John C. and Bettie R. Dailey House

08.28.11

John C. Dailey House.

Substantial 2 story, pyramidal-roofCraftsman/Colonial Revival style house with pedimented cross gables, plain siding, 1-over-1 sash windows, original glazed front door with 1 sidelight, wraparound porch with granite Craftsman posts, and a granite foundation.

1925 CD: J. C. Dailey occupant. Dailey operated a grocery on Ninth St.

(The information below in italics is from the Historic Preservation Society of Durham Plaque Application for the John C. and Bettie R. Dailey House)

The Dailey House was built in 1913. It and the other houses built on the corners of the intersection of Carolina and Englewood Avenue were the first houses erected on Englewood west of Broad Street and are, consequently, among the oldest houses in the Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood. The Dailey House, like its neighbor across the street, was built as a speculative venture. Its builder, Clem Gurley, was a real estate salesman and speculator who appears to have built the house with the intention of living in it only a brief while before selling it. 

The house is a large, modified foursquare in the colonial revival style. The front porch is deep and wraps around to the east side of the house. It is supported in trabeat fashion by four craftsman pier-and-pylon columns with very long spans between them. The piers and foundation are dressed with the irregular rustic granite blocks which were popular in better built homes in the 1910s. The wooden pylon bases and tops are decorated with ogee moldings. The front door is glass and there is there is a wide matching sidelight to the east. The house is sided with narrow claps. The one-over-one windows are symmetrically arranged in relation to one another, but are not evenly spaced on the façade of the house. This is not unusual for late Victorian and later foursquare homes. The windows are simply framed. 

The roof is pyramidal, but broken by pediments and the hipped extension to the rear. The deep eaves are boxed. All of these elements are original. Indeed, the house is very little modified inside or out which is a testament to the quality of its construction and the durability of the foursquare plan. The front-facing pediment is offset to the east and not centered over the front windows or doorway. It is arranged to balance the extension of the porch to the east and the result provides the house with an appearance of informality desirable in a middle class American home of the period. 

The roof was originally pierced by two large, multiple-flu interior chimneys. Today, the caps are simple. It is uncertain whether they were originally corbelled. It appears that the house was originally heated with coal-burning fireplaces. At a later time, an exterior chimney was added to the west side of the house. This chimney only serves the central heating system. It is faced with the wire-striated brick that was so popular during the 1920s and thus dates the upgrading of the heating system. 

The interior of the house has also been beautifully preserved. The living room or parlor also serves as the stair hall - one of many common arrangements in foursquare dwellings. The fireplace has a decorative tile surround and still has its original coal- burning hardware including its iron faceplate. The mantle is dark, clear pines and rises to enclose a beveled mirror and headboard-like cap. The woodwork belongs to the transitional period between late Victorian and more settled early 20th Century styles. The stair is decorated with molded box panels and the rail is supported by closely set square palings. 

During the Daileys' tenure, there were three out buildings on the property - a play house and two garages. Today, only one of the garage buildings remains. 

The house was purchased by John Cleveland Dailey and his wife, Bettie Roney Dailey in 1917. They paid $3,900, a considerable amount considering that a two-to-three bedroom bungalow cost less than $2,000 during the same period. From that time until 1971, the house belonged to the Dailey family. The Daileys were already prominent in West Durham before they purchased the house. They lived on Sixth Street before moving to Englewood Avenue and their original store fronted Main Street near its intersections with Broad and Iredell Streets. Later, John Dailey owned and operated two stores on Ninth Street selling groceries in one and general merchandise in the other. He was also vice president of West Durham Bank. Dailey was a relatively young man when he died in 1933. His son, John Calvin Dailey, took over the Ninth Street stores eventually turning one into a hardware store and the other into an appliance store. They operated until the late 1980s. John Calvin Dailey actually built the appliance store on the site of a two-story frame house which once dominated the center of the Ninth Street business district. Dailey moved the house to the rear of the property and used it for storage for a time. The building Dailey put up was called the "new store" by the family. 

In 1933, during the depths of the depression, the Dailey house was occupied by the elder Daileys, the Dailey's son, John Calvin Dailey, their daughter, Lucille Dailey, and John Dailey's nephew, Albert Forrest Dailey. It was probably at this time that a separate apartment was created on the rear portion of the second floor. By 1943, the house was occupied by Bettie Dailey, John Cleveland Dailey's widow, her son, John Calvin Dailey, his wife, Ruth Forlines Dailey, their son, John Calvin, Jr. (this Dailey family occupied the apartment), and Bettie Dailey's daughter, Ruth and her husband, Ralph Chesson. By this time, Albert Dailey had married and moved to Wilson Street. 

Ruth Forlines Dailey was the daughter of the owner of Forlines Grocery, a well- established business located in large building located at the intersection of Anderson and Erwin Roads. The building was leased to Forlines by Erwin Mill. It was demolished in the 1980s, but the Durham Architectural and Historical Inventory contains a note concerning it. The note about the Dailey House in the same volume incorrectly states that the house was built for the Dailey family. 

Later, Ms. Dailey occupied the house alone, however, the apartment was occupied by Wilma Stuart, a niece of the Glymphs and former resident of their home across the street. Ms. Stuart was a school teacher. For more information about her, please refer to the attached notes on the interview with Martha Riley. 
According to John Calvin Dailey, Jr., his grandmother, Bettie Roney Dailey lived in the house until just before her death in 1969. She is buried beside her husband in the Dailey family plot in section 1 of Maplewood cemetery. The Dailey heirs sold the house in 1971 and it passed through the hands of owners who resided in it only briefly before it was purchased by the applicants in 1978. 

This is an important house not only architecturally, but also because of the state of its preservation and because of its association with one of the principal families of West Durham. The Dailey House is located in the Watts-Hillandale National Register and Durham local historic districts.