Site Statement

Sven,

Hey. I can't find your email addy so I'll just post here. Wanted to let you know I've been greatly enjoying your blog. I live in Durham and am a history museum curator, so naturally this is exciting to me. Keep it up.

Chris
(whighill-at-gmail-com)
(www.nchs.vox.com is my work podcast and google "whig hill" for my personal blog.)

Hi Sven -- I, too, cannot locate your contact info!

FYI in any case, I've added you to my blog roll and made an introduction, today.

http://archerpelican.typepad.com/tap/2006/11/endangered_durh.html

Sven,

Want to meet you, talk, collaborate, create and make trouble for the usual suspects. Please email me.

scott@centerstudioarchitecture.com

Scott Harmon

Sven,

AMAZING website! I, too, am outraged with all the destruction that is going on in Durham (since 147 was constructed)...when the place that needs the real cleanup is city hall!

Anyway, since I was unable to find your e-mail address, I just wanted to let you know of an old Jackson Street signpost that is front of the Forest History Society headquarters...just thought you'd find it interesting!

Thanks, and keep up the posting!

Anon
Thanks very much! I know the signpost you are talking about - very near my house. Helps fuels my fantasies about Jackson and Vickers still being connected/reconnecting someday, somehow.

GK

This is a great site. I really appreciate all the hard work that is going into it.

Do you know what is happening at 916 W. Trinity Ave? It's a three-story apartment building that was occupied until recently. It had clearly been neglected over the years, but it is a potentially handsome building well worth saving. People seemed to have been doing some work on it six months ago or so. Now it is boarded up with some of the upper floor windows left open. This is in the heart of Trinity Park and all the neighborhood seems interested in talking about is the height of some proposed condos on Lamond St.-- John email: bulldurhamnc@yahoo.com

John

Thanks so much for your appreciation. 916 W. Trinity is being converted to condos, which they are calling Ambassador House. You can find the sales link on www.fmrealty.com - just search the MLS listings for street name="trinity" in Durham. I don't know anything about their timetable, but typically these developers like to pre-sell as many as possible, which helps them get financing in place.

GK

I recently stumbled upon this blog and I find it to be a very positive contribution to the resurrection of Durham. The "then and now" photos are particularly enlightening, especially with the historical context added.

I'm very supportive of efforts like this when they are used with the intent to make those in power want to change their minds. Or in the case of a slumlord, shame them into changing their minds. As long as the right thing can be done without imposing upon the rights of a private landowner, it's a noble cause.

Things do get tricky with some private properties. If the properties are just ugly looking but sufficiently maintained for the functional purpose of renting out apartments, I don't think you can really impose your will upon the property owner. It's not until things get so run down that they are breaking housing laws that the force of the law should be applied to compel changes.

What has been going on in Durham is a real mixed bag. The stuff going on around Southpoint is just suburban sprawl. But some of the downtown renovations really bring a lot of great modern urban character to the town while preserving its rich history.

It would be nice if the new buildings going up were more in line with the buildings that are already here, and if sprawl could be better avoided than it has been.

Viridari

Thanks for your comments, and I'm glad you find the blog a positive contribution to the scene.

Re: property - I generally try to point out that property law is a bundle of rights and responsibilities, which basically boil down to : you have the right to do whatever you want with your land, right up to the point that it infringes upon my rights in some way. Operationalizing that is what keeps lawyers in business, as there are usually incentives for people to do the things that infringe on other (or they wouldn't do them.) Since it sounds like you are coming from a libertarian perspective, I would say that the appropriate role of government is to provide methods for re-integrating externalities into the market, and that's where I hope policy will go with our slumlords. While I'd like to think that shame would work (part of my thinking with starting this website) it really doesn't, unfortunately. If these owners can leave their properties a boarded-up derelicts for years, they are inherently devoid of shame to begin with. I still have some hope that it may influence their behavior to some degree if people in the community bug them about it, but not so far.

Thanks for stoppping by

GK

Thank you for this website. I stumbled upon it accidently but have so enjoyed reading your commentary and devouring each and every picture; e-mailing copies to my parents and family. As a Durham native I feel such an affinity for these buildings as most of my family photos have similar if not the same back drops; from Grandmother Gowan's house on Guthrie to Grandpa Waddell's home on Roxboro Street. I hate seeing them dissapear and I feel let down when I realize that I recognize less and less as I drive through downtown. Thank you again.
Rachel Lyndon Zamorski

Rachel

Thank you for your comments; your kind of feedback definitely makes my day. Feel free to email me through the 'about' link. If you have pictures that you'd like to share of Durham, I'd love to see them, and to hear your stories.

Thanks

GK

Hi there,

Just another fan of your insightful and compassionate site. I'm from Hillsborough and now live in Boston, but I'm intrigued by the idea of coming to Durham to live and get involved in the arts community. Keep up the good work!

Jessie

Visiting your site is a real high point of my daily routine. I am 52, and have lived in Durham my entire life.I am also an old car collector and enthusiast . Would love to see some of the old car dealerships--Uzzle Cadillac-Olds on Foster st. , Weeks Motors-Lincoln-Mercury on Geer St. Back in the 50's and early 60's, the new car models were hidden in the old Durham Bulls Park until showday! Thanks for all of your hard work-I truly appreciate it ! Barry

Barry

Thanks so much. I have some old car dealership pictures from downtown/East Main, I have few of the Foster/Geer area. I keep hoping to improve my collection before trying to catalog that area, but it doesn't appear that people had much motivation to shoot pictures there. I love the Geer St. building in particular.

GK

Hey we LOVE LOVE LOVE with blogspot! We are thinking of moving our office into downtown durham VERY VERY soon! I wasn't able to locate your contact info and would love for you to contact me at mjw0726@yahoo.com. I would like to ask about some specific photos - who took them - who has rights to them, etc. We want to contact whoever is necessary to be able to get some of these photos printed for decoration usage in our office!

Thanks so much!!!

Melissa mjw0726@yahoo.com

gary

love your site. do you have any more pictures of addison's playworld inside or outside,other than the one's already posted. also any of fowlers food store in the 1960's .. thanks again .

Anon

Thanks for your comment - I've added the one interior pic I have of Addison's to that post.

I have two pictures of Fowlers from the 1950s. They are unlabeled - I believe one is from Chapel Hill, and I think the other was the Durham store on Roxboro. Shoot me an email (under the About Me link) and I'll send it to you - maybe you can help me confirm before I post about it.

Thanks

GK

thank you for the addison playword photo of the girl at the counter. it was a great toy store. on the fowlers food store. send the photos to www.joenut@aol.com. i will respond back ... thanks

I'm in Iraq currently and stumbled across this site today while looking for some history on the Old Durham Athletic Park... This site really interests me as I was actually thinking of starting to research the history of many of Durhams old buildings out of curiostity myself when I get out This fall. (apparently Ya'll have already done this for me haha!) I havent lived in Durham since Joining the Army in 2004 but I will be moving back and would love to become involved in some way with a project like this. please let me know if there is anyway I can help.... I have family that goes back 5 generations in Durham (specifically Bahama/Orange Factory area) and they are a treasure trove of information and they would love to share it! I think sites like this are important so that folks can remember what Durham was and maybe things like this can instill a little sense of pride in a community that from what i can see when I'm there desperately needs to get some! Durham has a lot of great history and I think its awesome that Ya'll are finding it and documenting it.... keep it up, and come this fall I would love to help out.....
-Matt
matthewwwinstead@gmail.com

Sven/Gary,

I stumbled upon your site (through Bull City Rising) a few weeks ago, and it has disrupted my life terribly. I now find I can’t make it through my day without spending WAY too much time at Endangered Durham each evening. My wife calls it my “internet history porn” addiction.

But the amount of time I’m devoting to reading and viewing this blog is nothing compared to the amount of time you must be spending in archival research, in writing, in layout and posting. This is truly an achievement of incredible magnitude and a wonderful gift to our community. I am so impressed with Endangered Durham that I am telling everyone I know about it, including a few professors at Duke, where I teach. I’ve even posted a link on one of my class webpages.

I have lived in Durham for about a quarter century now (Duke Manor [!], then Walltown, now the far burbs), but you have given me a newer and fuller vision of the city: one that is multi-layered and historical, with the city as a living, dynamic entity, through which streams of both continuity and change constantly flow and intertwine, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad. (I knew of course of what happened to Hayti, but never until I read Endangered Durham did I realize the scope and audacity, how the very street grid was re-written.) I feel like I now understand the city so much better than I did before, and its very geography as I drive or walk now evokes history for me.

I also greatly appreciate your new urbanist approach to contemporary planning issues. By giving me that historical vision of things, you have made those contemporary issues more multi-dimensional as well.

I have wanted to leave specific comments to several posts, but found myself unable to comment through Blogger (on this or any site). I think the problem has been that I have been using Chrome instead of some more established browser, so I am now trying again with this general, somewhat gushy, comment. If this works, you can expect to see more comments from me now and then.

Again, thanks so much Gary for this incredible labor of love. This is documentary history at its best.

Kent

Hey Garry, Ive spent hours looking thorugh your site pages for about a week now. I truly appreciate the work and effort that goes into something like this. Its a great cause and fulfills a much needed void in Journalism that matters. I'd love to ask you a few questions for an article I'm working on for the Document Durham Project. Please Get back to me! my email is tmitchell2@elon.edu -- thanks a bunch.