South Mangum Street

Looking east on East Proctor Street from South Mangum/McMannen St., mid-1960s (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper) East Proctor St. is a bit of a hard area to capture in by my usual way - these blocks would cut diagonally across the current freeway, and pictures of the street seem absent from the urban renewal records. So I offer up the one vista...

(Courtesy Durham Fire Department) Fire Station #4 was constructed in 1926 on the northeast corner of McMannen St (later South Mangum) and Cobb St. at a cost of $14,350. Sanborn Map, 1950, showing the fire station on the northeast corner of Cobb and McMannen. Fire Station #4, 1950s

Much like the western side of the 400-500 block of McMannen St., the eastern side developed with a first generation of ~1870s-1880s houses (most likely) of which many were supplanted by larger dwellings during the 1890s-1910s. Some of the earlier dwellings persisted on the east side into the 1960s 507 S. Mangum All of these houses were torn down by the city using federal urban renewal funds in the late 1960s.

The northernmost extent of McMannen Street (now South Mangum St.) featured a mixture of residential and industrial uses, including the large freight railroad depot between Vivian and Pettigrew Sts., the Austin Heaton/Peerless flour company, and, east of McMannen, along Pettigrew, a collection of very early residential structures. Above, the view...

The Sneed-Thomas building was constructed on the southeast corner of East Main St. and South Mangum St. in the 1890s. It housed the Sneed and Thomas drugstore, operated by Paul C. Sneed and Allen S. Thomas. Their building was described in the "Handbook of Durham" as "a large three-story pressed brick building with marble trimmings."

Kress Building, 1970s The John L. Markham Cash Store, located at the southwest corner of Main and Mangum Sts., was the first commercial brick structure in Durham, built sometime prior to 1881. (From "Durham: A Pictorial History" by Joel Kostyu) Looking southwest from Mangum and Main, 1890s. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina...