Rigsbee Avenue

Built in ~1938, the Durham Baking Company seems to have been a wholesale production facility, and possibly the Merita Bread Company production facility. 1950 Sanborn map of Rigsbee and West Geer Streets. Although sources are sketchy, it sounds as if a fire in the baking company building may have resulted in the exit of bread production. Regardless...

The Little Acorn restaurant was started in 1940 by Robert Roycroft. Like many of the eating establishments that lined Rigsbee Ave. and Morgan St., the Little Acorn catered to businesses in and patrons of the warehouse district, but it appears to have had far wider appeal as well. Per a 1951 writeup, the Little Acorn

The warehouse district area north of Morgan St., what is left of it, is a mid-20th century creation. The area near Rigsbee Ave. and Broadway St., in particular, was a higher-end late 19th and very early-20th century residential area. Looking north-northwest up Rigsbee Ave., 1924. The houses are clustered around Broadway and Rigsbee. (Courtesy Duke...

The last-built and last-standing (as of 2011) of Durham's once large set of tobacco auction warehouses, the Liberty stopped auctioning tobacco in 1984, but was used as storage and cheap office space for several decades afterwards. In May 2011, a large section of roof collapsed in a rainstorm, rendering the southern portion of the warehoues unusable. In 2012, Greenfire announced plans to demolish the southern portion of the building (retaining the primary facade Rigsbee Ave. portion) to replace it with apartments.

Mangum Warehouse, looking west from Broadway St., 1940. (Courtesy Library of Congress) The Mangum Warehouses (No.1 and No.2) were built between 1937 and 1940 on sloping terrain to the north of the earlier tobacco warehouses. The Rigsbee Ave. frontage was, prior to construction of the warehouse, residential. Warehouse district, 1959.

Looking east from Rigsbee Ave. and Seminary St., 1940 (Courtesy Library of Congress) The original Liberty Warehouse was located at the northeast corner of Rigsbee Avenue and Seminary St. The warehouse was constructed in the early 1930s, and operated by Satterfield and Stone. Looking north up Rigsbee Ave. from Seminary St., 1940. The Roycroft...

Sale day, 1940. Looking northwest from Rigsbee Ave. and Seminary St. (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

The Sinclair gas station near Rigsbee and Morgan, 1940. Today's post is a historic illustration of an architectural type that I've advocated many times before - the liner building. The large Brick Star warehouse at Morgan and Rigsbee was 'square' to Rigsbee St., where Morgan St. curved to the south as it headed east away from Rigsbee. This formed a...

Looking northwest, 1924. (Courtesy Duke Archives) The building just behind the First Baptist Church in the above photograph began as a livery stable (where people would stable their horses) but later became a car garage. By 1940, the building had been replaced or remodeled as one of Durham's first "super-markets"