Walter and Theo Whitted House

(The information below in italics is from the Preservation Durham Plaque Application for the Walter and Theo Whitted House)

The house at 1204 West Markham Avenue was built for Walter L. Witted and his wife, Theo Holleman Whitted, in 1920. It is perhaps the earliest Spanish Eclectic style house in Durham. 

Interest in Spanish Eclectic architecture in the United States was stimulated by the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal. The exposition's magnificent buildings were designed by Bertram Goodhue and drew upon rich Spanish colonial architectural precedents throughout Latin America. At the same time, American architects, long accustomed to studying in Paris, Vienna, and Rome, were diverted to neutral Spain as the First World War made travel to belligerent countries difficult or impossible. These architects brought back design ideas which pushed beyond the Mission Style which had dominated Spanish-influenced buildings in the United States in the years before the war. Major national magazines like The Ladies Home Journal soon began to feature plans for modest Spanish style homes which spread interest in Spanish architecture across the country. Influential residential design publications like those of the Architects' Small House Service Bureau and the William Radford Company promoted Spanish style houses throughout the 1920s. 

Spanish style houses were immensely popular in California and the growing cities of the American Southwest. Outside Florida, however, the style gained little traction in southern states where bungalow and colonial revival styles were dominant. There are very few Spanish Eclectic homes in Durham and of these, the house at 1204 W. Markham Avenue is the earliest and most significant. 

Walter Whitted was born on January 29, 1888. He was a Durham native and attended Durham schools. During the late 1910s and early 1920s he was a partner with his four brothers in a retail business located at 209 W. Main Street called Whitted's Sport Shop. Each of the brothers held an office in the store. George Whitted was president of the business and Gordon Whitted was its vice president. Walter served as secretary. 

In 1918, Walter Whitted married Theo Holleman. She was also a Durham native. She was born on July 12, 1890. She attended Durham schools and was a graduate of the Southern Conservatory of Music in Durham. According to her obituary in the Durham Sun (August 12, 1953), she attended Duke University, the University of Michigan, and the University of North Carolina. 

The Whitteds purchased the lot at 1204 W. Markham Avenue on August 1, 1919. At that time, this portion of Markham Avenue was known as A Street, having been laid out in in 1890 by the Consolidated Land and Improvement Company, a venture of Julian S. Carr and Richard Wright. Carr and Wright intended for the 286-acre development north of Trinity College to serve as a site for an industrial plant and its attendant worker housing. Their maps of the area show large lots reserved for factories. During the economic down-turn at the time, however, no factories were built, and the lots nearest the Trinity campus became attractive to middle class families associated with the college. 

The Consolidated numbered the streets running north and south with what is now Buchanan Boulevard designated as First Street. The east-west streets were given letter names. Originally, the property where the subject house now stands was a portion of two lots facing 2nd Street (now Lancaster Street). When Trinity College professor H. M. Ellis sold the property to the Whitteds, he reconfigured the two west-facing lots into two lots facing south, towards the college. This associated the property more closely with Trinity and made the location more desirable. 

Construction of the house at 1204 is attributed to Durham builder Tyson Crisp in the 1984 nomination of the Trinity Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places. The information supporting the attribution came from interviews. No other information supporting the attribution could be derived from currently available records and sources. The National Register nomination also identifies the house as an example of the Mission Style. This is incorrect under the current vocabulary of American architectural history. At the time the nomination was being prepared, it was common to refer to all Spanish-influenced American architecture of the early 20th Century as "Mission." The term "Mission" is now more properly reserved for houses and structures designed and built in the first decades of the century which display the influence of Spanish colonial mission churches - especially the curved and stepped gable parapet associated with the Alamo and other mission churches in Texas. Terminology describing other Spanish style buildings, especially those built after the California-Panama Exposition, has become more descriptive and finely divided. In addition to Mission, these buildings are now classified as Monterey Style, Pueblo Revival, and Spanish Eclectic according to their distinct architectural features. 

The Markham Avenue house is cited as an example of the Spanish Eclectic style in the first edition of Virginia and Lee McAlester's authoritative A Field Guide to American Houses (1984, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, p. 429). The house displays the asymmetrical plan, stuccoed walls, decorative roof tiles, arched window and door openings, and arcades typical of the style. The McAlesters' Field Guide also includes a similar house in St. Louis, Missouri. This tends to indicate that construction of the Markham Avenue house followed a stock plan or design. Then as now, house plans and designs were widely published in popular periodicals and catalogs. It was not unusual for customers to order construction drawings from national design firms or to simply take a magazine page illustrating the elevation and floor plan of the desired home to a local builder who would then adapt the house from the illustrations. What caused the Whitteds to select the Spanish Eclectic style plan for their new home is unknown, but the house has long been considered a Durham landmark for its design. 

In the early 1920s, the Whitted brothers sold the sport shop and pursued independent careers. Walter Whitted went to work in the business office at the newly formed Duke University. In the 1926 city directory, Whitted is shown as assistant to the treasurer of the university and A Street is first listed as College Road. In 1927, Whitted is listed as "bkpr Duke U" and the listing remained unchanged throughout the later 1920s and 30s. During the morning of June 14, 1939, Whitted suffered a heart attack and died at home. His death certificate lists coronary occlusion and overexertion as the causes of his demise. He was only 49. According to an article in the June 15 edition of the Durham Sun, Whitted had been in ill health for some time, but his condition was not considered serious. His sudden death was unexpected and came as a shock to the community, the paper reported. Whitted was popular with the university's administration and students. On June 15, his body was taken from his home to Duke Chapel where it lay in state for a time before his funeral in the chapel late that afternoon. The service was conducted by the Rev. H. C. Smith of Duke Memorial Methodist Church. Whitted is buried in section H, lot 639 at Maplewood Cemetery. This the Holleman plot. 

Theo Whitted continued to live at 1204 Markham Avenue until her death on August 11, 1953. The Whitteds had no children and Theo lived in the house alone. According to her obituary in the August 12, 1953 edition of the Durham Sun, Mrs. Whitted also died at home unexpectedly. The cause of death was reported to be a cerebral hemorrhage. She was musical. At various times during her life she sang in the Duke Chapel choir, the Duke Memorial Methodist Church choir, and the choir at First Presbyterian Church. Theo Whitted is buried with her husband in Maplewood Cemetery. 
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Within a few months following Theo Whitted's death, the administrator of her estate sold the house to Mr. and Mrs. Kirby Ray Lewis. Mr. Lewis and his wife, Mildred Grantham Lewis, first moved to Durham in 1927 at the request of his employer at the time, the Standard Oil Company. Later, Lewis owned and operated Lewis Oil Company in Durham, an oil distribution firm. He also owned and operated Lewis's Grocery on Newton Road. According to his obituary in the November 2, 1959 edition of the Durham Sun, Lewis died suddenly at 1204 W. Markham Avenue on November 1, 1959. The cause of death was a heart attack. Lewis was born on May 2, 1899. He was 60 years old when he died. After Kirby Lewis's death, his wife, Mildred, and son, Jack, lived in the Markham Avenue house until 1961. In that year, Mrs. Lewis sold the property and later made her home around the corner at 919 Lancaster Street. According to her obituary in the September 30, 1976 edition of the Durham Sun, Mrs. Lewis was born on January 8, 1906. She died in on September 29, 1976, at age 70. The Lewises are buried in lot 139, section 4, of the Maplewood Cemetery Annex. 

In 1961, the house at 1204 Markham Avenue was acquired by James Freeman and his wife, Elizabeth. They did not reside in the house, but used it as income property. Their tenant from 1961 until 1963 was Evelyn Dykes. Ms. Dykes was the receptionist at the Durham County Family Services office. In 1963, the Freemans conveyed the property into a trust. It was at this time it was divided into three separate apartments.

 
Between 1964 and 1967, the apartments were occupied by a succession of tenants, nearly all of whom were students or employees of Duke University. There were exceptions. William Andress, who lived in the house with his wife, Kay, in 1964 was in the United States Navy. Mary Parker, who lived in the house in 1965, was a nurse employed at Watts Hospital. Several of the Duke-related tenants of this period went on to successful careers. Luke T. Lee was a legal researcher at Duke when he lived in the house in 1965 and 1966. He later became a noted author on subjects relating international law. Gary Cox became a physician and professor at Duke's Department of Medicine. 

In 1967, the Freemans' trustees sold the Markham Avenue property to Duke University. From the time of purchase until Duke sold the property in 1978, the house continued to be used as a three-unit rental property. Unfortunately, during this period the surveyors for Hill's Durham Directory ceased to list the occupants of all the units at the house or list their occupations. The listed occupants, however, were Duke students. Harold Stull, who lived in the house in 1969, is now an information technologies business consultant in the Washington, D. C. area. William Tiga Tita, who also lived in the house in 1969, but is not listed in the city directory, is now a professor at North Eastern University in Boston. Kenneth Wilson, who lived in the house with his wife, Joanne, is now a doctor of internal medicine at Duke. In 1974, the listed tenant was Ned Stoughton. 

He is now a dermatologist in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1977 and 1978, the tenants included Will Hooker and Barry Jacobs. Hooker is a highly regarded horticulture professor at North Carolina State University. Barry Jacobs became a noted author, historian, and commentator on Atlantic Coast Conference basketball. He has served for many years on the Orange County, North Carolina, Board of County Commissioners. He is currently the board's chairman. 

1204 West Markham Avenue, February 1966 (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

During the night of February 12-13, 1969, about 25 members of the African American Society at Duke University gathered at the upstairs apartment at 1204 W. Markham Avenue to make final preparations for the takeover of the university's main administrative offices in the Allen Building at dawn on the following morning. At the time, Duke law student Charles Becton was the tenant of the apartment. The students brought with them the blankets and food they thought they would need to withstand a siege of the building. After the meeting, which was animated and noisy, some of the students slept in the apartment that night, while others went to their east campus dormitories. The takeover had been in the planning stages for a number of days and had been suggested by Dick Gregory and other speakers during Duke's first black cultural week. Early the next morning, the African-American students gathered again at 1204 Markham Avenue and loaded their gear and themselves into a U-Haul truck that had been rented to carry them to the Allen building on west campus, near the chapel. 

At about 7:50 a.m. on the morning of February 13, 1969, about 50 African American students occupied the Allen Building. Some had come in the truck, others walked to the building. They expelled the employees in the building and barricaded themselves inside. They contacted the Duke Chronicle and told it's editors that they would destroy the university's historical records if their demands were not met. These included the creation of an African-American studies program, an all-black dormitory on campus, a student body which would be 29% black by 1973, reinstatement of black students who had left school after the fall semester, a black advisor, a black student union, high school achievement as the sole criteria for the admission of black students, collective bargaining for non-academic university employees, an end of tokenism, an end of grading for black students, and amnesty for those involved in the takeover. Caught unaware, university officials set up ad hoc groups to respond to the crisis. 

Douglas Knight, president of the university, was in New York when the takeover began. He flew back to Durham to try to re-establish control. Under pressure from conservative trustees and alumni, Knight refused to negotiate and demanded that the students leave the building peacefully. He called in the police. As police were gathering, a crowd of several hundred white students sympathetic to the black students surrounded the Allen building and pledged to defend it. Conservative white students also flocked to the building where they displayed confederate flags and sang "Dixie." Above it all, someone played the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club television show on the chapel carillon. 

During the afternoon, African-American activists Howard Fuller and Ben Ruffin entered the Allen Building and convinced the students that they had made their point. They advised the students that a confrontation with the police formed up outside would lead to bloodshed. At about 5 p.m., the students evacuated the building through its windows just as Durham police in riot gear were approaching the building. The white students gathered outside the building did not disperse, however, and a melee ensued. The police fired tear gas and the students threw bricks and stones. In all, about 40 people, mostly students, were admitted to area emergency rooms. According to newspaper accounts, most of the injuries were minor; however, one police officer suffered a serious head wound. 

The university summarily suspended about 25 students believed to have been in the building. The students were charged with violating the university's pickets and protests policy. Following a hearing on March 19, 1969, the students were placed on probation. Although the administration did not immediately give in to the students' demands, the incident did awaken the university to the alienation black students felt on campus. Duke realized that it had failed to adequately prepare for integration. Incrementally, changes were made that reduced tensions. 

Several student leaders of the takeover finished their programs at Duke and went on to illustrious careers. Among these is Charles Becton. He became a noted civil rights litigator and later served as a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. He was Interim Chancellor of North Carolina Central University during 2012-2013 and now serves as Chancellor of Elizabeth City State University. Brenda Armstrong, who was among the students who gathered at 1204 Markham Avenue on the night before the takeover, later became a pediatric cardiologist and is a member of the Duke University medical faculty. 

For information concerning the Allen Building takeover, see the unpublished manuscript by Don Yanella entitled Race Relations at Duke University and the Allen Building Takeover and the Allen Building Takeover collection, 1969-2002. Both are maintained in the special collections at the Rubenstein Library at Duke University. Additional information concerning the role 1204 Markham Avenue played in the takeover is derived from interviews with Harold Stull and Charles Becton. Notes of these interviews are attached. 

In 1978, Duke University sold 1204 Markham Avenue to Jack R. Mitchell. Mitchell restored the house into a single-family home and made it his residence. According to Hill's Durham Directory, Mitchell was a commercial equipment salesman. In 1980, he sold the house to Mary Staples Bacon. Bacon was a regionally famous chef who specialized in vegetarian cuisine. In 1973, she opened a very successful restaurant called Somethyme in the 1100 block of Broad Street. She sold the restaurant 16 years later. In 1976, she bought a restaurant in Chapel Hill called Wildflower Kitchen and changed its name to Pyewacket. Bacon operated Pyewacket for 25 years. In 1982, Bacon opened another Durham restaurant, this one on Gregson Street, called Anotherthyme. She closed the restaurant in 2009. Each of Bacon's businesses developed a strong local following. 

In 1990, Bacon sold the Markham Avenue house to Dr. Lionel Michael Cobo and his wife, Virginia Cobo. Michael Cobo was an opthamologist. The Cobos resided in the house until Michael's death in Key West, Florida, on October 23, 1995, of complications from AIDS. See Cobo v. Raba, 125 N.C. 541, 495 S. E. 2d 362 (1998) and The Durham Herald-Sun, October 31, 1995. Cobo was 45 when he died. His wife, Ginny, and their son, James, continued to live in the property until they sold it to the applicants, Peter Lange and Lori Leachman, in April of 2005. 

Lori Leachman was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1958. Growing up, she lived throughout the South and the Northeast changing schools almost yearly as her father moved up the football coaching ladder. She earned her BA (1980) and Ph.D. (1987) in economics from the University of South Carolina. She is currently a Professor of the Practice in Economics at Duke University where she has been employed for the last 15 years after previously teaching at Winthrop, UNC-Charlotte, and Northern Arizona University. She is also an exhibited painter. Peter Lange was born in New York City and lived there through his high school years. He earned his BA from Oberlin College in 1967 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1975, both in political science. He taught at Harvard University from 1973 to 1981 and then came to Duke moving through the professorial ranks becoming a Full Professor of Political Science in 1989 and the Thomas A. Langford University Professor in 2010. He has been Provost at Duke since 1999, stepping down in July 2014 to return to the faculty. Lange held the post of provost at the university longer than any previous incumbent. 

From 1963 to the present, the house at 1204 W. Markham Avenue has undergone a series of significant changes. It was converted into three rental apartments in 1963. In this conversion, walls were erected dividing the first floor living area into a large unit to the east and a smaller unit to the west. The second floor space, which appears to have been two bedrooms and a bathroom originally, was converted into a one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and living room. The interior stair was blocked off and an iron exterior stair was hung on the west side of the house. In 1978, the house was returned to single-family use, but the original floor plan was not completely restored. Decorative dark wood banding on the original floors upstairs demonstrates that the room arrangement today differs somewhat from the original 1920s layout. Even after the house was returned to single family use, the kitchen and utility areas at the rear of the house have undergone one or more modernizations. 

Soon after the applicants purchased the house in 2005, they discovered that the stucco covering most of the exterior walls was in a condition of failure and that the wooden structure underneath the stucco was substantially deteriorated from the invasion of moisture and insects. The applicants undertook a major restoration of the house in two principal phases, one in 2006 and another in 2014. It was necessary to remove most of the original stucco, rebuild much of the supporting structure, and strengthen what remained. They also added a new penthouse on the upper level of the house and a new accessory garage and living structure to the east. The architect for the renovation, penthouse, and the accessory space was Mark Dixon, Peter Lange's son-in-law. Throughout these projects, the applicants were committed to the preservation of the historic architecture of the house and, although they added on to the house and used a modern exterior cladding to replace the failed materials, the house today retains its architectural and historical integrity. 

Because of the many changes made to the house over time, and because no plans for the original house seem to survive, it is difficult today to determine with certainty the location and purpose of all the original interior spaces. Despite the changes, the principal architectural elements of the interior remain. The main entry is arched and the stucco is rounded over at the corners creating the illusion of mass and solidity. The living room still has its remarkable original Spanish-style fireplace with its arched stone surround. The interior stair rail is rounded over plaster. On the first level, the den, living room, and dining room floors are oak. The floors in the other, less public spaces, are pine. Many interior doors are original and retain their elaborate brass hardware. In the northeast corner of the house, traces of the cabinetry in the nook that once joined the dining room with the original kitchen remain. The exterior loggia on the east side of the house retains its stucco arcade. It was originally open, but is now enclosed with screens. 

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The house is listed as a contributing structure in the Trinity National Register Historic District nomination and the preservation plan for the Trinity Heights Local Historic District. In 1994, the house was also designated a local historic landmark by the Durham City Council. In 1979, the Historic Preservation Society of Durham gave Jack Mitchell a preservation award for his restoration of the house. The applicants received a Golden leaf Award for their 2006 restoration of the house. 

The house is called the "W. L. Whitted House in the Durham Architectural and Historic Inventory (Roberts, Claudia, City of Durham and the Historic Preservation Society of Durham, 1982, p.188). It is called the "Whitted House" in the National Register nomination.
 

Sources:

Prepared by Tom Miller

Interview with Charles Becton July 18, 2014 

Charles Becton returned my call today. I told him about my project and that I had seen accounts of the Allen Building takeover in which students said that the night before the takeover they had met at an apartment behind Baldwin Auditorium, or a house on Markham Avenue, or at Charles Becton's house. Judge Becton told me that all three accounts are accurate because he lived in the upstairs apartment at 1204 Markham Avenue during the 1969 school year. The students met at his apartment on the night before the takeover and they loaded in to the U-Haul truck in front of the house the next day. 

Becton said that he entered law school at Duke in the 1966-1967 school year. During that first year his roommate was James Thatcher, an African American law student one year ahead of him. They lived in a house on the far side of town because white landlords and real estate agents would not rent black students an apartment near Duke. For the next year, and Hatcher were determined to live near Duke, but they ran into the same problem - no one would rent a place to black students. They even went to the Duke housing office and were told that the university had nothing for them near campus. A few weeks later, they went to the housing office again and again they were told the university had nothing for them. The people at the office didn't even check to see what was available. This time, however, Becton and Hatcher told the people in the housing office that they were law students and that they would not leave the office until Duke-owned housing near campus was located for them. Becton said that the office personnel were startled by this and they went into a huddle. They soon came back and offered them the upstairs apartment at 1204 Markham. 

In 1969, the large downstairs apartment was rented by foreign students including William Tiga Tita and another student whose surname was Odo. Tita is now a professor of business administration at Northeastern University in Boston, Becton said. 

Becton said the apartment was ideal. It was near campus and had a living room, bathroom, kitchen, and one bedroom. To enter, it was necessary to climb an iron stair mounted on the west side of the house. The apartment gave out onto two large flat roof terraces which were perfect for entertaining. He said that he and Hatcher hosted many parties for African- American and other students on the roof areas of the house. This made the house a natural gathering place for African American students at that time. 
Hatcher graduated from the law school in 1968. During the 1969 school year, Becton was the sole tenant in the upstairs unit. 

Becton told me that the African-American Society at Duke was a relatively new organization modeled on a similar group at the University of Tennessee. It was an undergraduate organization, but he was involved with them in their struggle against the university. He was not an officer in the organization. 
On the night before the Allen building takeover, about 20-25 members of the African- American Society met at his apartment and made final preparations for the Allen Building takeover the following morning. After the meeting, most of the students went back to their own dorms, but some slept in his apartment. Early the next morning, the U-Haul truck they had rented came to the street in front of the house and students, including him, piled in. The students who boarded the truck included not only those who stayed at his apartment, but also other students who gathered at the house that morning. 

He participated in the takeover of the Allen building and was there throughout the day. Among the students who were with him was his girlfriend, Brenda, whom he subsequently married. Brenda Becton was a Duke undergraduate. They had met earlier at Hope Valley Country Club, where both were picketing to protest the club's refusal to admit black members or guests. The picket was sparked by the decision of the Duke University Athletics Department to hold the football team's annual banquet at the club even though department officials knew the team's two black team members would not be admitted to the club. This issue, among others, demonstrated Duke's failure to perceive the alienation of black students.

Charles and Brenda Becton divide their time between homes in Elizabeth City and Durham.
 

Via telephone, Tom Miller 
Interview with Harold Stull July 16, 2014 

During the evening of July 16, Harold (Hal) Stull called me back. He confirmed that he was the tenant of the left hand first floor unit at 1204 Markham Avenue during his junior year at Duke. He was a physics major. He said the house was divided into three rental units. His unit was on the left hand side of the house as you faced it and the door to the unit was up a few steps on the left-hand side of the house. The door on the side there led into a kitchen-dining area and then there was a bathroom and a bedroom. The right-hand apartment was occupied by foreign students. It was larger. The third unit was upstairs. It was rented by an African-American male. I asked him if the tenant might have been Charles Becton who was a law student at the time. He said the name sounded familiar, but he was not sure. He said he never knew his neighbors well. He had a roommate - Lenny Greenberg. 

Hal confirmed that on the night before the Allen Building takeover, about 25 or more African-American students came to the apartment upstairs and had a meeting. He said they were very noisy which upset him because he had a very difficult physics class at 7:30 the next morning. This meant he had to get up really early to get over to the physics building on west campus. The students upstairs were animated and arguing. Late that night they left and things settled down. I asked if he was aware that a bunch of students spent the night at the apartment and that they got in the morning and loaded into a U-Haul truck to go over to the Allen Building. He said he was totally unaware of that, but that he was probably long gone by the time they loaded the truck. To get to his 7:30 class he had to leave the house by 6:30 or so. He was on campus later on the 13th to see the students peacefully evacuate the Allen Building. Later in the day he did see the demonstration at the Allen Building. 

Hal lived in the house only that one year. He said it was in pretty good condition considering that it was full of students all the time. Each of the units had multiple students residing there. He said the yard was overgrown and the landscaping was not cared for. He graduated as a math major. His daughter went to Duke. I believe he said she graduated in 2001.