2025 Annual Home Tour: The Golden Anniversary

The original cabinets and farmhouse sink were repurposed for a basement laundry. Bathrooms have been updated, with original porcelain fixtures complimented by period-appropriate faucets and tile. While adding central air-conditioning was a must, heat is still provided by the original steam radiators, now clad in custom covers. Upgrades to building systems have been surgical, preserving the original finishes and materials to the greatest extent possible. In the downstairs hall, the owner painstakingly restored Mrs. Carver’s nicotine-stained French wallpaper, hand painting a replacement for a panel that was beyond repair. 

In 2022, the spooky unfinished attic was converted to a light-filled multipurpose space, with costs mitigated by use of the Historic Tax Credit program. Original windows were restored, with cozy daybeds tucked into dormers. These are now the favored sleeping quarters of visiting grandchildren. Solid wood doors were repurposed from elsewhere in the house. Furnishings, light fixtures, and Herman Miller storage cabinets were all thrift shop finds, collected over several years for the project. Heart pine flooring was milled from reclaimed timbers salvaged from the American Tobacco Campus. As the Carr-Carver House nears its 100th anniversary, we celebrate the history of this remarkable home and its legacy of families, preservation, and community. We are grateful for the opportunity to share the home and its story on Preservation Durham’s Golden Anniversary.

The house is an excellent example of the later, more restrained version of the Queen Anne Style in a foursquare form, with partial gables in the roof on the front and both sides and over the front porch, large multi-paned windows, and a paneled front door. On the east side is a two-story curved bay. During their possession of the house, Dr. Calhoun and Mr. Broadwater worked with Preservation Durham to make sure the house was preserved. They received Preservation Durham plaque #83 in 2007, and in 2008, they donated a preservation easement on the property to insure its interior and exterior character defining features would be preserved in perpetuity.

 The second century of the house’s story almost began with a bang in 2006 when a new landlord decided to demolish the century-old building and redevelop the site. Word got out and very quickly a group of preservationists came to its rescue. They persuaded the landlord to forego demolition. Instead, they asked him to give up the house and allow them move it to a new site. He agreed. Former president of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association and Durham street historian John Schelp was one of those who intervened on behalf of the house. 

“With this kind of demolition, you aren’t just tearing down houses. It’s tearing the fabric of a community. Inside these houses are the stories of everyday lives....The people who lived in this house might not have been generals in wars or industrial barons, but they were every-day characters. It’s their stories that bring brick and frame to life.” (John Schelp)

Proudly standing in the middle of the block, the Manning House, also known as the Bull Durham House, is a fine, highly decorative example of late-nineteenth century Victorian Stick Style architecture in the North Durham–Duke Park National Register Historic District. Its prominent situation on the lot, capacious porch, elaborate woodwork and decorative paint scheme call it out as a house to be noticed. Perhaps this is why it was selected to be featured in the 1988 movie, Bull Durham, where it served as the home for the character Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon. It was the architectural flair and the charming original details that drew the current owners to the house, much more than its relative fame. They were drawn in by appreciating the craftsmanship and find themselves imagining the lives that were lived in the house.

The current owners are residential designers and builders in Durham with many preservation projects to their credit. This project, however, was special. As an artistic statement, the house represents “Black excellence, Black existence and Black joy.” Everything, from the materials to the colors and the artwork, was selected with intention and imbued with meaning. You’ll notice repeating themes of copper, green and ivory throughout. There was deep intention and thought behind the selection and curation of each of these colors and materials.

A focal point in the heart of the house, the dining room features a curated gallery of 32 photographs of local Black leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, and educators as a nod to Durham’s historic Black Wall Street and celebration of Black Durhamites continuing to shape history today. About the house, the owner shared, "In many ways, it educates and offers diversity to what is still a predominantly all-white neighborhood. It is giving us our flowers now." Robbin Gourley, a local artist, gifted her artwork, “The Vase with Flowers,” to the home after she learned about the concept of the dining room. The vivid colors set against the black drop-cloth perfectly complement the overall theme of the space. QR Codes are available to dig deeper into the stories and personalities of the local leaders that adorn the walls.

This grand Colonial Revival-Style house in the Morehead Hill Historic District was built in 1931 and retains a remarkable degree of historical integrity including its slate roof, original windows, and exterior wood siding. The stately house is made conspicuous by its location on a prominent elevated site well above street level. Steep stairs lead from Cobb Street up to a flagstone walkway. With its perfectly symmetrical, five-bay façade and one-story flanking wings, the house embodies the period when domestic architecture showed a sense of restraint and discipline of ornament when compared to buildings of the Victorian era. The gable end corbelledbrick chimneys bookending the two-story main block enhance the front elevation’s unadulterated balance. The bold and orderly massing is softened somewhat by a dentil cornice and the accentuated entrance. Here, a gabled portico surmounts the doorway and crowns a fanlight panel. Classical fluted pilasters frame a delicately molded arched door surround topped by a keystone.

The house is clad in long bricks in a modern running bond. A careful eye will note that some bricks are laid proud of their neighbors in a random fashion for texture. Earlier Tudor houses overtly reached for antiquity by using “clinkers” – bricks purposefully made with firing flaws and irregularities. Not here. Note also that the window openings are generous, not little slits with diamond panes. They retain their original steel casements. These were modern for the time. The shutters, like the front door, are simple vertical planks fixed with battens. The large openings for the screened porch at the right are spanned by heavy timbers set in with trapezoidal cuts. This is a signature Hackney device for his Tudor Style houses.

The current owners of the Dr. Hickman and Ethel Ray House often welcome people into their home much like the Rays did in the first half of the twentieth century. “We can’t imagine living in something new,” they say. The historic nature of the home gives them a sense of comfort, “It never feels lonely when any of us are home alone.” The historic plaque is often a topic of conversation among visitors, and people make note of it when they approach the house. The plaque demonstrates to the community that the Ray house, its structure, its past residents, and their stories, matter.

 Just off the busy thoroughfare University Drive in the Forest Hills Historic District sits a lovely street in the form of an oval named Hermitage Court. The Worth-Newsom House, built in 1924 at 1542, on the outer part of the oval, is identified by the bronze plaque to the left of its front door. At the top of the plaque appear the words, Historic Preservation Society of Durham. It is this organization, now known as Preservation Durham, that administers the program to recognize and honor the homes and homeowners that are Durham’s history, the places and people who have shaped Durham and given this city its unusual and special character.