East Main Street

"Public Welfare" was established in Durham in 1919, after passage of the Public Welfare Law by the NC General Assembly. Prior to that time, 'welfare' (and I'm not sure what it entirely consisted of at that point) was managed by the Salvation Army.

The earliest grand houses on the east side of Durham were built along Roxboro and the first two blocks of East Main St. east of the intersection of those two streets. Some of the early, more forgotten names in Durham history - Day, Lyon, Fuller - industry magnates who faded from the scene as business consolidated around the Blackwell/Carr and, later, Duke empires. Few records of these early houses remain, except for intriguing footprints on the early Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, and most of them did not survive the early 20th century.

Mill Park service station, ~1950. (Courtesy Wayne Henderson) As I mentioned when discussing the Pure Oil Station at Morgan and N. Mangum, a sudden explosion of gas stations in residential neighborhoods during the 1920s met some resistance from neighbors - perhaps a bit aghast that every house on a corner was being torn down for another gas station.