Church

Union Missionary Baptist, 1960s. Union Missionary Baptist was founded in 1897, when John Robinson, Ed Hockaday, and John Thomas, with the help of Aaron Moore and White Rock Baptist Church organized a Sunday School for Baptist families living in the East End.

Watts Street Baptist Church, 1925 Watts Street Baptist Church was organized in 1923 to accomodate a growing Baptist community in north/west Durham that was somewhat far from First Baptist and Second/Temple Baptist. The initial group raised funds for a sanctuary, which was built in the Gothic Revival style, using stone similar to that utilized for...

Trinity Ave. Presbyterian, 1926 Trinity Avenue Presbyterian had its origins in the Pearl Cotton Mill, which opened its doors in 1892. In 1894, the Rev. L.B. Turnbull, Minister of First Presbyterian Church was instrumental in opening a mission at the mill. The congregation met in a cottage on Washington St., but sometime prior to 1898 built a frame...

Durham Christian and Missionary Alliance Gospel Tabernacle, 1927 Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection) The Durham Christian and Missionary Alliance Gospel Tabernacle built the masonry brick structure on the corner of North Gregson and Lamond Ave. in 1927. The Durham congregation had been established in 1889. Between 1898 and 1900, the...

Wesleyan Church, likely 1930s. (Courtesy Mac Bare and John Schelp) The Wesleyan Methodist Church, later the First Wesleyan Church, was organized in the summer of 1907 by Wesleyan minister Rev. Shuber Williams after a tent revival held on Broad Street. Williams held services in different homes in West Durham before, on January 10, 1908, thirty charter members organized the West Durham Wesleyan Church in the home of JE Conway, who lived on Hillsborough Road near Ninth Street.

Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian, 1924 The Blacknall family, both Richard, Jr., who, with his father, Dr. Richard Blacknall, had organized Blacknall's Drugstore and his brother James, who was the first sheriff of Durham County, started the Presbyterian congregation in West Durham in 1892 as a mission, based from First Presbyterian downtown. The...

St. Joseph's, 1920s. (From "From Paternalism to Protest" by Tiffany Franke.) St. Joseph's Episcopal Church was established as the outgrowth of an Episcopal mission in West Durham established in 1894 -which would become the second Episcopal parish in Durham, the first being associated with St. Philip's downtown. William Erwin taught Sunday School...

(Courtesy Old West Durham) Per the Old West Durham website a Pentecostal mission was established in West Durham in 1911. The group met in the home of CE Cates, located on Gin St. For the next nine years, the group used the SW Avery home on 15th St., "a hall" on 9th St., and AW Utley's home on 13th (Bolton) St. In 1920, a location at Oakland and...

West Durham Church of God, looking northwest from Hillsborough Road, mid-1950s (Courtesy John Schelp) The West Durham Church of God was organized in 1937 and initially located in a small frame structure on Case Street.

Carolina Furniture Company on East Pettigrew St., 1902. (Copyright Sanborn Map Company) The block of East Pettigrew Street between Ramsey St. and Branch Place was the site of the wood-frame Carolina Furniture Company building. The Carolina Furniture Co. building had been constructed in the 1880s as the "Wortham Wooden Mills." This venture became...