Carlton-Spangler House

From the 2007 Preservation Durham plaque application compiled by Heather Slane (then of Trinity Design/Build, now of hmwPreservation):

Based on architectural evidence, the house at 519 Holloway Street was likely constructed between 1890 and 1900 by then owner, J. H. Gilbert.  Gilbert purchased two parcels of land from M. F. May and Martha J. May in 1882 and 1888 and likely constructed at least three houses on the street including 519, 523, and 527 Holloway.  (The house at 527 is a near mirror image of 523 Holloway, but retains its original porch.)  Without early Sanborn maps of the 500 block of Holloway Street or the earliest city directories it is nearly impossible to date the house exactly or to know its earliest residents.  However, Gilbert is listed as a carpenter in the 1880 census, so it is likely that he constructed the houses himself.

Gilbert never lived in the house at 519 Holloway; he is listed at 415 Holloway Street before his death in 1908 and his widow, Susan, continued to live at 415 after his death.  In 1912, Susan sold the properties on Holloway Street to Robert M. Jones.  The house appears to have been operated as a rental property by Robert M. Jones who, according to the National Register nomination for the Holloway Street Historic District, constructed his own residence at 521 Holloway Street in the early years of the century.  The 1919-20 city directory lists C. J. Markham as the resident.  Though the initials are reversed, this may have been the same J. C. Markham who, together with Jones owned and operated the Markham & Jones Company, a grocery company.

Jones’s health had begun to fail by the second decade of the twentieth century.  His obituary states that he sought relief from his ailments in Hot Springs, Arkansas three years before his death in 1922.  In 1919, Jones sold the house to Alonzo P. Carlton, secretary of Weatherspoon-Council Co. Inc.  Carlton and his wife, Carrie Boone Carlton, moved into the house shortly thereafter and lived there with their four sons, Eugene, Herbert, Percy, and Alfred.  During this time, Carlton formed his own business, Carlton Insurance & Realty Co.

The Carltons sold the house in 1938 to Oliver G. and Evangeline F. Spangler.  The Spangler family moved from Cleveland County to Durham sometime after the birth of their daughter 1934.  Oliver was a jewelry store employee in Cleveland County and was employed with the Piedmont Mercantile Co. in Durham.  By 1941, the city directory lists Frederick T. Baker as an additional resident of the house.  It is possible that Baker was simply a boarder with the Spanglers; however, it is more likely that the house had been divided into multiple units because in 1951, Ernest C. & Artis W. Gregory are listed along with the Spanglers in the directory.  By 1956, the Spanglers are no longer listed at 519 Holloway.  Oliver passed away in 1952, leaving his widow, “Vangie” who may have remained in the house, but was not listed in the directories.  By 1964, Vangie had remarried and sold the property to James K. and Beatrice T. Weaver.

The property was owned by nearly a dozen different parties between 1964 and 2005 when it was acquired by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.  When occupied, the house was always a rental property with tenants in up to three separate apartments.  The property remains an investment property today, but has been carefully restored.

That restoration - along with the above-quoted plaque application that dubbed this the Carlton-Spangler House - was carried out in 2005-2007 under the ownership of Faye Calhoun & Tommy Lee Broadwater.

             Photo by Pam Lappegard circa 2025

(From the Preservation Durham 2025 Home Tour Program)

The Carton-Spangler House, a Queen Anne foursquare in the Holloway Street Historic District, was built around 1911 or 1912. Researching its history has been an adventure, with updated findings since it first received its plaque. Originally numbered 417 Holloway, the house first appears on the 1913 Sanborn Fire Insurance map—the earliest to cover this part of the street. Sanborn maps, created from 1867 to 1970, were used by insurance companies to assess fire risk and provide detailed information on building construction, size,and street layouts.

Since the 1913 Sanborn map was the first to show this area, additional sources were needed to confirm the construction date. City directories—early versions of telephone books—revealed that 417 Holloway appeared in the 1911–12 Durham Hill’s directory but was absent from the 1911 Seeman’s directory. This suggests the house was built between 1911 and 1912. Further supporting this, the house does not appear in the 1910 census, unlike others on this block that were documented in both the census and the 1913 Sanborn map.

Understanding the history of houses on this part of Holloway Street is complicated by the rapidly changing development pattern in the area at the turn of the century. In the 1880s, John H. Gilbert bought enough land from M. F. and Martha May to build three houses on this block. Gilbert and his family lived at what was then 415 Holloway, with his other houses and parcels serving as investment properties. The street was originally subdivided into large lots for Victorian-era homes that required space for animals and outbuildings. But, as time progressed, some of the original large lots were subdivided into smaller parcels and more houses were built. In the early twentieth century, the house numbers along Holloway were changed to re-establish an orderly sequence. John Gilbert died in 1908 and, in 1912, his wife Susan sold the property at 519 Holloway to Robert M. Jones. Jones was a prosperous merchant who operated a general store on Angier Avenue beyond the eastern limits of town. It’s possible the Gilbert’s started to build on the lot before selling to Jones, but more likely that the house was built in 1912 by Robert M. Jones. The Joneses’ tenure was relatively short.

Today, the house is named for its long-term owners: Alonzo P. and Carrie Carlton, who lived here from 1921 to 1938, and Oliver and Charlotte Evangeline Spangler, who owned it from 1938 to 1964. Alonzo “Lonnie” Carlton was active in the Democratic Party and served on the Durham County Board of Commissioners, eventually becoming its chairman. He worked in real estate and insurance, serving as an officer of Durham Realty & Insurance Company until the Great Depression. With the real estate market in distress, he opened his own firm, Durham Insurance Service Company. He and Carrie raised their four sons at 519 Holloway.

The Spanglers worked in retail sales. When they bought the house in 1938, they were in their thirties and both employed at Piedmont Mercantile, a clothing company—Charlotte as a saleslady and Oliver as the credit manager. The 1940 census reveals they had turned their home into a boarding house, taking in six lodgers, including three beauty operators, a proofreader at a printing company, a textile store proprietor, and a vending machine business owner. The Spanglers also raised two children, Shirley and Garland, on Holloway Street.

What a busy place the house must have been! By the late 1940s, Oliver had become a jewelry salesman, and the Spanglers had divided the house into three apartments, living in one and renting out the other two. In 1952, Oliver suffered a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital. The following year, tragedy struck again when the Spanglers’ 18-year-old daughter, Shirley, and her husband, Huey Major, were killed in a terrible car accident just two months after their wedding. In 1954, Charlotte married Jack Mincey, a widowed Orange County farmer, and left Holloway Street to live with him near Hillsborough. She kept the house as a rental property, and from 1954 until she sold it a decade later, its three apartments were occupied by a rotating group of one- and two-year tenants—including, interestingly, her son Garland, who lived in his childhood home in 1962.

By 1964, this downtown neighborhood had changed. The house at 519 Holloway went through many owners through the next forty years, including two banks. The house was divided into three or four small apartments throughout this period. In 2005, Durham preservationist Faye Calhoun and Tommy Lee Broadwater acquired the house from the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Dr. Calhoun and Mr. Broadwater sold the house to Christopher and Jessica Covington in 2012. They sold it to Michael Reinke in 2015. The current owners bought the house from Reinke in 2019 and, after extensive renovations, moved in two years later.

The house is an excellent example of the later, more restrained version of the Queen Anne Style in a foursquare form, with partial gables in the roof on the front and both sides and over the front porch, large multi-paned windows, and a paneled front door. On the east side is a two-story curved bay. During their possession of the house, Dr. Calhoun and Mr. Broadwater worked with Preservation Durham to make sure the house was preserved. They received Preservation Durham plaque #83 in 2007, and in 2008, they donated a preservation easement on the property to insure its interior and exterior character defining features would be preserved in perpetuity.

The house has a “side-hall plan” and tourgoers will enter the house into a foyer where a narrow staircase leads straight up to the second floor. This staircase and foyer were partially reconstructed by the current owners to remove an earlier side entrance created to accommodate upstairs apartments. An original installation of glass paned panels envelops a doorway to a back hall and a new, colorful, half bath was added under the stairs. A family heirloom bookcase fits perfectly against a slanted section of the wall. On the east side of the house are three large rooms with ten-foot ceilings. The heart pine floors in the two front rooms are original, as is the wainscoting in the dining room and kitchen. The front and center rooms share a chimney that has a fireplace on each side. Although the fireplaces have been closed off, the historic mantels remain as important decorative features.

All the rooms are painted with rich, deep colors and exhibit an eclectic collection of framed art works and other decorative pieces, making good use of built-in shelves in the front room. The center room, once the dining room, features windows in the curved bay that runs floor to ceiling on the east side. The current owners widened the doorway to the kitchen at the rear to create a more open space. The kitchen floor is new but designed to match the original floors in the other rooms. Modern kitchen appliances flank a large central island and the inside wall has an extensive array of cabinets. Under the large window opposite is a built-in seat with storage underneath. The back door opens onto a recently built screened-in porch that matches the historic character of the house and overlooks the neighborhood down the hill from the back of the house.

Upstairs are four large bedrooms arranged along a side hallway illuminated by two large windows over the stairwell. The hallway was formerly enclosed by a wall around the stairwell when the house accommodated multiple units. The current owners removed it, creating a light, airy space filled with artwork and accented by decorative wallpaper at the head of the stairs.

The bedrooms truly reflect the colorful and creative tastes of the current owners, with most of the mural painted by the current owner. The smallest bedroom at the rear of the house is now a child’s playroom, and next to it is a bedroom decorated for a little mermaid, painted with a high wainscoting of rolling turquoise blue waves and fanciful undersea creatures. The small fireplace closure is also decorated with tiny fish. Painted clouds float in the pink sky above the waves and complemented by the cloud-like Ikea chandelier. The bed is draped with pastel net curtains. This bedroom connects to the guest room through a closet, a connection probably made when the space was divided into apartments.

The guest bedroom over the dining room includes the large bay on the east side of the house. White drapery at the bay windows accents the dark maroon paint on the walls. The current owner decorated the fireplace here with painted faux tiles on the hearth.

On the other side of the chimney, the fireplace in the master bedroom is decorated with floral wallpaper. Here, dark green walls are accented with white bedding and white curtains at the three large windows. The large en-suite bathroom was once an apartment kitchen, and the master closet was a bathroom.

Ellen Cassilly Architects designed the remodel and the screened porch. Ken Gasch with TurnLight Partners did the large renovations and Christian Pikaart with Featherstone Building Company built the porch.

The Carlton-Spangler House is a beautiful example of how a historic home can evolve while keeping its charm and character intact. Its stewards have embraced the home’s rich past and protected elements while adapting it for the future, just as the neighborhood has grown and changed over time. Preservation Durham is truly grateful to the current owners for their thoughtful care and dedication to preserving this special piece of history.

This house was featured on the Preservation Durham 2025 Annual Home Tour: The Golden Anniversary