Seth W. & Arlene T. Myatt House

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

Type B bungalow constructed 1926 with multiple, sometimes overlapping gables, notched brackets, and large tapered box posts on brick plinths. Seth Woodall Myatt had the house constructed within a year after J.B. Duke asked him to move from Canada, where he was working for the Duke-Price Power Company, to serve as purchasing agent in the acquisition of more than 7,500 acres for the new West Campus of Duke University. Upon completion of the real estate package, Mr. Myatt served as secretary-treasurer of the Duke Endowment until his retirement. The Myatts occupied the house until around 1970; two other parties have owned the property since then.

(The information below in italics is from the Preservation Durham Plaque Application for the Seth W. & Arlene T. Myatt House)

The house at 1016 Urban Avenue was built in 1923, likely by building contractor Charles Harvey Stone, who had  purchased the lot on which it sits in 1905. His own house at 1020 Urban Avenue, constructed sometime  between 1906-08, sits next door. Deeds show Stone selling the 1016 property to Helen Lyon Reams in May  1923, and then Helen and her husband Marion Reams selling the property to Helen’s sister Marie Lyon McCullen  and her husband Alpheus McCullen in June 1923. The 1923 Durham city directory lists Alpheus McCullen as  residing at 1014 Urban Avenue. This would have been the same house as the current 1016, as house numbers  changed often in early days when homes were being added to streets and there was no other house built along  this part of the north side of the 1000 block of Urban Avenue at this time. 

Alpheus McCullen’s occupation is listed in Durham directories and census records as a hardware salesman at W.  C. Lyon, a hardware store located in downtown Durham at the corner of Foster Street and Chapel Hill Streets  (the site of the current printing company Spee Dee Que). McCullen had married Lyon’s daughter Marie in 1917, and the couple had been living in the large Lyon family home on Club Boulevard since their marriage. Though  Stone originally sold the house to Marie Lyon McCullen’s sister, Helen Lyon Reams, in May 1923, it appears that  either the Reams changed their mind about wanting the house for themselves, or there was some other need for  the transaction to go from one sister to the other, as the McCullens purchased the home from the Reams only a  month later, in June 1923. 

Less than a year later, in April 1924, the McCullens sold 1016 Urban to Lawrence C. McCullen and his wife May.  The Lyons likely would have known the new owner, Lawrence C. Callahan, who was employed as an auto  mechanic at Grand Central Garage in downtown Durham, just across Chapel Hill Street from their hardware  store. Lawrence, his wife May, and their infant daughter Alice, had moved to Durham from Washington, D.C.  around 1921. They first appear in the 1922 Durham city directory at 314 Elizabeth Street. 
The Callahans lived at 1016 Urban Avenue for three years, from April 1924 until April 1927. It is unclear why  they sold the house, as they are listed at the Beverly Apartments at 107 Watts Street in 1927, another Durham  address in 1928, and then they return to Washington, D.C. the next year, where they reside for much of the rest  of their lives. 

In April 1927 Seth W. Myatt, his wife Arlene Tracy Myatt, and their young son Robert Woodall Myatt move to  1016 Urban Avenue, which will be the Myatt family home for the next 46 years. Seth Woodall Myatt was born to  N. G. Myatt and Mary B. Woodall Myatt in Wake County near Raleigh in 1888. He was one of at least 8 children,  and his parents appear to have separated quite early on, as both the 1900 and 1910 censuses show Mary B. Myatt  as head of household in Smithfield, NC. She is listed as married (as opposed to divorced or widowed), though  her husband seems to be living in Raleigh during all these years and until his death in 1921. He variously appears  in city directories as a grocer, a prison guard, a nurse at the state hospital, and he is listed on his death certificate  as an inmate.  

Seth does not appear to have let his lack of a father hold him back. Indeed, as the oldest male in the household,  he likely felt some obligation to make a good living. By 1910 he is living with his family in Smithfield, NC, and  working as a bookkeeper for a tobacco company. In 1911 he was living in Richmond and working as a clerk for  the American Tobacco Company. He is also listed in the Durham city directory in 1911 as working as a clerk for  the Duke Branch of the American Tobacco Company. On his 1917 draft registration card, he is living in Jersey  City, NJ, and working as an office clerk for the British American Tobacco Co. at 511 5th Avenue in New York City.  He served in the US Army during WWI, shipping out in October 1918 and arriving back to New York from  France in March 1919. 

Seth W. Myatt married Arlene Tracy in New York City on June 5, 1923. Three days later the couple moved to Isle  Maligne, Lake St. John, Quebec, where Seth would work for James B. Duke’s hydroelectric power venture with  Canadian paper pulp magnate Sir William Price. The Quebec Development Corporation, as it was initially known,  formed around 1922-23 to develop power at a point known a the Grand Discharge on the Saguenay River in  Quebec. The company was incorporated in Canada as the Duke-Price Power Company in 1924 and was sold in  1926 to the Aluminum Company of America. 

Following the sale, the Myatts returned to Durham where Seth served as a director of the Duke Construction  Company which oversaw the purchase of the land and the construction of buildings on Duke’s West Campus.  The Myatts had two children, Robert Woodall Myatt, born at Isle Maligne, Quebec, on March 23, 1925, and Ruth  Arlene Myatt, born in Durham on July 29, 1930. Seth Myatt spent the rest of his career working at Duke, in the  Endowment Office. He died in 1972, and his widow Arlene sold the house in 1973 to Peter and Helen Keese.  Peter Keese was an Episcopal priest. The Keeses sold the home in 1979 to Albert and Mary Elizabeth Eldridge.  Albert Eldridge also spent his career at Duke, teaching Foreign Relations and working in administration,  according to his obituary. The Eldridges sold the home to the Castors in 1995, and Mrs. Castor sold the home to the current owners in 2009 after her husband died in late 2007. The current owners are both medical  doctors at Duke University Medical Center.