Uzzle Cadillac / Green Horizon

36.003331, -78.901684

625
Foster Street
Durham
NC
Cross Street
West Geer Street
Year built
1940s
Architects/Designers
Davis, Archie Royal
Construction type
Masonry
National Register
Foster and West Geer
Neighborhood
Central Park
Use
Furniture Store
Auto Dealership
Architectural Salvage and Design
Building Type
Commercial
Can you help?
You don't need to know everything, but do you know the builder?
Log in or register and you can edit this.


Looking east from West Geer St. to catch a small piece of the Uzzle Cadillac dealership, late 1960s.
(Courtesy University of North Carolina)

Uzzle Cadillac was started by Wilson Uzzle in a rather elaborate service station building on the southwest corner of Dillard and East Main Sts. around 1930.

In the 1940s, Uzzle moved his dealership to a new building on Foster St., designed by Archie Royal Davis (who has been mentioned on this site in the context of the round houses.)

Wilson's two sons, Dan and Gran, joined the business around this same time. Commenters noted the appearance of Martha Uzzle, Dan's wife, in one of the pictures of the Naval Reserve Building a few days ago.

In the early 1960s, the Uzzles built the pagoda-style building across Foster St. as a used car dealership. In 1969, they moved their Cadillac-Oldsmobile dealership out to Chapel Hill Blvd/15-501.

Weeks Lincoln-Mercury on W. Geer St sold their business to Bradley Lincoln-Mercury in about 1975, and the dealership moved to this location. They remained here until the 1980s when they built the present-day Michael Jordan Lincoln-Mercury on 15-501.

The building is now owned by Greenfire, another of their seemingly odd property-ownership choices (other the logic of just buying anything in DDO-1 that they can.) It houses Peter's Design Works, an architectural salvage and design/construction business (which was housed in the Venable Tobacco warehouse for a number of years before moving here) as well as Southern Portico, an apparent furnishings store.


Looking south-southwest at the former Uzzle Cadillac, 06.08.08.

10.1.13 - Green Horizon - A services company that specializes in HVAC, Insulation, and Crawl Space Systems.
Photo by Andrius Benokraitis


36.003331,-78.901684

Related Tours

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 6/19/2008 - 12:23pm

I've always liked Exxon/Esso's old motto, "Happy Motoring" as shown in back of this photo. They must have discontinued its use after traffic congestion & road rage became the norm....

Myers

Submitted by Michael Bacon (not verified) on Thu, 6/19/2008 - 2:42pm

I think Greenfire's finger in that particular pie has to do with MiLB and their "fan experience." I'm a little worried about the bulldozers coming for that building, given its lovely situation looking out over center field.

The last rumor I heard, though, had the museum going on a parking lot elsewhere in the area, so maybe we can leave the black armbands in the drawer.

Submitted by Carey (not verified) on Thu, 6/19/2008 - 11:30pm

I always new this as the Brame Building. I guess that was only a later use.

Submitted by Carey (not verified) on Thu, 6/19/2008 - 11:31pm

sorry - "knew"

English actually is my first language, believe it or not.

Submitted by Toby (not verified) on Tue, 2/22/2011 - 4:33am

In recent months, a new sign appeared on this building, for a company called "Green Horizon". Looks like they do sustainable building: http://www.greenhorizon.com/

Add new comment

Log in or register to post comments.