People & Places

305 Dunstan Ave. – McKinley Barton House

This one-story, hip-roofed Minimal Traditional house is three bays wide and triple-pile with a gabled projection on the west elevation, flush with the façade, and a gabled rear ell with a shed-roofed screened porch beyond the ell. County tax records date the building to 1941; the earliest known occupant is McKinley Barton (factory worker) in 1945. According to a neighbor, his wife worked at the laundry at Duke University.

1320 Clarendon St. (6th St.) - McCauley House

1937 City Directory: Thomas H. and Nellie W. McCauley. Thomas is listed as a carpenter.

312 East Umstead Street - John M. Avery House / Harriet Tubman YWCA

John M. Avery House, 1922. From Milestones Along the Color Line This was the home of John M. Avery and his wife; Avery is listed in the 1923 city directory as "pres Acme Regalia Co. Vice-pres-sec North Carolina Mutual Co. and treas Bankers Fire Insurance." In 1938, the Harriet Tubman YWCA occupied the house. By 1955, the home was torn down, and the...

YWCA

Looking south/southeast from the north side of W. Chapel Hill St. (Courtesy Durham County Library) Copyright Sanborn Fire Insurance Company The Durham chapter of the YWCA was established in 1920 at 303 1/2 West Main St. (the Sparger Building,) upstairs from the Charles Department Store. Mrs. IF Hill was at the forefront of the drive to establish...

312 East Umstead Street - Harriet Tubman YWCA (Second)

(County Tax Record photo) Segregated from facilities serving Durham's white community, the Harriet Tubman YWCA was a major site of organizing for civil and women's rights activism. Built alongside the John M. Avery House, which it had used since relocating from its first address on Fayetteville Street in 1937, the Tubman Y's new building opened...

218 Morgan St. / YMCA

The buildings at 224-226 West Morgan St. were built sometime between 1913 and 1937, replacing earlier tobacco prizery buildings. 226 West Morgan was a plumbing supply wholesaler in 1937 - the use of 224 is not noted. The buildings were essentially unchanged in 1966. 226 West Morgan St. looking northeast from Morgan and Foster.

Trinity Avenue YMCA / Duke Diet Center

When William Erwin (Jr?) decided in 1955 to give a large parcel of land just north of the Pearl Mill (across West Trinity Avenue) to the YMCA so that they could built a 'modern facility' to replace the original YMCA downtown, there remained one earlier structure on the site - the (Pearl Mill) Lyceum. "Erwin Gives Land to YMCA - 08.08.55" (Courtesy...

YMCA - East Main St.

Looking southwest from Roxboro and East Main. The southwest corner of Roxoboro and East Main St. initially was the location of a home, although I don't know the original inhabitant. This house was still in place when the first courthouse was built immediately to its west. Looking southeast from East Main St., 1880s. The first county courthouse is...

1006 Fayetteville Street / C.C. Spaulding House

1006 Fayetteville, the CC Spaulding House, 1922. (Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection and scanned by Digital Durham.)

801 S. Alston Ave.

The history of South Alston Avenue deserves more attention than it has gotten to date; even this site seems to have looked past it about as quickly as the cars fly on NC-55. Though a north-south road through this area has deep roots and this section looks like it was incorporated into town limits by at least 1907, the east side of Alston around...