35.9956378, -78.9010162

One of the buildings demolished along the north side of Main Street to make way for the towering new One City Center - read more about the evolution of this lot on the page for the Brodie Duke Building which stood at 118 W. Main before the catastrophic 1914 fire.
Stores housed in this building included Van Straaten's clothing store in the postwar years.

(Courtesy Durham County Library)
Owners Harry and Julia Van Straaten had a house in Hope Valley built in the mid-1950s.


03.02.2015 (Gary Kueber)
The developers of the 'City Center' tower built a brand new replica of this storefront in front of the continuous steel and concrete structure behind the former 122, 120, and 118 West Main Sts. I'm honestly not sure how to feel about that. I guess, architecturally, it's nice to have something with more human-scale detail than the rest of the new construction, but I wouldn't call it historic preservation.
08.04.2021 (Gary Kueber)
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