Residential

Hood Street, originally called Parrish Place, was a street of large houses at the eastern edge of the East Downtown neighborhood anchored by mansions on East Main and Dillard Streets. Around 1900, the street was put through an area that had held JR Reams' tobacco prizery house. 1891 - the prizery house is labelled #28. Reams Ave. later became South...

As Durham is a relatively young town compared to Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Raleigh, etc., there is a great deal of history in now-Durham County (originally Orange County) prior to the existence of Durham proper. While it may sometimes be tempting to think of it in the same way we think of colonial settlements, Durham's history is more that of multiple small settlements and farms that rather quickly consolidated around the opportunity presented by a new railroad line.

While I've previously shown how the larger houses extended east from the core of early Durham on East Main, Roxboro, Liberty, Dillard, and Holloway, there was one additional street on the east side of downtown that was a linear strip of 'sizable-house' development - Ramseur St.

When Julian Carr established the Durham Hosiery Mill No. 1 (above), and the Golden Belt Hosiery Mill, he developed two communities - Edgemont and Morning Glory. At the center of those two communities, he developed a park (seen in the foreground above) with a baseball diamond, gazebo, trees, etc. This park was the center of the community - a place...

510 Holloway, likely 1960s. (Courtesy Herald-Sun) The R. Pearcy Reade house was built around 1900 by Mr. and Mrs. William B. McGary, who purchased the land from Julian Carr. Originally the house, like the others around it, was Victorian / Queen Anne in style. In 1909, R. Pearcy Reade purchased the house from the McGarys. In the late 1920s, he...

The house at 528 Holloway was another of the turn-of-the-century Victorians along the Holloway St. ridgeline. Looking north at the intersection of Elizabeth and Holloway. 528 Holloway is on the southwest corner. ~1950s. (Courtesy Herald-Sun) During the 1960s, Elizabeth St. was straightened, widened and connected with Fayetteville St. to the south...

One of the oldest houses remaining upright in the City of Durham, the Calvin O'Briant house is the remaining 'farmhouse' of a much larger one-time farmstead that precedes of development of the neighborhood that now surrounds it.

The unusual and unique houses at 701 and 702 Holloway, just to the east of the Durham Belt Line railroad tracks, were undoubtedly built by the same builder around the turn of the century. With intricate sawnwork (covered by vinyl siding now,) mansard roofs (including a mansard gable on 702 Holloway) and pedimented windows, these houses survive...

The intersections of (moving south to north/bottom to top) Holloway and Elizabeth, Carlton and Elizabeth, plus Gilbert and Elizabeth) 1950s. (Courtesy Herald-Sun) As I mentioned previously, the entire 300 block (east side) of Elizabeth St. was demolished to widen Elizabeth to 4 lanes for 1 block north of Holloway. Very useful.