Dry Cleaners

210 May St / Gray Ave

210 Gray Avenue as Greater Harvest Pentecostal Holy Bible Church of God, September 2017 (Durham County Tax Administration) This building was originally constructed in the mid-1920s as the "sanitary plant" for a laundry company, Sanitary Dry Cleaning, Inc - apparently an off-site facility for a business with a storefront at 114 North Church. A man...

705-707 North Mangum Street

Labor Temple, 1950s (Courtesy Herald-Sun) In April 1941, the heirs of Mary A. Green - longtime resident of a home at this address who had bought the land from A. M. Rigsbee in the 1880s - sold this parcel to trustees of the Plumbers & Steamfitters Union, Local 585. By the next year, along with more than two dozen other 'locals' affiliated through...

951-953 East Main St.

951-953 East Main, September 2007 951-953 was built in the mid-1920s; like many of the structures to its west, it replaced earlier frame mercantile structures. 1928 951 Brown Brothers and Holt 953 Edgemont Market 1933 953 Edgemont Market 1937 Vacant 1944 951: JE Gunter Hosiery Mill 953: Scott and Roberts dry cleaners 1952

Durham Knitting Mill / Royal Knights Of King David / 702-704 Fayetteville

Durham's first African American owned and operated textile operation, visited and praised by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, then home to the Royal Knights of King David fraternal order.

708 Fayetteville

Looking southwest at the 700 block of Fayetteville St., 1950s. (Courtesy The Herald Sun)

108-110 South Church Street

108-110 South Church St. was the Savoy Hotel, later the Royall Hotel, later the Durham Hotel There were two buildings on the west side of South Church St. 108-110 S. Church St. is to the left, with the single story portion at the rear. In 1923, Rex Dry Cleaning was located at 108, and Butler's Auto Service Station was located at 110 In 1934: Vacant...

800-806 North Mangum Street

looking east-northeast, 1952.

400-404 West Main Street

(Durham County Library) Built in the 1930s. 1939 Duke Homecoming Parade (Retrochrome.net) showing 400 W. Main as the "Advance Store" and "Durham Beauty Academy." I was a bit loath to believe that this shot was from as early as 1939, but I can't imagine the "Advance Store" would use a rising sun logo after the early 1940s. 01.28.58 01.28.58 (Photo...

2021 Angier Avenue

2021 Angier Avenue, 1980 2021 Angier Avenue used to be connected to the back of 314 South Driver Street as part of DW Brown cleaners, and later, Scott and Roberts cleaners. 2021 Angier Avenue, ~2000 I always loved this building, with its huge windows and stately entry. I thought it provided an amazing substrate for an adaptive reuse - possessing...

312-316 South Driver Street

312-316 South Driver, 1945 312-316 South Driver was built in the 1920s. By the early 1930s, it housed Ferguson Grocery at 312, DW Brown Dry Cleaners at 314, and the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) at 316. (314 had a wing that extended from the rear of the building to the south, fronting on Angier Avenue - 2021 Angier.) By the mid-1940s, 312 had become the East Durham Beauty Shop. It was closed by 1950.