Cauthen House

1981 (Old North Durham Architecture Slides, Durham County Library)

(Below in italics is from the 1985 North Durham National Register listing; not verified for accuracy by this author.)

A large one and one half story bungalow with side facing gabled roof continuing unbroken over porch in classic bungalow fashion.
Centrally located shed roof dormer, bungalow columns on stone piers. Wood shingle siding contributes greatly to character.

1922: was home to the Cauthen family. Godfrey B. Cauthen was a cashier for the Southern Air Line Railroad; Arista B. Cauthen was an auditor for the Fidelity Bank

(The information below in italics is from the Preservation Durham Plaque Application for the Cauthen House)

The house at 313 East Trinity Avenue was built in 1920 to be the home of Arista Bradford Cauthen, his wife Ethel Regina Crow Cauthen, and their sons, Godfrey and Carl. A. B. Cauthen was born on June 15, 1878, in South Carolina. To his family and friends he was known as "Brad." The house was home to the Cauthen family for nearly fifty years. 

This large, end-gable, shingle-clad craftsman bungalow is in a remarkable condition of preservation. It possesses many high-style features associated with Craftsman Style dwellings. The street front is dominated by a fully engaged, very deep porch that wraps to the right. The porch roof extends in a deep overhang with exposed rafter tails. These are capped with fascia. The porch roof is supported by box columns resting on rustic granite piers with copings made of a single pieced of granite. The foundation wall on the front of the house is also faced with rustic irregular granite. The mortar joints are raked in a bullnose. The foundation on the other three sides of the house is brick. 

The porch is reached by a broad shallow stair made of massive, evenly cut slabs of granite. The porch railing is not original. The front door is located in the center of the projecting bay. It is glazed and surrounded with a simple frame and surmounted by a transom with four lights. On either side of the door is a tripartite window made up of a large central sash window with light arranged in a fifteen-over-one pattern. Flanking the central window are narrower sash windows organized in a vertical six-over-one pattern. A similar window grouping is placed on the east side of the house looking onto the wraparound portion of the porch. In the roof above the front door there is a shed dormer with a deep overhanging roof. The front of the dormer is taken up with four sash windows. The interior brick chimneys projecting through the roof retain their original corbelled tops. 

The interior of the house is in near-original condition and displays remarkable high-style Craftsman details and original finishes. The plan is typical of bungalows. The front door opens in to a spacious living room. The ceiling in this room and all of the public rooms is box-coffered. The ceilings downstairs are ten-and-a-half feet high. The original plaster walls are paneled to three-quarter height. The paneling is topped with a ledger supported by keys. The doors, baseboards, and door and window frames are original and are stained dark brown and varnished as they were originally. The house retains its original sand-finished plaster work throughout. The formal rooms have top quality pine flooring cut on the quarter. The work and family spaces are also floored with pine but of a lesser grade. In the living room there is a large Craftsman style brick fireplace with hard-fired bricks in two tones. This fireplace, and all the fireplaces throughout the house, are built to burn coal as a means of supplemental heating. They have iron inserts and covers. The house originally possessed a convection coal-fired furnace. The original grate for the living area was located in the living room just in front of the door to the stair passage. The grate opening was covered with wood flooring when more modern heating was installed. 

To the left of the living room through glazed doors is a family parlor. The more modest fireplace in this room has a Craftsman Style wood surround and mantle. The firebox is faced with yellow tile. Above the fireplace are new electric sconces in positions that once held originals. This room might once have held furniture for family relaxation and entertainment such as book cases, a smoking stand, a Morris chair, an upright piano or Victrola and later, perhaps a radio. 

Beyond the living room is a large dining room. This room is lit by a four-part series of sash windows each with a with nine-over-one light pattern. The dining room fireplace has an elegant Craftsman mantelpiece with a perpendicular Gothic arch. The firebox is faced with green tiles. In the dining room, as in the other public rooms, the decorative woodwork is all original. 

Beyond the dining room is a space that may originally been a nook and butler's pantry. It served to join the kitchen to the dining room. At some point early in the history of the house this space appears to have been altered to make room for a half- bathroom. The kitchen is contained in a one-story wing on the rear of the house. The interior space is original although the cabinets are not. The chimney containing the flue for the original coal-burning cook-stove is still in place. Beyond the kitchen is a porch space that once held the icebox. 

On the west side of the house, backing up to the family parlor, is the downstairs or "parlor" bedroom. The mantel in this room is more modest than those in the public rooms of the house. The shelf is held up by cabriole supports more typical of Victorian transitional houses a decade earlier. The firebox is faced with white tiles. The closet door in this room and in all the rooms in the private parts of the house are six-panel doors. The door frame is surmounted by an entablature. This type of casework is common in Southern houses built before 1925 when ceilings were higher and central heating was not fully accepted. Doors in the north wall of this room provide access to a bathroom that also opens into the stair passage and another space the purpose of which is not entirely clear. This portion of the house appears to have been reworked in the past. It is possible that the entire space was originally a bathroom or divided into a full bathroom and a half-bath. 

The staircase in the stair passage is entirely original and retains its original finishes. The rail is supported by an interesting balustrade made of five palings on each tread. The palings are a full inch in section and the spaces between the palings are also an inch. At each riser the interval is wider. The effect is like a vertical musical register. At the bottom, the balustrade is supported by a tall Craftsman Style newel with a simple cap-and-strap decorative top. Because of the high ceilings downstairs, the staircase rises fourteen steps to a landing then turns left against itself to ascend another four steps. A pair of tall six-over-one sash windows lights the staircase and the passages above and below. 

Upstairs there are two large bedrooms - one in each of the end gables. Each bedroom is lit by a run of three six-over-one sash widows. There are no fireplaces upstairs but in each bedroom the walls show ghosts where nipples for coal stove connections to the chimneys have been plastered over. Originally there were no ducts to provide heat from the basement furnace to the rooms upstairs. The crown moldings here and may not be original. The ceilings in these bedrooms are considerably lower than in the rooms downstairs. 

At the front of the house upstairs there is a fully finished "sewing room" in the shed dormer. These rooms are common in front-facing dormers and gables in end-gable bungalows. The corresponding gable or dormer to the rear is usually occupied by the stairway. This is the case with this house. These sewing rooms might actually have been used for sewing, but often as not they served as nurseries, children's playrooms, or simply lumber rooms. 

In the northwest corner of the upstairs is a space that is now a bathroom. Given its fenestration with two large sash windows (sharing the rearward shed dormer with the stairs), it is probable that this apace was originally a small bedroom, perhaps intended for a servant. 

Arista Bradford Cauthen was born on June 15, 1878. The Cauthens were from upcountry South Carolina. Census records for 1900 indicate that he married Ethel Regina Crow in 1898. In 1900, they were living in Yorkville, South Carolina, where he worked as a railway agent. They had one son, Godfrey, who was then one year old. By 1907, the Cauthens had moved to Durham and A. B. had taken a job as clerk to the Auditor of the Durham and Southern Railway. The 1910 census indicates that A. B. had become Chief Clerk and Freight officer for the line and that they family had grown to four with the birth of a second son, Carl, who was then just two years old. A. B. Cauthen continued to work for the railroad rising to the office of Auditor. In 1916, the family was living at 1207 Elizabeth Street.

Durham city directories indicate that by 1919, A. B. Cauthen had left the railroad and become Auditor for the Fidelity Bank. The Fidelity Bank was organized by the Dukes and George Washington Watts. By 1920, it had its principal offices in the Italian Renaissance-style Geer Building downtown and west and east branches in the mill- oriented business sections on Ninth and Driver Streets. Cauthen's new position seems to have stimulated a desire for a new residence. In January, 1920, Cauthen bought the lot at 313 east Trinity Avenue. The seller was John Lasater, the proprietor of City Wood and Coal and the Idle Hour Billiard Parlor. Cauthen had a stylish bungalow built on the lot and his family moved in later that year or in early 1921. 

The area was developed in the early years of the twentieth century. In the 1890s, the neighborhood was considerably north of the city and early homes tended to be smaller rental properties along Mangum Street and Roxboro Road. With the establishment of streetcar service, upper middle class subdivisions were created. The area was away from the smoke and grime of the industrial city center and the convenience of public transportation and the automobile made the area north of town attractive. The principal developer was Brodie L. Duke who platted the large sub-division containing East Trinity Avenue in the first decade of the new century. In addition to individual home owners, builders and speculators bought blocks of lots and sometimes reconfigured them (as happened with the subject lot). Large, comfortable homes were built in in the neighborhood in styles ranging from neoclassical revival to prairie, Tudor and craftsman. Older houses like the Geer house in the block east of 313 E. Trinity were moved from their original sites onto newly created lots. The neighborhood was well established when A. B. Cauthen had his home built. Its location justified the expenditure for higher-end materials such as the granite used on the façade. 

Through the prosperous 1920s, the Cauthen family consisted of Brad Cauthen, his wife Ethel, and their two sons, Godfrey and Carl. Godfrey Brevard Cauthen was twenty- one when the family moved to 313 East Trinity Avenue. He had attended Durham schools and graduated from Trinity College where he was an honors student and a French instructor in the Trinity Park School. (See Chanticleer, 1917 and 1918). His September, 1918 WWI draft card indicates that Godfrey was tall and possessed blue eyes and brown hair. He followed his father's footsteps and entered the accounting field. Upon graduating from Trinity he worked for a time as a cashier in the office of the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company and later in the insurance department of the First national Company. In 1924 he was a cashier at Cobb and Glass, an insurance firm in Durham that became Southern Fire Insurance Company. In July, 1927, Godfrey contacted pneumonia and died at home on Trinity Avenue. His death certificate indicates that his illness lasted seven days. A notice of his death published in the July 29, 1927 edition of the Raleigh News & Observer newspaper asserts that Godfrey Cauthen was a young man of "exceptional abilities" and that his death came as "shock to his many friends...." Godfrey is buried in the Cauthen plot in section 1, annex B of Maplewood Cemetery. 

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, A. B. Cauthen continued to work at the Fidelity Bank. His titles there alternate between assistant cashier and auditor. Cauthen died at 8:30 in the morning on April 13, 1939. His death certificate indicates that he died at home of a heart attack possibly caused by a coronary thrombosis - a blood clot. He was 60 years old. He is buried in Maplewood Cemetery. 

Following the death of A. B. Cauthen, his widow, Ethel, and their son Carl continued to make 313 East Trinity their home. Carl graduated from Durham High d School and went to work as a bookkeeper at Thomas and Howard Company, a wholesale grocer on Peabody Street in Durham. City directories indicate that he worked at Thomas and Howard in various capacities until the outbreak of World War Two. Carl Cauthen did not marry. According to his WWII draft card, he was 5'9" tall and weighed 157 lbs. Like his brother Godfrey, Carl's his eyes were blue and his hair was brown. He enlisted in the U. S. Army in March, 1942, and served during the war as a warrant officer. When the war ended, Carl returned to Durham and worked in real estate for a time. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he worked as bookkeeper for Griswold Insurance and Real Estate Company. He then went to work as bookkeeper for the Durham city garage, a position he held until his death. 

Ethel Cauthen died on September 7, 1962 at age 82. Her death certificate lists the cause as extreme circulation failure. She is buried in the Cauthen plot in Maplewood between her husband and her son Godfrey. Carl Cauthen lived at 313 East Trinity until his own death on February 8, 1969. He was 60 years old. He died of multiple myeloma at Watts Hospital. His death certificate indicates that he suffered with the disease for four years. He left no descendants or living Durham relatives. He is buried with his parents and his brother in the Cauthen family plot in Maplewood Cemetery. 

Following Carl Cauthen's death, the Trinity Avenue house became the subject of a special proceeding before the Clerk of Superior Court among Irby and Ruth Cauthen, Carl's uncle and aunt in South Carolina, and Nell Hatfield and others. The property was placed in the hands of commissioners and sold in April 1970 to Clyde E. and Alda Copley. Clyde Eugene Copley (1901-1977) and his wife Alda Pugh Copley (1901-1994) lived in the neighborhood on Edward Street. Clyde was a grocer who operated the neighborhood grocery store at 212 East Trinity Avenue. At different times this store was known as North Durham Grocery, Owens Grocery, and, ultimately, Copley's Grocery. 

The Copleys resided at 313 East Trinity Avenue until Clyde Copley's death in 1977. In August, 1978, Alda Copley sold the house to Richard and Elizabeth Smith. It is believed that the Smiths used the house as rental property. Due to restrictions preventing library access during the present Covid-19 pandemic, occupancy the house between 1963 and 1988 cannot be firmly established, but it is believed that the house was occupied by a succession of tenants. In 1988, the Smiths sold the house to the applicant, Rand Neyland, and his partner, David Rabiner. In 2011, Mr. Rabiner and his wife Donna Rabiner conveyed their undivided interest in the property to the applicant. During the tenure of the applicant and the Rabiners, the property has been occupied by rental tenants. 

The house at 313 East Trinity Avenue is listed as a contributing property in the North Durham-Duke Park National Register Historic District. For plaque purposes the house should be called the Cauthen House. It is simply identified as "House" in the National Register nomination.