Tobacco Prizery

06.07.08 609 Foster Street was built in 1938 as a tobacco prizery and warehouse for the RJ Reynolds Company. Presumably, given the size of the Durham auction market, Reynolds wanted a presence convenient to the auction warehouses to press and store tobacco for shipping to their factories. 1937 plat. Note the reference to the "Big Bull Warehouse"...

The northernmost portion of McMannen Street transitioned from residential to commercial use early on - certainly by the late 1800s. This included the Peerless Flour / Austin-Heaton company and the Kramer tobacco prizery.

202-204 North Corcoran Street was likely built as early as the 1880s as a tobacco prizery - it may have been remodeled to match Hackney Block cornice line - or vice-versa. In 1888, the building housed the JS Lockhart tobacco warehouse. By 1898, the building housed the Mallory Cheroot Company, which had previously been located in a smaller building...