Downtown South

Whitted Tobacco Company, 1895. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Digital Durham) James Young Whitted began tobacco manufacturing in 1859 in Hillsborough in partnership with James Webb; their company was appropriately named Webb & Whitted. The company ceased operations at the beginning of the Civil War and Whitted was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Confederate Army. He mustered out of the army in April 1863 due to wounds sustained at Antietam.

415 S. Roxboro, 1962 (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection) The east side of the 400 block of Pine Street / South Roxboro St. was primarily a residential street, developed in the 1880s, initially as part of a primarily Jewish community of eastern European cigarette-rollers working in the tobacco factories. 400 block of Pine St...

Venable Warehouse, looking east on East Pettigrew Street, likely 1920s-1930. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, Wyatt Dixon Collection) Much of the historical information in this post derives from the National Register nominations for the Venable buildings

What is now South Roxboro Street was initially Pine Street - one of a number of north-south streets south of the North Carolina Railroad line that did not connect to streets north of the tracks. The non-connecting and non-aligned Roxboro and Pine Streets, 1891. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Digital Durham) The residential...

122 Cora St. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection) The Venable Tobacco Company, which had built three bays of warehouse on the east side of South Roxboro St. / Pine Street in the first two decades of the 20th century, built two additional warehouse sections (which they labelled 4 and 5) on the west side of South Roxboro at...

408 South St. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection) 1891 Bird's Eye View of Durham, looking northwest. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Digital Durham) The 400 block of South Street, extending south to Proctor St., was developed early in Durham's history, along with the adjacent McMannen St. - part of the...

336 South St. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection) 1891 Bird's Eye View of Durham, looking northwest. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Digital Durham) South Street was developed early in Durham's history, along with the adjacent McMannen St. While the initial homes on both streets were quite similar in...

There was nothing particularly remarkable about Tatum Place, once called Pipe St. - a small one-block street with small unassuming housing that connected Matthews St. with South St. - except, for me, the contrast between the landscape then-and-now. 208 Tatum St. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

(Photo by Gary Kueber) --- Looking northwest across the area around Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co., 1891. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection / Digital Durham) I'd like to know how the short diagonal street extending southeast from Blackwell St. got the name "Red Cross Street", but I haven't found an explanation that suffices, other...

Looking southeast at the 'point' of Matthews St. and Blackwell St., 1964. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection) The terse writeup of the AB Morris cafe in 1951's "Durham and her People" says only that the cafe at 416 Blackwell St. "cater[ed] especially to the employees of the American Tobacco Company."