Walter L. Totten House

08.28.11

W. L. Totten House.

Substantial brick bungalow with a side gable roof, interior and end chimney, a shed dormer, 6-over-1 and 9-over-1 paired windows, and a Craftsman front door with transom and sidelights. The hipped porch has Craftsman posts and railing and the hipped side porch has fluted columns.

1925 CD: W. L. Totten occupant. 

(The following information in italics is from the Historic Preservation Society of Durham Plaque Application for the Walter L. Totten House)

Walter Totten (July 8, 1895 - May 12, 1970) was the business manager of Alexander Motor Company on East Main Street when he had John Sally build this house for him in 1924. See Hill's Durham Directory, 1925. He appears to have been a young, ambitious, and reasonably successful businessman in the 1920s. Alexander Motor Co. was the Durham Ford dealership and with the price of the Model T dropping every year, business was good. See Robert H. Casey, The Model T: A Centennial History, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008. In addition to his job at the car dealership, Totten speculated in real estate. Records in the office of the Durham County Register of Deeds indicate that he purchased and sold lots throughout West Durham and that he became involved financially with George Watts Carr's New Hope Realty Company which was then involved in developing land in the Forest Hills area. 

Totten assembled the land at 2215 W. Club during 1923-24 by purchasing property from his immediate neighbor, John Kerr, and a slightly more remote neighbor, H. B. Talbert (1112 Alabama Avenue). The Totten and Kerr houses still share a driveway. Sometime later, Totten enlarged his property by purchasing more land from C. E. Buckner. 

At some point, Walter Totten married Callie Tilley. Their son, Walter, Jr., was born in 1926. See Maplewood Cemetery records, Walter L. Totten. Mrs. Totten was the bookkeeper at Alexander Motor Co. for a time. See Hill's Durham Directory, 1926. 

Not long after the great crash of 1929, the Tottens began to experience financial problems. By 1931, Totten no longer worked at Alexander Motor Company. He is listed as an insurance salesman in the city directory. He defaulted on his mortgage and the lender, Raleigh Real Estate and Trust Co., foreclosed. The Club Boulevard property was purchased on the courthouse steps in July of that year by the Prudential Insurance Company. In 1932, New Hope Realty was forced into receivership by order of the United State District Court. Totten defaulted on his obligations to the company and its creditors.

After the foreclosure, The Totten family continued to reside in the house until 1933. In that year, the city directory lists the residents in the house as Mr. and Mrs. Totten and two nurses. The Tottens moved to 2303 W. Club in 1934. By then, Totten was a clerk in Martin's Jewelry store. See Hill's Durham Directory, 1935. 
According to his obituary in the May 14, 1970 edition of the Durham Morning Herald, Totten wound up in the real estate business. He and his wife, Callie (April 24, 1900- June 16, 1986) are buried in Section 2 at Maplewood Cemetery. 

In the 1934 edition of the city directory, 2215 W. Club is listed as "vacant." 

In that year or perhaps during 1935, the Prudential Insurance Company either leased the property to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel V. Daniel or sold it to them on an installment basis. See Hill's Durham Directory, 1935. According to city directories and neighbors who remember him, Daniel was a tobacco buyer; however, the identity of his employer is unknown. The Daniels purchased the house from the Prudential in 1942. Mrs. Daniel (Annie M.) died sometime thereafter and Mr. Daniel then married Frances McKenzie, a laboratory technician at Watts Hospital. When Daniel died in the early 1970's, Frances resided in the house only briefly before it was sold by Daniel's estate to James W. and Bodie Vaupel in 1973 (interview with neighbor, Janie Johnson). No cemetery references, death notices or obituaries could be located for Samuel or Annie Daniel in Durham or surrounding counties. 

James Vaupel was an associate professor at the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs at Duke University from 1972-1985. During most of that time he and his wife, Bodie, resided at 2215 W. Club Boulevard. In 1984, the Vaupels sold the property to James T. and Helen Lever Compton, the applicants. Mr. Compton was a software developer first at Data General Corporation and later at EMC Corporation. He is now retired. Helen Compton was a mathematics instructor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. She, too, is now retired.

John Sally was Durham builder active in the first half of the 20th Century. Hilda Sally Coble was John Sally's daughter. In an interview made before her death in 2006, Mrs. Coble identified this house as one of many her father built in the neighborhood.

During their tenure, the Vaupels removed the wall dividing the two first-floor rooms on the east side of the house making one large room in their place. For a description of the house and modifications made by the current owners, please see the article on the house, "W. L. Totten House," The 12th Annual Old Durham Home Tour, Preservation Durham, 2008, pp.17-18.