Shipp-Cahow House

11.17.2006 (DC tax office)

(Below in italics is from the 1984 National Register listing; not verified for accuracy by this author.)

This late 1930s two-story brick Period House features a cross gable roof, multi-paned windows, a double-shouldered and stone-trimmed exterior end chimney and an entry beneath a small fanlight transom. Other features include broken pediment gables, a wall donner, and a one bay shed-roof porch upheld by grouped square posts with lattice infill.

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from the HPSD plaque application, dated February 3, 2023:

This property was purchased by Connie H. Shipp on March 25, 1918 for $1500.  Shipp owned C. H. Shipp Construction Company and lived next door to the property at 1104 Watts Street.  Shipp did not build on the property until 1936-37, at which time he hired George F. Hackney to design a house for the site and also transferred the property to his wife, Ada C. Shipp, on September 18, 1936.  This was the height of the Depression, and Shipp would have recognized the desirability of rental income.  Since he could build the house himself, he could keep the labor costs relatively low.

The original George Hackney blueprints and specifications for the house (Hackney commission 620—the 20th commission in 1936) are dated September 1936 and have been passed down and remain with the house.  George Hackney graduated from North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (now North Carolina State University) in 1927 with a degree in architectural engineering and moved to Durham following his graduation.  He began work as a draftsman for Fidelity Construction Company, which was located on 138 E. Chapel Hill Street and was owned by Frank J. Householder, who lived in Trinity Park at 1008 Urban Avenue.  Hackney himself lived in Trinity Park at 1002 Monmouth Avenue upon his move to Durham.  From employment at Fidelity Construction, Hackney moved to working as a draftsman for architect George Watts Carr, and when work slowed for Carr during the Depression, Carr supposedly helped Hackney get work with the construction taking place at Duke University at the time, ca. 1930.

By the time Connie Shipp hired Hackney to design the house at 1106 Watts in 1936, Hackney had owned his own practice located downtown Durham at 206-1/2 N Corcoran Street for a few years.  Around this same time, Hackney had designed and moved into his own home at 1012 Knox Street (then known as C Street), not far from the 1106 Watts Street site.  Several other homes along Knox and Demerius Streets in this area were all designed by Hackney and constructed during the mid to late 1930s and perhaps into the 1940s. [more work should be done to document all of these homes]

The house Hackney designed for the Shipps is a two-story brick structure in the English cottage style with elements of Colonial and Tudor revival. One enters the house from front steps onto a porch and through a Tudor style door beneath a fanlight set within a slightly projecting entrance gable.  Set slightly back and to the side is a larger front porch set below a shed roof.  This porch is accessed from another door along the side of the entry hall.  The entry hall, and stairwell, as well as the study on the north side of the house are all lined with random width pine paneling.  (This did not appear to me to be original to the house, but it is outlined in the specs, so indeed is original.). The paneling is painted today but would have been left unpainted when installed.  The floors of the house, besides those in the kitchen, breakfast rooms, and bathrooms, are all 2-1/4” white oak.  (Some of these floors are covered today.) The kitchen and breakfast rooms were built with pine flooring that was covered with linoleum.  The rear porch floor was best-grade heart pine.  All the exterior woodwork was yellow pine.  All the interior doors were two panel doors. Picture mould was specified in all rooms but the kitchen and bathrooms.  Double hung windows with screens were specified with an alternative of steel window sashes, which were ultimately chosen.  These original steel casement windows throughout the house are one of the home’s most beautiful features.

From the entry hall (shown on the plans as “stair hall”), doors lead to either the porch, the living room, the study, or the stair.  The living room is long and spacious, with a fireplace on the south wall. The living room leads into either a center hall (termed “passage” on the plans) or the dining room which is situated on the southeast corner of the house.  The dining room leads into the former breakfast room, which leads to the kitchen.  The wall between the kitchen and breakfast room have been taken down to open up the kitchen into one larger room.  The original back porch led off the rear of the kitchen.  It had been turned into a sun room by a previous owner, and the current owners returned it to function as a screen porch, expanding its footprint toward the east at the same time.

From the kitchen, one enters into the center hall (passage), which has doors to the bathroom, the study, the basement, and the living room.  The upstairs hall leads to a bathroom and the three bedrooms.  The master bedroom sits over the large living room, and the original dressing room was off the bedroom over the dining room.  The dressing room was turned into space for an expanded master bathroom, which can be accessed by both the master bedroom as well as the bedroom in the northeast corner of the upstairs.  All the bedrooms have ample closet space.  In fact, there are closets and storage spaces throughout the house, many of which are lined with cedar.   There is also a wonderful clothes chute, with doors in the upstairs hall and the breakfast room, and which empties out into a large wooden bin in the basement.

The basement formerly contained a maid’s room, a bathroom, a furnace room, and a coal room, in addition to extra space.  The current owners removed the maid’s room to open up the space and have created two studio areas in the large area.  One is a jewelry studio and the other is a painting studio.  Much of the original bathroom remains intact.

When the house was completed in 1937, the Shipps rented the house out, first for about a year to Andrew Turnbull, a radiologist at Watts Hospital, and next for two years to Dr. Thomas H. Byrnes, a pathologist at Watts Hospital.  From 1941-1944 Duke Law Professor Douglass J. Poteat, his wife Mary, and their children lived in the house.  From 1945 until 1960 Rev. E. Kelsey Regen, his wife Jocelyn Watson Regen, and their children Jon W. Regen and Margot A. Regen lived in the house.  Rev. Regen was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Durham during these years, and the church paid the rental and utility expenses.

In the fall of 1960 Rev. Regen was transferred to the First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, leaving the house at 1106 vacant. Connie Shipp had died in early 1960, and in early 1961 his wife Ada Shipp died as well.  Therefore, with no tenant and the passing of their parents, the three Shipp daughters sold the house in the spring of 1962 to Clark R. Cahow and his wife Patricia.  Clark Cahow was a Duke graduate and had returned to Durham to serve as the associate registrar at Duke University.  He wore many hats during his decades at Duke, from registrar to director of admissions to assistant provost to history professor to the Director of Canadian Studies.  Clark and Pat Cahow raised their daughter Lee Cahow, born in 1954, at 1106 Watts.  Pat died in 1994, and Clark sold the house in 1997 to Lawrence Spann and his wife Elizabeth Robinson Spann.  Lawrence Spann was a Physician Assistant at Duke University Medical Center, and Elizabeth Spann was a nurse and administrator at Duke University Medical Center.  They lived in the house for three years and sold it in 2000 to Lara K. Campagna and her husband David M. Coniglio.  David Coniglio taught Physician Assistant practice at Duke; Lara Campagna was a Physician Assistant herself.  They lived in the house for 10 years and sold it in 2010 to the current owners, Pam and Jack Swinney.