicious creme filling. I think a shot john is just a shorter long john and was cheaper.Davis Bakery on Chapel Hill Street sold the best ones in Durham.

With the pictures you have there, I couldn't swear that they were the originals by 1990, but they were generally low slung commercial buildings, not entirely contiguous or connected the whole way. The northern portion was a series of small buildings that stepped up with the grade as one went up the hill to the south. There was another small, freestanding building that I actually watched the bulldozer knock down. Its last tenant was Fuller Resume.

I've gotten better at seeing what's structural and what's cosmetic in the past 10 years, but when these went down, I got the distinct impression of them leaning. I don't think they were masonry buildings, and the demo pictures would seem to agree. I believe they were stick-built. My memory of the Fuller Resume building is that it went down with about three swipes of the bucket of a backhoe.

As for appearances, the DataFlow buildings had green awnings and large plate-plexiglass windows, with rather Spartan metal-frame doors. At the time of the demo, I lived on the 900 block of Iredell, and walked to the 9th St. district extremely regularly. I've come to second guess any "tear it down" sentiments I might have had, but I can say that from the perspective of a pedestrian, the walk past DataFlow was always gloomy and depressing, even when they were occupied. Whatever the dlaws, the Dickson building feels much, much better to a pedestrian, and frankly looks better with the surrounding architecture.

Which raises an interesting point -- the original plans for 9th St. North were stucco. It was OWNDA that prevailed upon Dickson to do a brick facade instead, to match Powe and the Fire Station. Dickson, I believe, later acknowledged that it was definitely the right choice.

(there should be a law against stucco in the humid southeast, to protect dumb architects from themselves.)

Hi. i am the son of Taylor Davis. I was doing a search for his company and ran across this site.
It brings back a lot of memories seeing our building and delivery trucks.
I was 10 years old at the time of the photo, and worked for my father there. I actually started when I was in the third grade at E.K. Powe and would walk to the store after school and fold boxes that we put our cakes and pies in. I got a penny for every 4 boxes I folded!
Feel free to email me if you have any questions. wa4zwc@gmail.com
Thanks, Jerry