1919 Cecil Street

Photograph taken by Cheri Szcodronski, National Register Historic Submission, January 2018

Recently renovated, this one-story, side-gabled Period Cottage is four bays wide and double-pile with a painted brick veneer with projecting header-course brick watertable and vinyl windows. A front-gabled bay on the facade has paired windows and an original four-light fanlight in the gable. To its left is a replacement door, exterior brick chimney, and single window, all sheltered by a two-bay-wide, shed-roofed porch on square columns. To its right is a single window. A single window each on the right (southeast) and left (northwest) elevations have been infilled with brick. County tax records date the house to 1948 and the earliest known occupants are Beecher Coward, a public school teacher and later a principal, and his wife, Narviar Coward, a librarian, in 1950.  They were the parents to three children.

On August 23, 1947, according to County Deed Records, Reverend J.J. Rives and his wife, Loretta J. Rives, sold the lot to Narviar Walker Coward.  The 1950 City Directory shows Beecher Coward  and Narviar Coward as owner and occupants of the house.  The Cowards and their children lived in the house until the late 1960s, when they built a new and larger home on South Roxboro Street.  

County records do not show when the Cowards sold this house.  The next transaction show that Paul Hawkins and his wife Savannah W. Hawkins, Alonzo P. Walker and his wife, Mildred Walker, Pecolia M. Walker and his wife, Daisy Walker sold the house to Lula M.W. Cathcart.  Ms. Cathcart lived in the house and sold it on January 10, 1991 to Valeria L. Lee.  Ms. Lee owned and lived in the house until July 3, 1917, when she sold it to Lorenzo Homes, LLC.

On January 22, 2018, Lorenzo Homes LLC sold the house to Michael Joseph Fox, who bought it as an investment rental property.

Below is a picture from the Durham County Property Records of the house prior to the completion of renovations taken in 2017.