EAST END - VOLUNTEER INVENTORY (2002-2022)

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1985.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1912.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1952.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1920.

Photograph by Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 10.18.2002.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1925.

A house appears at this address on the 1937 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Durham (the area was not included in earlier editions), before the section connecting Alston to Holloway further south was completed.

Google Streetview shows this house present in September 2012, but gone by August 2014.  A demolition permit was issued at this address at the end of June 2013.

Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 10.18.2002.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1944. In 2016, significant renovation and repairs were done, including to the facade, front porch and back deck. 

Durham County Department of Tax Administration, 9.27.2017.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1912.

Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 11.1.2002.

This house appears to have been built by around 1913, when it first appears on Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.  The land previously belonged to D. Z. O'Briant, one of the heirs to Calvin O'Briant who held significant acreage in this area.  The younger O'Briant sold this parcel to Allen Jeffries, an African American employee at the nearby gas plant who had come to Durham from Wake County about a decade prior.  He and his wife Siddie had two children, Lillian - who worked at hosiery mills and later as a typist at NC Mutual - and George, who at least initially followed his father to work at the gas company.  Allen Jeffries eventually established his own trucking business, hauling materials for his former employers at the gas company among other clients.  His son George, followed him into this profession.  He was drafted and served in a labor battalion on the home front during World War 1.  Siddie Jeffries died of cancer in fall 1922.  Allen remarried to the widowed Alice Daniel Jones in 1924.

Property records indicate that the family lost title during the Depression years of the early 1930s, but were somehow able to remain in the home.  Unfortunately these were not the last of their troubles; George Jeffries and a friend were shot by an unknown assailant in March 1937.  While the friend recovered and doctors at Lincoln Hospital battled infection for nearly a week, Jeffries eventually succumbed to his wounds.  Still working at age 70 two and a half years later, Allen Jeffries and one of his drivers were bringing a load of coal and coke down Elizabeth Street to the gas company not far from his house when a tobacco-laden truck ran the red light at its intersection with Geer Street.  Jeffries was thrown from the vehicle and killed, while his driver survived his head injuries.  The White, Apex-based driver of the tobacco truck was tried for manslaughter but acquitted.

Members of the Jeffries family would remain at 1007 Hazel after his death until at least 1950, after which a series of shorter-tenured tenants appear in city directories.  The property appears to have been abandoned by the time of the above 2002 survey photo, and demolished before 2007.

The sloping lot sat empty until 2016, when a new structure (below) was built at this address.

Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 11.1.2002.

According to county property records, the house at 1103 Hazel Street was constructed in 1920.

In 2010, this house was demolished. In late 2020, permits were filed to construct a new single-family dwelling on this site. 

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1944, however, a similarly located and configured structure appears on the 1937 Sanborn Fire Insurance map.  Originally a duplex, in recent years it appears to have been remodeled as a single-family dwelling.

This house appears to have been built around 1914 by David Jones and his wife, Alice Daniel Jones - possibly replacing an earlier home built closer to the street on the same parcel.  Originally from a large family in the Dutchville Township of neighboring Granville County, David Jones and several of his siblings came to Durham around the turn of the century.  He initially worked in the building trades, so it is possible he contributed labor to raising this structure.  His brother, Rufus Jones, lived next door at 309 Dowd with his wife Fannie.

Around the time this house was built, Jones made preaching his profession, leading the nearby Mt. Gilead Baptist Church. (The history page on the website of the still-active church credits his leadership in moving the congregation to a new structure at its present location.)  Unfortunately, his heart gave out in the spring of 1921, leaving his wife Alice a widow.  She remarried in 1924 to a widower named Allen Jeffries, whose house on Hazel Street was the subject of a recent post.

From the late 1940s, this was the home of Levi and Georgia Pettiford Mitchell.  She held jobs as a cafeteria worker at Durham High School and later on the custodial staff at Duke University.  Her husband was also employed by Duke - as an orderly at the hospital in the 1940s - before working many years for American Tobacco and as a driver for a furniture company.  They would have been residents here along with their children during the years of sit-ins and protests against segregated service at the Royal Ice Cream parlor just a few doors down.  It seems they relocated to a home in the Hillside Park neighborhood at some point in the mid-1960s, though they retained ownership of the house at 311 Dowd until the late 1970s. (Mrs. Mitchell passed away in 2019 at the age of 104 - see the tribute to her long life here.)

By the early 21st century when the survey photo above was taken, the houses that once stood on either side of 311 Dowd had been demolished.  Much of the surrounding property belonged to Union Baptist Church, which also obtained this parcel in March 2003.  The combined property of the church in this vicinity is outlined in the aerial view below in red:

Plans to build the Union Independent School - now the Global Scholars Academy - led to the demolition of this house, the former Royal Ice Cream commercial building at the northeast corner of Roxboro and Dowd, as well as houses along the north side of the block facing Corporation.  Open Durham founder, Gary Kueber, then working on its predecessor blog Endangered Durham, was pictured at the site of the demolition he'd vehemently opposed in the Herald-Sun.

Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 11.1.2002.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1924. Amid the many demolitions and redevelopments in the East End neighborhood and throughout urban Durham, as of 2017 the house at 1105 Hazel remains unchanged and seemingly well cared for. 

Durham County Department of Tax Administration, 9.27.2017.

Photograph by Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 10.18.2002.

According to property records, this duplex was constructed in 1959.  Sanborn maps confirm there was no structure on this lot prior to 1950.  Aerial photos confirm a building had been erected by 1960, though no residents are listed at this address in the city directory for that year.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1925.

Photograph by Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 10.18.2002.

County property records date construction of this house to 1945, but identical structures appear at this location on both 1937 and 1950 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

While county records have this bungalow dated to 1943, historical sources suggest it had been built by the late 1920s.  The owners at the time - and the first listed residents at this address - were Alexander C. and Vester Suitt Cokley.  A. C. Cokley, as his name frequently appears shortened, was a tailor with a shop at the corner of Roxboro and Canal (possibly this structure later converted to a grocery).

In 1940, this was home to a multi-generational family that had come to Durham from Wilson.  Prodigal and Kissie Parker - by then in their 50s - lived with their son Oscar, daughter-in-law Ella, and their 5 young children.

Ada E. and Arthur Dunlap purchased the property in 1943.  She worked nearby at the Farmers Mutual Exchange, while he worked for Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company.  Widowed by 1960, Ada Dunlap sold the house to Lennis and Pearl Graham Jackson.  It remained in their family for more than three decades.  After as string of sales in 2014-2015, the house has underwent significant renovation.

According to county property records, this structure was built in 1920, when Hazel Street was briefly known as an extension of Pearl Street (and prior to that, as Cobb Avenue).

Originally one of several East End rental properties of the Horner family (Durham native and Trinity College/UNC alum W.E. Horner was a state politician and longtime publisher of the Sanford Herald). City directories reflect duplex occupancy from 1956, although a 1937 Sanborn Fire Insurance map clearly shows the property split into two residences. A number of renters and their families called 1201 Hazel home before it was ultimately demolished in 2016. A new single-family dwelling (below) was built in its place in 2017.

Though county tax records date this structure to 1925, a barber named James Wesley (J. W.) Whitaker appears at this address for a dozen years beginning in 1919.  His wife - Mary Hester Tapp Whitaker - purchased the property in 1915.  She seems to have held various jobs, from housekeeping to midwifery.  Both appear to have had children from previous marriages, including some who lived here with their own young families in early adulthood.  After Mary Whitaker died in 1929, the house briefly belonged to J. W., who continued to host relatives and tenants while working at a barbershop on South Mangum.

In 1934, the home was purchased from NC Mutual by Lottie B. Lowe.  She and her husband James resided next door at 801 N. Elizabeth.  407 Gray remained in possession of their heirs until the mid-1980s.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1935.

Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 11.1.2002.

County property records show this house as having been constructed in 1943, although a 1937 Sanborn Fire Insurance map indicates a single-family structure at this location with roughly the same dimensions and alignment. Permits on file with the city and county show a significant amount of restoration work done in 2014 due to fire damage. 

Durham County Department of Tax Administration, 9.27.2017.

Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 11.1.2002. 

County property records show this house as having been constructed in 1940. As of 2017, the structure remained largely unchanged from when the above photo was taken. 

Photograph by Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 11.01.2002

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1959.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1945.

Photograph by Preservation Durham Survey volunteers, 10.18.2002.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1925.

Photograph by Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 10.18.2002.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1936.

Photograph by Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 10.18.2002.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1922.

According to county property records, this house was was constructed in 1922.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1943.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1945.

Preservation Durham survey volunteers, 11.01.2002.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1943, replacing a previous single-family dwelling on this lot. City and county permit records indicate significant renovations to the property in 2017. 

Durham County Department of Tax Administration, 9.27.2017.

According to county property records, this house was constructed in 1943. Sometime between when the above photo was taken and 2007 (when the current city/county permit database was established) the home's exterior was altered to enclose the southern half of the porch.