FIRST PRESBYTERIAN

The First Presbyterian Church began when Dr. Richard Blacknall moved from ‘Red Mountain’ (Rougemont) to Durham in 1860 and persuaded Revs. James and Charles Phillips to come from Chapel Hill to hold sermons in the Trinity Methodist or First Baptist churches. His wife organized Sunday school classes in the First Baptist Church as well. The congregation was organized in 1871 during a meeting of the “Orange Prebytery” which met in the old Durham Academy building (no relation to the current school) on Chapel Hill St. to form a church composed of 11 members.

The church functioned for several more years without a structure of its own, until it was able to purchase a site at the corner of the Roxboro Road and Main St. in 1875 and construct a small frame church building.

Looking northeast ~1880 at the intersection of Roxboro and Main, as well as the Presbyterian Church and surrounding houses. Many of these simpler frame houses would later be replaced by more ornate structures. You can note the ornate E.J. Parrish House in the distance to the right side of the picture.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

George W. Watts (who funded the construction of Watts Hospital – twice) was an early member of the church congregation, and helped fund missionary trips to Cuba, Brazil, Korea, various parts of Africa, and other parts of the U.S.

By 1890, this structure was no longer adequate to hold the congregation, and new Gothic Revival church, with a 70 foot tower, was constructed on the same site to replace it, with the financial assistance of Mr. Watts.

Looking northeast, 1905.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

Looking northwest from E. Main St., 1905.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Looking west on East Main St., ~1900. First Presbyterian is on the right.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Looking northeast, 1910.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

In 1916, the church hired architects Milburn and Heister (Carolina Theatre, Union Station, etc.) – better known for their neoclassical designs – to design a new Gothic Revivial structure for them to replace the previous brick structure. The result was an impressive structure of contrasting brick and stone and deeply recessed stained glass across the front facade. In 1922, the church added a ‘church house’ adjoining the structure.

The church and church house in 1926, looking northwest.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

A partial view of the chruch from the air, looking northwest, 1924. The Eligibility building is to the left, the Malbourne Hotel directly across Roxboro, and the Afton Inn and other large residences along Roxboro are visible moving towards the top of frame.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

The congregation continued to grow throughout the 20th century.

First Presbyterian and the Public Library, visible during a parade on East Main St., looking northeast, 1940s.

As with the remainder of the downtown churches, the 1950s and 1960s were a difficult period, in which suburban migration changed the neighborhood considerably, and the natural base for the congregation. The surrounding residential neighborhood was demolished in the late 1960s by the City of Durham using urban renewal funds. The church’s website notes that the congregation voted to stay downtown during this period.

First Presbyterian demolished part of its own structure in 1963, destroying the rear wing of the building (I’m not sure what its function was) that is visible in the 1924 picture above.

Recently demolished, 1963 – looking southeast from Roxboro.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

New educational building built in its place, 1964 – looking southeast from Roxboro.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Along with St. Philip’s, Trinity Methodist, and First Baptist, First Presbyterian was a founding member of Congregations in Action, which sought to provide assistance to residents of Oldham Towers and the Liberty St. Apartments.

First Presbyterian continues to be an active congregation downtown, involved in numerous religious and civic actvities.

Looking northeast, 2006.

SECOND MAIN PUBLIC LIBRARY

The main public library in Durham – the first public library in North Carolina – was established in Durham in 1897 at Five Points, located in a small, ornate Queen Anne frame structure. The library’s collection began to push the capacity of this small structure by the 1910s, and the search began for funding and space to build a new library.

The Carnegie Foundation, which funded many public libraries across the country, came through in 1916 with a pledge to contribute 80% of the construction costs for the library. Board chairman General Julian Carr objected strongly to accepting funds from the organization, and began boycotting meetings when the board persisted. A site was selected adjacent to the parish house of the First Presbyterian Church on East Main. The Colonial Revival building was designed by New York architect Edward L. Tilton, known for his work in designing libraries, and completed construction in 1921 at a cost of $40,000. General Carr came around on the library after its completion in 1921, and upon his death in 1924, asked that, in lieu of flowers, people donate books to the library.

Looking north, mid-1920s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Looking northeast, mid-1920s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The library in 1940, looking north-northeast.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

By the 1960s-1970s, the library had begun to seriously outgrow its facility, and the quest began to build a new structure. The funding and control of the library had come from both city and county, and reorganization of the library system was in serious order, as the library system had been segregated prior to 1965. The library system was consolidated and placed under county control. Two bond referendums were defeated to build a new main library before a third one succeeded in 1976, approving $3 million to construct the current main library at Roxboro and Liberty Sts., on land cleared of houses by urban renewal.

The old library on East Main sat vacant for several years.

Looking northwest, 1980.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

But it was renovated by 1984 – I presume privately.

Looking northwest, 1984.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

It currently is occupied by offices.

Looking north-northwest, 2007.

ELIGIBILITY BUILDING / JR DAY HOUSE

I’ll mention the JR Day house again today, which took up most of the southern 300 block of East Main St. As labeled on the Sanborn map below, it was even noted as “Central Hotel.” I haven’t read any other reference to this, and the label is absent in subsequent years.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of the 300 block of East Main St., 1902.

Below, the Lyon house from the rear, as well as the First Presbyterian Church to the left, and the barely-visible steeple of St. Philip’s to the right.

Looking north, 1899.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

By the early 1920s, and, looking at the deed, probably 1917, the Day house was torn down, and the Durham Sun building, the Astor Theater, and a Freemason’s Lodge were constructed on the property. Today’s post focuses on the Lodge, later known as the Eligibility building.

(Courtesy Duke Archives)

Fraternal organizations were omnipresent in Durham during the late 1800s and early 1900s – Elks, Knights Templar, Odd Fellows, and others, including three branches of Freemasons. I’ve been unable to determine which branch of the two white-affiliated Masons built the building on the southeast corner of Roxboro and E. Main. I think the lettering (“AF & AM”) stands for “Ancient Free and Accepted Masons”. On the side of the building are the letters “B.P.O.E.” If anyone has any insight into that, let me know. [Thanks to RWE, below, who mentions that this stands for ‘Benign Protective Order of the Elks.’ If I’d looked back at my own post about the Temple Building, I would have realized this. This quite interesting, as I have no record that the Elks were housed here.]

It appears that this building housed two lodges of the Masons – the Durham and Eno. There is a notation in Jean Anderson’s book that the Eno Lodge was organized around 1860, but that the Doric Lodge (another lodge, evidently) was the oldest fraternal organization in Durham.

A reader supplied the following additional information from the “History of Durham Lodge Number 352” compiled by R.D. Love 1986 and “Historical Sketch of Durham Lodge No. 352 A.F. & A.M.” by Irving E. Allen, 1946. I need to integrate it better into this post, but here it is (I’ve added hyperlinks).

“June 14, 1876: the Durham Lodge has its first organizational meeting (meeting place uncertain); officers are elected, with James H. Southgate elected ‘Worshipful Master.’ Several (6?) of the members were from the Eno Lodge, which was considered to have ‘very poor leadership and was in a
more or less dormant state.’

December 6, 1876: the Durham Lodge receives its charter. Early lodge leaders included Julian Carr, James Southgate (previously of Hillsborough), E. J. Parrish, L.T. Smith, and others.

The lodge’s first meeting place is unrecorded. The minutes of the April 10, 1877, lodge meeting state that Julian Carr and William T. Blackwell agreed to rent a room to the lodge for $150 annually. This room may have been in the Bull Durham tobacco factory. By 1881, membership was reported at 39 men.

After some time, the lodge meetings moved to the Wright Building on the SW corner of Main and Corcoran Streets. Then it moved to the upstairs of the building that housed T.J. Lambe’s men’s clothing store. Then it moved to the “upper stories” of the Sneed-Markham building at the SW corner of Main and Mangum Streets, where the rooms were shared with the Pythian Order).

In 1924, plans were (again) started for a permanent meeting place/temple for the lodge. A site at the corner of Main and Roxboro Streets was selected, and funds were raised and the three-story building built. During the ‘Great Depression’, in 1938, the building was lost/forfeited by the Masons to the mortgage holder (an insurance company); the property was then purchased by the county for use as its health department.

After losing the building, the lodge temporarily moved to the Temple Building. In the 1940s, the Masons purchased ‘a very desirable lot’ on Mangum Street, but no building apparently was ever built at the site. In 1953, they finally decided to move and
purchased and renovated the ‘abandoned’ 1913 Lakewood Methodist Church
on Palmer Street.”

Information about the Mason’s actual use of the building, perhaps appropriate for a rather secretive group, is scant. By the late 1930s, the Masons were still in the building, and a car dealership has moved on to Morgan St.

Looking southeast, ~1930s.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

During World War II, the Health Department took over this building – probably in 1941. In a popular 1940s re-do, they filled in the 1st floor windows with glass block.

Looking southeast, 1950s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The Health Department, looking southwest from E. Main St., 1966.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The Health Department moved down the street to the former Sears and Roebuck. The county bought that property in 1972, but I’m not sure if the Health Department moved soon after that, or later. The Eligibility building then took on its current name, by housing the eligibility section of the Social Services Department.

Below, the building in 1986, looking south-southeast from Roxboro.

(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The building has been empty since 1992. The county sold the building through an open bid process in March of 2007 to David Revere – a new developer on the scene who recently moved from Los Angeles to Chapel Hill – who intends on converting the upper floors to office space (although I’ve also heard residential,) and the first floor to a restaurant.

It will be great to see this building re-occupied with some new life – and perhaps even better to help bridge the east-west divide at Roxboro with some activity on this corner. I don’t know the interior condition, although I’ve heard there is a sizable auditorium in the building. I hope he keeps the air raid siren on top of the building (although I hope he chooses ignore American Tobacco’s example of unnecessary horn soundings for kitschy effect.)

He also bought the lot next door, the former location of the Astor Theater, which had become a storefront church – and another abandoned building – before the county tore it down. I hope that he’ll be able to build an infill building on that lot, which would help re-bridge the streetscape with the former Durham Sun Building. The county’s parking deck (complete with helipad) behind the buildings did not come with the deal.

Looking southeast, 2006.

JR DAY HOUSE / DURHAM SUN BUILDING

The JR Day house was built during the 1880s, and took up about half the block between Queen and Roxboro Sts. The above is a sketch from 1895 of this large, elaborate house.

I haven’t located a photograph of the front of the house, but I noticed that a picture that purports to show something else entirely – the explosion of Durham’s first electricity generator – actually shows the back of the JR Day house. I also think it may show the steeple of the first St. Philip’s church, just visible through the trees.

Looking north from ~Ramseur near Roxboro, 1899.

This house was torn down in the 1910s, and the land was used to develop several commercial structures – including the row of the Eligibility building, the Astor theater, and the Durham Sun – during the 1920s. Today’s post will focus on the Sun building.

Looking south, 1926.

Durham has had series of newspapers, beginning with Caleb Green’s The Tobacco Plant in 1872, which later became the Durham Globe. Amongst the series of papers started in the subsequent decades was the Durham Sun, begun in 1889 by James R. Robinson and owned and operated by him until 1910. He was known to write columns under the pseudonym-of-sorts “Old Hurrygraph.”

The Sun was evidently a paper with a Conservative Democratic Party slant, at least in its early years, giving racially polarizing commentary in the 1892 elections that was critical of the populists who were advocating for the rights of African-Americans.

This building was contructed in the mid 1920s for the Sun. However, it was not used for long – in 1929, the Morning Herald’s owners took control of the Sun and operations were consolidated at the Herald’s Market St. offices.

This building later became offices for the Public Service Co. of North Carolina, which it remained through the 1970s.

Looking southeast, 1970s.

It is under private ownership now (“Diesel Productions, LLC”) and has been refurbished.

Looking southeast, 2007.

There is residential space upstairs, including a cool back deck.

Looking southeast, 2007.

NW CORNER QUEEN AND 300 BLOCK E. MAIN

The earliest grand houses on the east side of Durham were built along Roxboro and the first two blocks of East Main St. east of the intersection of those two streets. Some of the early, more forgotten names in Durham history – Day, Lyon, Fuller – industry magnates who faded from the scene as business consolidated around the Blackwell/Carr and, later, Duke empires.

Few records of these early houses remain, except for intriguing footprints on the early Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, and most of them did not survive the early 20th century.

Some early houses on the north side of the 300 block of East Main St. included the Fuller house:

313 E. Main St., looking north.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

The above picture was taken ~1905. This house didn’t make it into the 1950s, torn down for a parking lot.

The house immediate to its east, on the northwest corner of Queen and E. Main lasted into the 1960s.

321 E. Main St., looking northwest, 1966

As did its neighbor around the corner on Queen St., 107 N. Queen.

107 N. Queen, looking west-northwest, 1966.

Both of these houses were demolished by the city using urban renewal funds in the late 1960s, and , when consolidated with the demolition of ~7-8 other houses, became a vast surface parking lot for Durham County, which it remains.

Looking northwest, 2007.

This lot is part of the major problem in the fragmentation between central and east downtown. While the immense Roxboro 5-car-one-way pipeline is pretty egregious, this empty abandoned space destroys any sense of place once you get to the east side – you might as well be out in Target-land.

2.17 acres of county-owned surface parking, outlined in blue.

The county plans to build a parking deck on this lot – and that’s it. When I spoke with the county engineer a few months ago, I tried to encourage him to engage local developers in a public-private partnership to develop buildings around a parking deck. He said “[they] didn’t like those” but they might set it back so a developer could build something in front.

Either this is a throwaway line, or it just doesn’t seem to demonstrate much knowledge about the development process. No developer I know is going to be interested in building on a constrained space on East Main St. unless they were part of the plan from the beginning.

Personally, I think this would be an ideal spot for a new library, if the the library wants to build a new building. It would activate the E. Main streetscape, provide some historical continuity with the old public library, which would be next door, and keep the library accessible to the residents of the east side of downtown.

Above, my suggestion, if a parking deck is necessary.

Unfortunately, the county is still determined to make three significant mistakes on the east side of downtown – 1) This parking deck, without a joint project to create a streetscape. 2) A one-block large compound (several have called it a fortress) of a human services building, 3) demolition of all of the structures on the south side of the 500 block of East Main.

The same services that the county wants to provide could be provided without further damaging the connection between east and west. It has been hard to convince the county that investment alone does not improve the neighborhood. Look at the Southbank building, and the Durham Centre.

The Human Services Complex has to come before the Historic Preservation Commission next month (because it is in our Downtown Historic District.) You can take a look at the latest rendering. (Be sure to mentally subtract the street trees – they add a lot of softening to the building, but there’s never any guarantee they’ll be installed once the traffic engineers are involved in the process.) If you think the design could be, well, a bit more human-scale, contact your county commissioners.

ALEXANDER FORD / JOHNSON MOTOR CO.

During the early 20th century, the large, elaborate dwellings in the 300 and 400 blocks of East Main St. (the two blocks between Roxboro and Dillard St.) were progressively torn down to make way for commercial and institutional structures. These included several car dealerships, which were an entirely different beast than what we picture today.

Both the Alexander Ford Company and the Johnson Motor Company were constructed in the early 1920s. No pictures survive of the houses torn down to make way for them. To get a sense of how things have changed, the Alexander Ford Company hired Milburn and Heister (who designed Union Station, the Carolina Theater, and the Durham County Courthouse, among other buildings) to design their structure. The Johnson Motor Company hired prominent local architect George Watts Carr (this was his first commercial commission, and he traveled around the country looking at other car dealerships before settling on one in Baltimore as the model for this building.)

Alexander Motor Company (with the elaborate entrance awning) and Johnson Motor Company in the background, late 1930s.

The Johnson Motor Company also built a service station immediately to the west of their building, which they called, appropriately, the Johnson Service Station.

Looking south, 1920s. The Johnson Motor Company is out of frame to the left.
(From “Images of America: Durham” by Stephen Massengill)

No early pictures of the dealerships are available, but the following photo is from their waning days in the early 1970s

Left, Alexander Ford. Right, Johnson Motor Company. Looking southeast from E. Main.

I’m not very knowledgeable regarding automotive history, but my sense is that there were far fewer models of car, and that people would order their vehicle more routinely, rather than the dealer having a significant amount of stock.

Regardless, the overall shift towards a more suburban city and behavior led to a drastic change in the form of car dealerships. Alexander Ford left this building in the late 1970s to move to a 11+ acre parcel that had been cleared by urban renewal. It was later renamed University Ford.

The Johnson Motor Company may have left as late as 1984 (see comments); I don’t know if they are the same Johnson that owns car dealership(s?) in the area now.

The service station was torn down around 1972 and became parking.

The remaining two buildings are owned by the city and county. Both have had their once beautiful large front windows removed/modified. I hope they will see some more vibrant use at some point in the future.

The former Alexander Ford, now the Durham Housing Authority, looking southeast, 2007.

The former Johnson Motor Company, looking southeast, 2007.

Looking southeast, 2007.

The former Johnson Service Station, looking south-southwest, 2007.

ST. PHILIP’S EPISCOPAL

An Episcopal mission was organized in Durham in 1878 when a minister named Joseph Blount Cheshire was ordained and appointed rector of the Chapel Hill church, and Bishop Atkinson (who had preached the first Episcopal service in Durham) suggested that he should also devote time to the newly organizing Durham congregation if warranted. The Reverend (later Bishop) J.B.Cheshire split time between Durham and Chapel Hill over the next three years. In 1880, seeking to find a permanent home for the church (and using the $300 he had left from his former law practice) he bid on land at the eastern point of Five Points to provide the church with a structure of its own. He bid up to $405, and purportedly became quite concerned about how he was going to pay this price; he was therefore relieved when another bid came in at $406. However, land became available on East Main St., which he then purchased. The original frame church building was constructed in 1880, which one 1895 source called

“A neat and substantial frame building on the eastern end of Main Street. The membership is not very large, but considering the fact that some years ago there were scarcely no Episcopalians in Durham, the increase has been quite rapid.”

The original church.
(Courtesy St. Philip’s Archives)

In June 1906, the original frame church was moved to the side of the church lot to allow construction of the new stone church structure; the original structure was retained and continued to be used by the congregation. (Imagine – reusing buildings instead of trashing them…) The new Gothic Revival church, designed by Ralph Adams Cram, who also designed the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, was constructed at a cost of ~$21,000 between 1907-8 and began active use in 1908. It is the oldest remaining church building in downtown Durham.

(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Boyd’s history of Durham describes the downtown churches (Trinity Methodist, First Baptist, First Presbyterian, and St. Philip’s) as the churches of the “property owners” in town, and the neighborhood that grew on the east side of downtown, along East Main, Liberty, Dillard, and Holloway, certainly housed many of the wealthier citizens in Durham.

A view of the 1908 church entrance, looking northwest (which shows a residential structure on Queen St.)
(Courtesy St. Philip’s Archives)

The original, frame church building was still in use in 1934, but was torn down soon after that point.

Even by the 1930s, the previously residential section of East Main St had begun to erode.

Before 1937, the church’s west-side neighbor (at the northeast corner of E. Main and N. Queen), the William Guthrie House, was torn down and replaced with a gas station.

The William Guthrie house, looking north from E. Main ~1895.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

The AG Carr house across the street was also torn down to make way for a gas station during this period.

In 1942, the east-side neighbor, the beautiful Fuller House, was torn down to make way for the new
union bus terminal, which replaced the previous one at Rigsbee, Chapel Hill, and Mangum Sts.

Below, a view of the church in the late 1940s/ early 1950s, with the service station to the west and the union bus station to the east.

Looking northeast.
(Courtesy St. Philip’s Archives)

In 1945, George Watts Carr designed a new parish house addition for the church, which was constructed on the west side of the property, just to the north of the gas station. The gas station and the parish house coexisted for several years, but the gas station was torn down by 1959.

Looking northeast, 1950s.
(Courtesy St. Philip’s Archives)

In 1947, the gas station across the street which had replaced the Carr house was torn down to make way for the new Sears and Roebuck Department Store.

The 1950s-1960s accelerated the challenges for all of the downtown churches, as the natural neighborhood base for the congregation eroded with suburban flight, and urban renewal destroyed the surrounding neighborhood structures, leaving the churches, including St. Philip’s, isolated along a commercial/institutional strip in downtown.

The four churches of the one-time ‘landed-gentry’ downtown adjusted their focus as the neighborhood around them changed, uniting to form Congregations in Action, which provided assistance to elderly residents of Oldham Towers and, later, the Liberty St. Apartments.

St. Philip’s in the 1970s.

After the Union Bus Terminal closed, several tenants used the building, including, in its last incarnation, a plasma center. St. Philip’s became the owner of that Streamline Moderne building in the 1990s. While I can’t confirm this, I’ve been told that it was the last bus station of its era in North Carolina when the church demolished it in the late 1990s. That site remains a church-owned vacant lot.

I don’t know much about the congregation today, other than the fact that it is still quite active, and currently building another addition onto the Queen St. side of their complex.

The 1908 church, looking northeast, 2007.

The northeast corner of N. Queen and E. Main, location of the William Guthrie house, the Parish House, and the under-construction addition, looking northeast, 2007.

CARPENTER MOTOR CO. / 600 EAST MAIN (SOUTH)

The Carpenter family firm started in 1893, when J.E., J.W. and Dwayne Carpenter formed a partnership to sell ‘heavy groceries’, feed, and buggies on Parrish St. In 1910, the firm began to sell Metz automobiles and Kohler trucks out of a catalog. In 1912, the Carpenter brothers established the first Ford and Dodge dealership in Durham. In 1915, they switched their allegiance to Chevrolet, and remained a Chevrolet dealership from that point forward.

In 1923, Marcus Carpenter, Dwayne’s son, built a new dealership building in the 600 block of East Main St.

Above, seen from the Bus garage on the north side of the street, looking southwest.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Above, looking east on East Main St.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The building originally had a drive in filling station on the first floor corner. This, however, was enclosed sometime in the 1950s-1960s, and the first floor facade was sheathed in porcelain enamel tile.

Looking southeast, 1970s.

The Chevrolet dealership closed sometime after ~1980, but the building persists as a commercial space with two tenants.

Looking south, 2007

FIRE STATION NO. 3 / 500 BLOCK E. MAIN

Looking north, 1910s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The last of the ‘original’ fire stations downtown, fire station no. 3 was constructed between 1907 and 1913. The 500 block of East Main St. (between Dillard and Elizabeth streets) was constructed as a wide, divided street with a median – but only for one block. The fire station was constructed at the point the street narrowed back to 2, undivided lanes, moving east, at the Elizabeth St. intersection.

Sanborn map of the station and surrounding area, 1913.
(Copyright Sanborn Map Co.)

Looking north, 1920.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Looking north, 1930s?
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The divided portion of the street was narrowed sometime in the late 1910s or early 1920s, and the reclaimed road was accorded to the property on the north side of the street. Houses and an apartment building were built along the new frontage.

I don’t know when fire station number 3 went out of service at this location – likely the 1950s. But by 1962, the building was being used as a garage.

Here is a view of the block, moving east to west (right to left).

527 East Main, the old fire station building.

525 East Main.

523 East Main.

To the left/west of this structure were the Franklin Court Apartments, which I’ve previously profiled.

In the late 1960s, these structures were torn down by the city using urban renewal funds. The land became part of the Oldham Towers / Liberty St. Apartments public housing complex, which it still is today. Fire station no. 3 is now located on Miami Blvd.

Looking northwest, 2007.

600 BLOCK EAST MAIN / STREETCAR AND BUS GARAGE

Electric streetcars did not have an auspicious beginning in Durham. Mule- and horse-pulled streetcars had been part of the Durham transportation scene since 1885, but utilizing electricity was quite a new endeavor when the Durham Traction Company purchased the streetcar franchise from the Durham Street Railway Co. in 1901.

The inaugural run, in May 1902, was set to carry passengers to a baseball game at the Lyon Park. The cars were filled to capacity and got started, but the electric plant broke down. The Durham Traction Co. had to bring the horses in to pull the streetcars the rest of the way.

In June, they gave another go, this time to coincide with Trinity College’s commencement, and this time things ran smoothly.

What was less auspicious for the long haul was that the first car owner in Durham purchased his Stanley Steamer in 1901, before the electric streetcars began running. But for the early part of the 20th century, the electric streetcar was the dominant form of transportation in Durham, feeding linear development along Mangum St., Chapel Hill St./Kent St./Chapel Hill Rd., Angier Ave., Main St., and Holloway St.

Lakewood Park, opened in 1902, was a particularly popular destination at the southwestern end of the line. Cars would be packed with people coming to swim and ride the amusements, watch movies, fireworks, and orchestras during the summer in a ‘vacation’ from other parts of town.

[These are only the streetcar lines that I know of – there may have been others.]

The streetcars, when not in service, were garaged at a facility in 600 block of East Main St.

Looking northeast, ~1920.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

A closer view of a streetcar leaving the facility, looking northeast, 1920.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

Looking west down East Main St. – the streetcar is in front of the Carpenter Tip and Trim Shop / Womble Pharmacy, next door to the streetcar garage (the garage would be past the right side of the photo).
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

During the period between 1902 and 1920, the electric streetcar thrived, however, nationwide, that other inauspicious note had taken hold – the automobile. Declining ridership, and the advent of bus transportation caused the phasing out of streetcar transportation in almost all American cities.

The streetcar garage was converted to a bus facility as the streetcar service was terminated in 1930.

Above, looking northeast, 1930s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The streetcars did not meet a kind fate.

(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Buses were stored and serviced at this facility.

Up on the ‘lift’.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

This facility continued operation into the 1960s.

The remainder of the block has been an early residential area that became mostly commercial by the 1920s. The following pictures show the block in 1962, moving west=to-east from the intersection of Elizabeth St. to the beltline railroad (Elizabeth was later re-routed to be adjacent to the Beltline tracks at this intersection, but it was a full block west of the tracks at this time.)

605 East Main, the Womble Pharmacy, looking northeast.

607-611 East Main, the bus garage, looking northwest.

621-625 East Main.

629 East Main.

701-703 East Main.

These structures were all demolished by the city in the late 1960s, using urban renewal funds. Elizabeth St., as noted, was re-routed to the east to connect with the re-routed Fayetteville St.
I believe that this was playground space for the public housing complexes to the north and west (Liberty St. apartments and Oldham Towers). By the late 90s, it was empty green space.

In 2005, another investment of Federal funds brought about the construction of new apartments on this block through the HOPE VI program.

Looking northeast, 2007.

Looking northwest, 2007.

The former corner of Elizabeth and East Main Sts. (site of the Womble Pharmacy) – looking northeast, 2007.

It’s the kind of investment this neighborhood needed after the mistakes of the 1960s – good streetscape design that houses low-income families without the stigma of cheap-looking housing.