John M. Martin House

10.30.11

John M. Martin House.

1-story, flat-roofed Spanish Mission style house features parapet walls, tiled hoods over the windows and a batten door. The exterior is stucco, with 6-over-6 sash windows flanked by 4-over-4 sashes. A front stone terrace features low stuccoed piers. A side chimney and an attached wood sided shed are on the north side. 1930 CD: John M. Martin, occupant, was an auditor with Durham & Southern RR.

(The information below in italics is from the Historic Preservation Society of Durham Plaque Application for the John M. Martin House)

This house was built in 1925-26 by an unknown builder. The house is unique in Watts Hospital-Hillandale as the sole residential representative of the Spanish Colonial style. It does not appear to have been specially designed in this style. Instead, it appears to be a bungalow modified by the builder to incorporate some of the principal Spanish Colonial design elements on the façade of the structure. These include a parapet façade wall, stucco cladding and front door made of vertical boards strengthened by rails. The symmetrical arrangement of the doors and windows and the absence of decorative forged ironwork are compromises with the style driven by the original bungalow form. 

The 20th Century Spanish Colonial style took several forms beginning with the Mission form at the turn of the century and ending with the more adobe inspired form which grew out of the Panama-California Exhibition in San Diego in 1915-16. This celebration of the opening of the Panama Canal stimulated a renewed interest in America's Spanish heritage and its territories and possessions once held by Spain. During the 1920s the style swept the country and briefly came to dominate residential development in the southwest and Florida. Ladies magazines were filled with examples and providers of catalog homes such as Sears and Aladdin began to offer homes in the Spanish style. The house at 1110 Alabama is clearly a response to this trend. The Spanish Colonial style was never as popular in the upper south as the eastern and Virginia inspired colonial revival styles, though examples do exist in Durham. 

According to Hill's Durham Directories, The first owner occupants of the house were John and Bessie Martin. Whether they bought the house as it is from a speculative builder or whether they had the house built according to their own taste cannot be determined.