Woods Grocery, 703 W. Trinity Avenue

Why It’s Important:

The striking orange building just past the railroad tracks on Trinity Avenue was once a pivotal business for Brodie Duke’s Pearl Mill Village.  Built by local entrepreneur Joseph S. Woods and his wife, Lou Ella (Walker) Woods, in 1924, this grocery store with rooms for rent above served the district for decades until its conversion into an apartment house in the early 1960s.

The grocery is the only documented store to have served the district until development of a small commercial corridor accelerated on nearby Foster St. in the 1930s.  After the passing of her husband in 1934, Mrs. Woods, who lived around the corner, kept the grocery running until

Former Duke Park pool and boarded up bath house, 1/17/09. Courtesy of Open Durham.

Why It’s Important:
Neighborhood concern for park properties throughout Durham has brought these buildings to the 2012 list. Some of these structures include: the Duke Park Bathhouse, a 1930s Works Projects Administration project; the Forest Hills Park Clubhouse, designed by George Watts Carr, Sr in the 1920s; and the Lavender House in the Northgate Park neighborhood, home to the Trailside Museum in the 1940s which became the NC Museum of Life and Science. Other historic DPR properties include Leigh Farm, West Point on the Eno, Spruce Pine Lodge, and the City Armory.

Why it’s in Peril:
Durham is recognized statewide and beyond as a community rich in historic

Mill village of Morning Glory, courtesy of Open Durham

Why It’s Important:
The Golden Belt mill village extends from the east end of the factory complex to Holman Street and includes housing stock built in the early 1900s for Julian Shakespeare Carr’s Golden Belt Manufacturing Company. The blocks of similarly-detailed houses were listed to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and in 2011, residents petitioned the city to create a Local Historic District. In recent years, the homes’ uniform appearance is starting to evolve as owner-occupants make their mark.

In the last decade, millions of private and public dollars have poured into the area to revitalize the mill buildings and homes and to construct new developments bordering the village.

Why It’s Important:
The 300 block of South Driver is one of only a few intact early-twentieth-century retail blocks in outside of downtown Durham. This once-thriving commercial block anchored the eastern limits of the Durham Light & Traction trolley system as Ninth Street did to the west of town. Surrounding neighborhoods packed with families of mill workers and merchants could find in a single block the East Durham branch of Fidelity Bank (designed by Rose & Rose in 1921), the A&P Food Store, D.W. Brown Dry Cleaners, Ferguson Grocery, the East Durham Post Office, Lynette’s Restaurant, and Marion’s.

Why it’s in peril:

Like many neighborhood retail centers, the area declined throughout the latter part of the century with the loss of nearby manufacturing

Why It’s Important:
The Liberty Warehouse is the only surviving loose-leaf tobacco auction house in Durham. Constructed in two sections dating from 1938 and 1948, the massive, timber-framed structure features an expansive open-plan measuring 2.6 acres. It has a brick foundation with a low-pitched, front-gabled roof supported by large timber columns and has numerous skylights partially hidden by a stepped parapet. The auction warehouse filled an important niche in Durham’s tobacco culture; farmers would converge at the auction house, camping out there until their tobacco sold, and patronizing shops, banks, and cafes in the warehouse while they waited. Tobacco auctions ended in the 1980s and the building has been used for any number of purposes since then. Despite having undergone modifications

1957, courtesy of Open Durham

Why It’s Important:
In 1890, after engineering a merger with his three largest competitors, Brodie Duke began building his own rail line, arcing along the western and northern edges of town. This Durham Beltline completed a loop linking the newly formed American Tobacco Company facilities to each other and to both of the city’s regional railways. By the turn of the century, American Tobacco was producing and shipping 90% of the cigarettes sold in the United States, due in no small part to this rail infrastructure.

While the tracks forming the southern and eastern legs of the rail loop remain active, the Beltline – now owned by Norfolk Southern – lies dormant and abandoned. Relics are

Fendol Bevers Farmstead, 5713 Leesville Road

Why it’s important:
The Fendol Bevers Farm, straddling Leesville Road near Briar Creek, is a remarkable early farmstead that dates to about 1850. This early I-House has Greek Revival details, a stone foundation and chimneys, original windows with ornamented surrounds, and an intact interior. Early farm buildings surrounding it include a kitchen house, smoke house, and several tobacco barns and storage sheds. Fendol Bevers was Raleigh’s City Engineer and surveyed Wake County. His 1871 survey map helped establish the Durham County borders when it split from Wake County 10 years later. In 1895, after Bevers’ death, the house and farm were sold to J. Elmer Ross.

The Fendol Bevers Farm may be one of the

The Home Savings Bank Building, 01.30.69 (Courtesy Herald-Sun)

Durham’s best examples of Mid-Century Modern commercial design include the 1963 Jack Tar Motel, the 1968 Mutual Community Savings Bank, the 1960 Holiday Inn, and the 1966 North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Once seen as ‘futuristic’, many people now see these buildings as dated. However, they remain valuable pieces of the Bull City revitalization puzzle.

What’s Needed: The Mutual Community Savings Bank and the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Building remain in use as office space, with future plans for the Mutual Community Savings Bank to include a ground-floor restaurant or design firm. We hope that these buildings can be a stronghold for citizens to embrace the recent past. The Holiday

Designed by Milburn & Heister as a Freemasons Lodge in 1924, the building was acquired by Durham County during the Great Depression. It has been vacant since 1992, and deterioration of the roof has resulted in significant water damage, especially to the top floor. The Eligibility Building and the vacant site to its east were purchased in 2007 but the status of any renovation project remains uncertain.

What’s Needed: Preservation Durham supports the redevelopment of the building and infill development on the adjoining lot. Ideally, the development would encourage uses that re-engage the street level and re-open the once gracious storefronts. Until a full renovation can be completed, the building should be secured and stabilized, starting with repairs to the roof