Masonry

John O'daniel Hosiery Mill / Farmers' Exchange

Scanned from 1924 Durham City of Industry book. Another of my favorite buildings in Durham, the John O'Daniel Hosiery Mill building, was built at 801 Gilbert St. in the late 1910s as the Paragon Hosiery Mill. It changed names rather quickly thereafter to become the Bowling-Emory Knitting Mill before being acquired in 1919 by Julian S. Carr as a...

410 Watts Street / Trinity Park

410 Watts St. (Courtesy Adrienne Baroff) The house at 410 Watts St. was built in 1906 for James B. Warren, who is listed variably as a "manager" at 107 1/2 East Main St. later as vice president of Merchants Bank with an office at the same address. There are various JB Warrens in the city directories prior to that date who are listed only as living...

James A. and Irene B. Smith House

1417 Acadia Street, 2011 (Courtesy Alex Maness) The J. A. Smith House, 1931 1417 Acadia Street Among the last houses built in Duke Park before the crushing weight of the Great Depression halted nearly all construction, the J. A. Smith House is nevertheless an outstanding example of the Tudor or gothic revival style so popular in the Duke Park...

217 Hood St

Looking east, 1981. (Courtesy Robby Delius) I've always had a particular affection for the 1920s-era, Colonial Revival apartment building on Hood St. Although as late as the 1980s, above, there was an adjacent apartment building as well, for the time that I've known the building, it has stood alone amidst the warehouses. I used to wonder what in...

417-419 North Mangum

The residential portion of Mangum still extended south into the 400 block of Mangum when this picture was taken in the early 1920s. The houses are variably visible past the gas station, looking northwest from the intersection of North Mangum and East Chapel Hill St. With ~10 years, the commercial expansion of downtown had claimed these residences with a produce market and a (used) car dealership.

212 North Corcoran St.

Durham Morning Herald clipping from September 10, 1916 (online via NCLive). J. T. Christian had this building constructed in 1916 as a new home for his printing company, which had previously operated out of the Herald building on Market Street. The above image was part of a two-page spread Christian took out in the Morning Heral to promote the...

The Geer Building

The northeast corner of Main and Corcoran Street has seen its share of building drama. For much of the 20th century, it was the location of one of the buildings on my Top Five list of How-Could-They-Have-Torn-That-Down buidings in Durham: the Geer building.

118 W. Main St.

One of the buildings demolished along the north side of Main Street to make way for the towering new One City Center - read more about the evolution of this lot on the page for the Brodie Duke Building which stood at 118 W. Main before the catastrophic 1914 fire. Stores housed in this building included Van Straaten's clothing store in the postwar...

120 West Main Street

The two buildings at 120 and 122 West Main St., immediately to the east of the Geer Building, were constructed in the late 1910s, replacing earlier buildings that had been destroyed by the fire of 1914. Above, a picture of the north side of the 100 block of West Main St. looking northeast. It was taken a few years after the rebuilding of the block...

413 East Chapel Hill St.

(Courtesy Duke Archives) The 400 block of East Chapel Hill Street was primarily transformed from a residential into a commercial street in the 1920s. The above picture shows 401, 405, 407, and 415 had been built by 1924. Looking east down East Chapel Hill, 1927 (Courtesy Durham County Library) By the 1940s, the block was built out. Looking east...