It's time for a respite for me for a few weeks, after over 3 years of mostly 5-day-a-week-Endangered Durham and ~1000 posts, I need a bit of down time before cranking up with new areas of Durham, including Trinity Park, Old North Durham, East Durham, Northgate, Hope Valley, the southern-eastern-western portions of the county, etc., etc. I know that I'll be unable to completely take a break, and thus I'm going to plan on publishing posts as the mood strikes over the remainder of November and December, and perhaps January, with regular posting to resume, at the latest, in February. I'll update the twitter feed with posts I publish during The Break. As always, I appreciate your readership, and I hope you understand my need for a short hiatus to rejuvenate, research, and do some non-historic-durham-architecture-related-things. (Rumor is that there are some of those things out there.)
Thanks
Gary
Sabtu, 31 Oktober 2009
Kamis, 29 Oktober 2009
SECOND WATTS HOSPITAL / NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND MATH
Note: I've relied heavily on P. Preston Reynolds' excellent history of Watts Hospital - "Watts Hospital: 1895-1976. Keeping the Doors Open." in writing this entry. It's the best place-based book about a structure/set of structures in Durham - I highly recommend it for further reading if you are particularly interested in the hospital/hospital campus.
The original Watts Hospital - Durham's first hospital - had been established by George Watts on February 21, 1895 to provide hospital care to white men and women of Durham. The original hospital was a frame 'cottage' hospital located at the corner of Guess Road and West Main St.
Within 10 years, patient demand had outstripped the capacity of the old hospital. Watts made plans to expand the hospital on site, and engaged the firm which had designed the original hospital - Rand and Taylor of Boston, MA. Taylor, however, came to Watts with a proposal for an entirely new hospital - ambitious in scale and far from the "smoke, noise, and trains" in town. Taylor evidently placed multiple petri dishes around Durham, and chose the site that grew the fewest bugs - a 56 (or 43, or 60, depending on the source) acre tract at the northwest edge of town - outside of city limits, actually, in West Durham. The site was a "splendid grove of oak and hickory."
Ground was broken in May 1908, and the hospital was dedicated on December 2, 1909. Watts spent $217,000 on the site and construction.
Under construction, looking northwest from Broad St., 1909.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection - Chamber of Commerce Collection)
The initial complex consisted of 5 buildings: an administration building, operating building, power house, laundry, and one patient pavilion.
Per Reynolds:
".. all the buildings were constructed of fire-proof materials. The front lobby walls were paneled in quarter-sawn oak.... The new features in the administration building included a small isolation ward of two beds and a pathological and bacteriological laboratory, which the architects thought was the first of its kind 'outside of the large cities of the South'. Near the main kitchen was a separate diet kitchen for the nursing students and another eating area for the [B]lack employees. The second floor accommodated private patients and maternity patients who were separated from one another by stairs, a nurse's station, and an elevator. The third floor provided living quarters for the nurses. Not counting infants, this building could hold 45 patients."
"The patient pavilion was two stories high and housed 14 patients on each floor. A dining room for the convalescents, a ward kitchen, elevator, work rooms, solarium, and balcony completed the picture."
"The operating building had an ambulance entrance, rooms for major and minor surgery, and a separate area for the care of accident victims. Builders installed a skylight in the major operating room to provide adequate light. The x-ray room opened to the surgical suites. The walls and floor were of marble, tile, and terrazzo."
Watts Hospital from Broad Street
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection)
The Watts-Hill families completed at least three other structures in a similar style to Watts Hospital: the Hill House, the Temple Building, and the Beverly Apartments. The last of these structures was given to the Board of Trustees of Watts Hospital in 1911 as an additional source of income.
As at the original Watts Hospital, a nurse training program was an essential part of the facility. A nurses' home, named Wyche House after the 6th hospital administrator and nurse supervisor, Mary Wyche, started construction soon after completion of the original facility, and was completed in 1910 for $45,000. A separate patient pavilion for women was completed in 1911, also at a cost of $45,000.
Watts Hospital, 1915. From right to left: Wyche House, the administration building, the men's pavilion, and the women's pavilion.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection)
George Watts provided additional funds to expand the laboratory and the x-ray department in 1919, as part of his ongoing quest to create facilities at Watts Hospital that were the equal of the northeastern hospitals that the wealthy of Durham had previously traveled to for treatment (particularly Johns Hopkins)
Watts Hospital, Main entry from Broad Street, ~1920.
(From "Watts Hospital: Keeping the Doors Open" by P. Preston Reynolds)
Looking northwest, 1920s.
(Courtesy State Archives of North Carolina)
He began to pull back from active involvement in the hospital as his own health began to fail that same year; John Sprunt Hill, his son-in-law, stepped in to many of Watts' responsibilities that same year. Watts' last living efforts for the hospital were attempts to work with President William Preston Few to establish a medical school for Trinity College, a school which would utilize Watts Hospital as its teaching facility. Watts' death in 1921 stymied this effort.
Watts provided shares in the British-American Tobacco Co. and $200,000 to the hospital in his will. He stipulated that the hospital should construct a new patient wing to honor his first wife, Laura Valinda Beall Watts.
John Sprunt Hill took the mantle of President of the Board of Trustees after Watts' death, and began to champion the cause of a medical school affiliated with Watts Hospital. He devised the "Durham Plan" to establish the North Carolina Medical School in Durham. The state legislature would issue $4 million in bonds, $4 million would be collected from private sources, and Watts Hospital would provide $1.5 million. However, Hill suddenly dropped the campaign - at about the same time that James B. Duke asked Hill to help him craft the charter to establish the Duke Endowment.
A third generation of Watts-Hill joined the stewardship of Watts Hospital in 1925 when George Watts Hill became chairman of the building committee. Soon after, the hospital board began the work to expand the hospital with the new patient pavillion; they hired Taylor (by then Taylor and Kendall) to design the patient pavilion provided for by George Watts' will. The Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion was completed in 1927; it served urology and pediatrics, and had 50 private rooms, along with a kitchen serving the private patients. A radiology suite was constructed in 1934.
Per the Durham Centennial Edition in 1953 "two additions" to Watts Hospital were built by contractor George W. Kane, but I'm not sure which two.
Aerial view of Watts Hospital looking northwest, including the newly completed Valinda Beall Watts pavilion, late 1920s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
Valinda Beall Watts pavilion, 1930s
(Courtesy Durham County Library - North Carolina Collection)
West entrance to Watts Hospital, late 1920s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library - North Carolina Collection)
New competition was afoot for Watts Hospital; James B. Duke's endowment of Trinity College to become Duke University provided for the establishment of a medical school and hospital with the new university campus. Watts Hospital had no explicit role in the new medical school when Duke Hospital opened in July 1930. But the attraction of new medical professionals to Durham, particularly specialists, proved somewhat of a boon initially for Watts as the new staff often practiced at Watts as well. Soon, however, competition was acute, as Duke and Watts both opened outpatient clinics in 1931. Duke clearly did not mean to steer clear of the role of community hospital.
Interestingly, Durham had always provided minimal support for the hospital, which George Watts had stipulated should provide care to the community regardless of a patient's ability to pay. City and County donations to the hospital to offset charity care covered ~ 1/3 of the costs in the early 1930s. As the cost of medical care continued to grow, ironically, with the successful treatment of acute disease and rise in preventive care, hospitals nationwide, including Watts, would grapple with how to procure sufficient funding.
Watts Hospital was in somewhat of a unique position because of its First Family, the Watts-Hills, and their explicit involvement in the formation modern health insurance. I've written a bit about this on my post about the George Watts house (Harwood Hall), which would become the site of the Hospital Care Association building by the 1960s. This organization would later become Blue Cross-Blue Shield of North Carolina.
Watts would also play a role in training nurses during World War II - a significant mobilization of Federal funds into health care and medical training. In 1945, the Hill House - a dormitory and classroom building for the nursing school - was built to the west of the earlier Wyche House, funded primarily by Federal funds. The passage of the Hill-Burton Act in 1942 would provide for Federal funding to support construction of hospital facilities nationwide.
1938 view of West Club Blvd, with the hospital grounds to the left.
(Courtesy Duke Forest Collection)
1945 aerial, looking west-northwest, showing the new Hill House to the north of the original hospital wings.
(From "Watts Hospital: Keeping the Doors Open" by P. Preston Reynolds)
Old Administration Building, 1950s
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
In 1953, a George Watts Carr designed addition, which included a new emergency room entrance, main entrance, modern delivery/operating rooms, new xray, lab, and kitchen facilities, as well as 100 new beds was constructed west of the Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion. The addition cost $2,577,000 to build, and opened on December 20, 1953.
(Courtesy John Schelp)
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
Construction of new emergency entrance, 08.29.56
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
The increasing reliance on Federal and state funding to support capital and operating costs at Watts would also, eventually, lead to the ultimate demise of Watts hospital, as Federal legislation - including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the enactment of Medicare in 1965 - would demand that hospitals be racially integrated.
Like most institutions in Durham, the hospital system was racially segregated - Watts had, until the 1960s, always served only white patients. One of the more unique things about Durham has always been the strength of the African-American community during the segregation era; when Watts had originally proposed adding a wing to Watts Hospital to treat African-American patients in 1900, he was persuaded by the African-American community that this was not in their best interest. The better solution would be to construct a hospital where African-Americans could both be seen as patients and be medical providers. The result was the construction of the original Lincoln Hospital in 1901. Lincoln grew and prospered as an institution and moved to new, larger quarters on Fayetteville St. in 1925.
This led to interesting motivations in the move towards desegregation in the 1960s. By that time, despite large additions to both Lincoln and Watts Hospitals in the 1950, the two were providing hospital facilities to Durham that would be difficult to retrofit for evolving patient needs/desires.
As the larger of the two institutions, with greater room to expand, Watts was seen by the white community as the natural location for an expanded, consolidated hospital for Durham. A Hospital Study Committee also found that the patient census at Lincoln was low. Duke Hospital had always treated both whites and African-Americans, although it was internally segregated. But Duke had fully integrated its patient services in the 1950s.
Like many of the segregated institutions of the African-American community, Lincoln was no longer exclusively, or even widely patronized by the 1960s. The migration of the African-American consumer to new choices meant the demise of many retail establishments, as well as institutions such as Lincoln. Like much of Hayti, though, community leaders attached an understandably fierce pride to Lincoln, and the symbolism attached to its proposed closing was powerful. Fear regarding the adherence of Watts to a true integration of patient services, with equal care provided to African-Americans and whites was quite real.
In October 1964, the Watts Hospital Board of Trustees voted 7-4 to integrate Watts Hospital.
A $15 million bond was proposed to enact a plan proposed by the Health Planning Council, a group comprised of leaders from both Watts and Lincoln Hospitals as well as others. The plan would involve the expansion of a now-integrated Watts Hospital to become the primary hospital for the community. Lincoln would have reduced services, but continue to exist with some upgraded facilities. From the start, the bond issue struggled. Durham has had multiple instances, to this day, where the African-American community and the conservative white community find their interests aligned. This was one of those instances - the conservative white community (represented by the "White Citizens Council") objected to a single primary hospital for both the white and African-American community, as they favored segregation. The African-American community (represented by the then-"Durham Committee on Negro Affairs") also objected - because of the reduced role for Lincoln.
The bond issue was soundly defeated in November 1966.
A multi-racial Hospital Study Committee was set up, which recommended the construction of a new hospital, and the conversion of Lincoln and Watts into extended-care facilities. This initially also met with opposition, but eventually all parties agreed to the need for a new facility, after assurances that it would provide equal integrated facilities for African-American patients and medical staff. The $20 million bond measure passed by a 2-1 margin on November 4, 1968. This would lead to the construction of Durham County General Hospital on the former County Home site on N. Roxboro Road. Seemingly, the only way to move past the old divide between Watts and Lincoln was to start anew. This facility would be renamed Durham Regional Hospital in the 1990s.
(Reynolds does a wonderful job breaking down the political motivations and perverse incentives at play during the push to both grow Durham's hospital facilities and integrate them at the same time. )
Main entrance, 07.17.70
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
The new hospital was completed and ready for patients in 1976. On October 10th of that year, all patients were transferred from Watts to Durham County General. (Patients at Lincoln had previously been transferred to Watts in September of that year.)
Watts was never transformed into a health facility - administration offices and the nursing school remained on site until the early 1980s. It presented an ideal venue for another institution, however.
The idea of a 'magnet-school-for-North-Carolina' originated with Governor Terry Sanford, and was continued by Jim Hunt. In 1977, the goal of establishing a public, residential high school that would attract talented students from throughout the state was brought before the General Assembly. In June 1978, the GA approved $150,000 in funds to begin a search process for a suitable site and establish the school. In November 1978, Durham was named the host city for the school, which would be known as the North Carolina School of Science and Math.
In September 1980, the school opened its doors with 150 high school students -the first state residential high school of its kind. It currently serves 650 high school Juniors and Seniors from throughout North Carolina with a specialized curriculum in math and science.
Former Watts Hospital Administration Building, 09.12.09
Former Men's Patient Pavilion, 09.12.09
Former Women's Patient Pavilion (left) and X-ray pavilion (right), 09.12.09
Former Wyche House/Nursing Students' Home, 09.12.09
Former Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion, 09.12.09
1953 "Brick Addition" to Watts Hospital, 09.12.09
Below, a drawing that NCSSM handed out during the Watts-Hillandale tour showing the buildings on the campus, dates, and historical uses. The drawing is also in Preston Reynolds' book.
Find this spot on a Google Map.
36.018264,-78.920964
The original Watts Hospital - Durham's first hospital - had been established by George Watts on February 21, 1895 to provide hospital care to white men and women of Durham. The original hospital was a frame 'cottage' hospital located at the corner of Guess Road and West Main St.
Within 10 years, patient demand had outstripped the capacity of the old hospital. Watts made plans to expand the hospital on site, and engaged the firm which had designed the original hospital - Rand and Taylor of Boston, MA. Taylor, however, came to Watts with a proposal for an entirely new hospital - ambitious in scale and far from the "smoke, noise, and trains" in town. Taylor evidently placed multiple petri dishes around Durham, and chose the site that grew the fewest bugs - a 56 (or 43, or 60, depending on the source) acre tract at the northwest edge of town - outside of city limits, actually, in West Durham. The site was a "splendid grove of oak and hickory."
Ground was broken in May 1908, and the hospital was dedicated on December 2, 1909. Watts spent $217,000 on the site and construction.
Under construction, looking northwest from Broad St., 1909.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection - Chamber of Commerce Collection)
The initial complex consisted of 5 buildings: an administration building, operating building, power house, laundry, and one patient pavilion.
Per Reynolds:
".. all the buildings were constructed of fire-proof materials. The front lobby walls were paneled in quarter-sawn oak.... The new features in the administration building included a small isolation ward of two beds and a pathological and bacteriological laboratory, which the architects thought was the first of its kind 'outside of the large cities of the South'. Near the main kitchen was a separate diet kitchen for the nursing students and another eating area for the [B]lack employees. The second floor accommodated private patients and maternity patients who were separated from one another by stairs, a nurse's station, and an elevator. The third floor provided living quarters for the nurses. Not counting infants, this building could hold 45 patients."
"The patient pavilion was two stories high and housed 14 patients on each floor. A dining room for the convalescents, a ward kitchen, elevator, work rooms, solarium, and balcony completed the picture."
"The operating building had an ambulance entrance, rooms for major and minor surgery, and a separate area for the care of accident victims. Builders installed a skylight in the major operating room to provide adequate light. The x-ray room opened to the surgical suites. The walls and floor were of marble, tile, and terrazzo."
Watts Hospital from Broad Street
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection)
The Watts-Hill families completed at least three other structures in a similar style to Watts Hospital: the Hill House, the Temple Building, and the Beverly Apartments. The last of these structures was given to the Board of Trustees of Watts Hospital in 1911 as an additional source of income.
As at the original Watts Hospital, a nurse training program was an essential part of the facility. A nurses' home, named Wyche House after the 6th hospital administrator and nurse supervisor, Mary Wyche, started construction soon after completion of the original facility, and was completed in 1910 for $45,000. A separate patient pavilion for women was completed in 1911, also at a cost of $45,000.
Watts Hospital, 1915. From right to left: Wyche House, the administration building, the men's pavilion, and the women's pavilion.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection)
George Watts provided additional funds to expand the laboratory and the x-ray department in 1919, as part of his ongoing quest to create facilities at Watts Hospital that were the equal of the northeastern hospitals that the wealthy of Durham had previously traveled to for treatment (particularly Johns Hopkins)
Watts Hospital, Main entry from Broad Street, ~1920.
(From "Watts Hospital: Keeping the Doors Open" by P. Preston Reynolds)
Looking northwest, 1920s.
(Courtesy State Archives of North Carolina)
He began to pull back from active involvement in the hospital as his own health began to fail that same year; John Sprunt Hill, his son-in-law, stepped in to many of Watts' responsibilities that same year. Watts' last living efforts for the hospital were attempts to work with President William Preston Few to establish a medical school for Trinity College, a school which would utilize Watts Hospital as its teaching facility. Watts' death in 1921 stymied this effort.
Watts provided shares in the British-American Tobacco Co. and $200,000 to the hospital in his will. He stipulated that the hospital should construct a new patient wing to honor his first wife, Laura Valinda Beall Watts.
John Sprunt Hill took the mantle of President of the Board of Trustees after Watts' death, and began to champion the cause of a medical school affiliated with Watts Hospital. He devised the "Durham Plan" to establish the North Carolina Medical School in Durham. The state legislature would issue $4 million in bonds, $4 million would be collected from private sources, and Watts Hospital would provide $1.5 million. However, Hill suddenly dropped the campaign - at about the same time that James B. Duke asked Hill to help him craft the charter to establish the Duke Endowment.
A third generation of Watts-Hill joined the stewardship of Watts Hospital in 1925 when George Watts Hill became chairman of the building committee. Soon after, the hospital board began the work to expand the hospital with the new patient pavillion; they hired Taylor (by then Taylor and Kendall) to design the patient pavilion provided for by George Watts' will. The Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion was completed in 1927; it served urology and pediatrics, and had 50 private rooms, along with a kitchen serving the private patients. A radiology suite was constructed in 1934.
Per the Durham Centennial Edition in 1953 "two additions" to Watts Hospital were built by contractor George W. Kane, but I'm not sure which two.
Aerial view of Watts Hospital looking northwest, including the newly completed Valinda Beall Watts pavilion, late 1920s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
Valinda Beall Watts pavilion, 1930s
(Courtesy Durham County Library - North Carolina Collection)
West entrance to Watts Hospital, late 1920s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library - North Carolina Collection)
New competition was afoot for Watts Hospital; James B. Duke's endowment of Trinity College to become Duke University provided for the establishment of a medical school and hospital with the new university campus. Watts Hospital had no explicit role in the new medical school when Duke Hospital opened in July 1930. But the attraction of new medical professionals to Durham, particularly specialists, proved somewhat of a boon initially for Watts as the new staff often practiced at Watts as well. Soon, however, competition was acute, as Duke and Watts both opened outpatient clinics in 1931. Duke clearly did not mean to steer clear of the role of community hospital.
Interestingly, Durham had always provided minimal support for the hospital, which George Watts had stipulated should provide care to the community regardless of a patient's ability to pay. City and County donations to the hospital to offset charity care covered ~ 1/3 of the costs in the early 1930s. As the cost of medical care continued to grow, ironically, with the successful treatment of acute disease and rise in preventive care, hospitals nationwide, including Watts, would grapple with how to procure sufficient funding.
Watts Hospital was in somewhat of a unique position because of its First Family, the Watts-Hills, and their explicit involvement in the formation modern health insurance. I've written a bit about this on my post about the George Watts house (Harwood Hall), which would become the site of the Hospital Care Association building by the 1960s. This organization would later become Blue Cross-Blue Shield of North Carolina.
Watts would also play a role in training nurses during World War II - a significant mobilization of Federal funds into health care and medical training. In 1945, the Hill House - a dormitory and classroom building for the nursing school - was built to the west of the earlier Wyche House, funded primarily by Federal funds. The passage of the Hill-Burton Act in 1942 would provide for Federal funding to support construction of hospital facilities nationwide.
1938 view of West Club Blvd, with the hospital grounds to the left.
(Courtesy Duke Forest Collection)
1945 aerial, looking west-northwest, showing the new Hill House to the north of the original hospital wings.
(From "Watts Hospital: Keeping the Doors Open" by P. Preston Reynolds)
Old Administration Building, 1950s
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
In 1953, a George Watts Carr designed addition, which included a new emergency room entrance, main entrance, modern delivery/operating rooms, new xray, lab, and kitchen facilities, as well as 100 new beds was constructed west of the Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion. The addition cost $2,577,000 to build, and opened on December 20, 1953.
(Courtesy John Schelp)
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
Construction of new emergency entrance, 08.29.56
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
The increasing reliance on Federal and state funding to support capital and operating costs at Watts would also, eventually, lead to the ultimate demise of Watts hospital, as Federal legislation - including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the enactment of Medicare in 1965 - would demand that hospitals be racially integrated.
Like most institutions in Durham, the hospital system was racially segregated - Watts had, until the 1960s, always served only white patients. One of the more unique things about Durham has always been the strength of the African-American community during the segregation era; when Watts had originally proposed adding a wing to Watts Hospital to treat African-American patients in 1900, he was persuaded by the African-American community that this was not in their best interest. The better solution would be to construct a hospital where African-Americans could both be seen as patients and be medical providers. The result was the construction of the original Lincoln Hospital in 1901. Lincoln grew and prospered as an institution and moved to new, larger quarters on Fayetteville St. in 1925.
This led to interesting motivations in the move towards desegregation in the 1960s. By that time, despite large additions to both Lincoln and Watts Hospitals in the 1950, the two were providing hospital facilities to Durham that would be difficult to retrofit for evolving patient needs/desires.
As the larger of the two institutions, with greater room to expand, Watts was seen by the white community as the natural location for an expanded, consolidated hospital for Durham. A Hospital Study Committee also found that the patient census at Lincoln was low. Duke Hospital had always treated both whites and African-Americans, although it was internally segregated. But Duke had fully integrated its patient services in the 1950s.
Like many of the segregated institutions of the African-American community, Lincoln was no longer exclusively, or even widely patronized by the 1960s. The migration of the African-American consumer to new choices meant the demise of many retail establishments, as well as institutions such as Lincoln. Like much of Hayti, though, community leaders attached an understandably fierce pride to Lincoln, and the symbolism attached to its proposed closing was powerful. Fear regarding the adherence of Watts to a true integration of patient services, with equal care provided to African-Americans and whites was quite real.
In October 1964, the Watts Hospital Board of Trustees voted 7-4 to integrate Watts Hospital.
A $15 million bond was proposed to enact a plan proposed by the Health Planning Council, a group comprised of leaders from both Watts and Lincoln Hospitals as well as others. The plan would involve the expansion of a now-integrated Watts Hospital to become the primary hospital for the community. Lincoln would have reduced services, but continue to exist with some upgraded facilities. From the start, the bond issue struggled. Durham has had multiple instances, to this day, where the African-American community and the conservative white community find their interests aligned. This was one of those instances - the conservative white community (represented by the "White Citizens Council") objected to a single primary hospital for both the white and African-American community, as they favored segregation. The African-American community (represented by the then-"Durham Committee on Negro Affairs") also objected - because of the reduced role for Lincoln.
The bond issue was soundly defeated in November 1966.
A multi-racial Hospital Study Committee was set up, which recommended the construction of a new hospital, and the conversion of Lincoln and Watts into extended-care facilities. This initially also met with opposition, but eventually all parties agreed to the need for a new facility, after assurances that it would provide equal integrated facilities for African-American patients and medical staff. The $20 million bond measure passed by a 2-1 margin on November 4, 1968. This would lead to the construction of Durham County General Hospital on the former County Home site on N. Roxboro Road. Seemingly, the only way to move past the old divide between Watts and Lincoln was to start anew. This facility would be renamed Durham Regional Hospital in the 1990s.
(Reynolds does a wonderful job breaking down the political motivations and perverse incentives at play during the push to both grow Durham's hospital facilities and integrate them at the same time. )
Main entrance, 07.17.70
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)
The new hospital was completed and ready for patients in 1976. On October 10th of that year, all patients were transferred from Watts to Durham County General. (Patients at Lincoln had previously been transferred to Watts in September of that year.)
Watts was never transformed into a health facility - administration offices and the nursing school remained on site until the early 1980s. It presented an ideal venue for another institution, however.
The idea of a 'magnet-school-for-North-Carolina' originated with Governor Terry Sanford, and was continued by Jim Hunt. In 1977, the goal of establishing a public, residential high school that would attract talented students from throughout the state was brought before the General Assembly. In June 1978, the GA approved $150,000 in funds to begin a search process for a suitable site and establish the school. In November 1978, Durham was named the host city for the school, which would be known as the North Carolina School of Science and Math.
In September 1980, the school opened its doors with 150 high school students -the first state residential high school of its kind. It currently serves 650 high school Juniors and Seniors from throughout North Carolina with a specialized curriculum in math and science.
Former Watts Hospital Administration Building, 09.12.09
Former Men's Patient Pavilion, 09.12.09
Former Women's Patient Pavilion (left) and X-ray pavilion (right), 09.12.09
Former Wyche House/Nursing Students' Home, 09.12.09
Former Valinda Beall Watts Pavilion, 09.12.09
1953 "Brick Addition" to Watts Hospital, 09.12.09
Below, a drawing that NCSSM handed out during the Watts-Hillandale tour showing the buildings on the campus, dates, and historical uses. The drawing is also in Preston Reynolds' book.
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Rabu, 28 Oktober 2009
Mystery Photo - 10.29.09
"Mr. Evan Wilkins with butter he is selling which was made on his farm. Durham, North Carolina"
November 1939
(Courtesy Library of Congress)
Solution:
West Trinity and Bay Street - looking east. Thanks to Peter for taking a present-day shot:
Selasa, 27 Oktober 2009
1200 BROAD - THE PROFESSIONAL BUILDING
Looking east at the intersection of Broad and West Club, May 1938
(Courtesy Duke Forest Collection)
The northeast corner of Broad and West Club was initially residential in nature; the area to the west of Watts Hospital developed in earnest during the period between 1910 and 1930.
The Professional Building was built in ~1951, primarily as an office building for medical professionals. It is similar in character and function to fellow mid-century modern medical office building The Medical Arts Building on South Gregson St.
Professional Building ~1950s
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
Additional residential teardowns for future development, which would become parking lot for the Professional Building, looking west from Sixth Street, 10.24.53
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
After the departure of Watts Hospital, most of the medical practices left Broad Street and headed northward to office parks past I-85. However, the now-Lane Professional Building still houses dentistry and holistic medicine practices, per a quick googling.
Professional Building, 06.27.09
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Senin, 26 Oktober 2009
1122-1124 BROAD
Looking west towards W. Club and Broad St., May 1938.
1122-1124 Broad was built in the early 1930s, and initially housed Hospital Pharmacy and a branch of the (Great) A&P (Tea Company.) 1122 became a Purity Stores branch grocery by 1941.
It remained this until 1960, when it became a Durham Bank and Trust Co. branch. When DB&T became CCB via merger, the
branch followed suit. It remained a bank branch into the 1990s.
Currently it houses Stage 1 Salon.
1122-1124 Broad, 07.26.09
No offense intended to the business, which I know nothing about, but I thought I had seen just about every misuse of the should-be-banned-from-existence palladian window with fake muntins, but on a 1930s masonry commercial structure is new one for me.. I think the fake shutters mounted outside the protruding brick surrounds on the side is the capper.
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Minggu, 25 Oktober 2009
1116 BROAD
Colonial Stores had been located at 1106 and 1108 Broad prior to building a new supermarket to the north of these structures in 1953.
Looking south on Broad Street at the construction site, 10.24.53
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
Below, the grand opening, looking northeast.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
By the early 1960s, Colonial Stores closed this location, which then became an Eckerd Drugstore.
Looking north, 10.20.62.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
By 1975, this was a Revco Drugstore, which it remained through the early 1990s. By the late 1990s, this was Pars Oriental Rugs.
Of late, the building has seen a serious rejuvenation with the addition of three great retail establishments: Watts Grocery, High Strung, and the Broad St. Cafe
1116 Broad, 06.27.09
Find this spot on a Google Map.
36.016531,-78.918938
Looking south on Broad Street at the construction site, 10.24.53
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
Below, the grand opening, looking northeast.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
By the early 1960s, Colonial Stores closed this location, which then became an Eckerd Drugstore.
Looking north, 10.20.62.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
By 1975, this was a Revco Drugstore, which it remained through the early 1990s. By the late 1990s, this was Pars Oriental Rugs.
Of late, the building has seen a serious rejuvenation with the addition of three great retail establishments: Watts Grocery, High Strung, and the Broad St. Cafe
1116 Broad, 06.27.09
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Sabtu, 24 Oktober 2009
Calendar Signing tomorrow, 7pm at the Regulator
I'm excited to be doing a calendar signing event at the Regulator tomorrow night (10/26) at 7pm. The Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau asked me to volunteer my time to help them put together the Durham Historical Calendar this year, and in future years. I chose a theme of Mills and Factories this year, and included a timeline with each month reminiscent of ED. It was fun to work on putting together a printed Durham history project versus the usual web-based work.
Feel free to stop by and say hello. Calendars are $9.99, and proceeds go to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Feel free to stop by and say hello. Calendars are $9.99, and proceeds go to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Kamis, 22 Oktober 2009
1108 BROAD
Looking south from near West Club at the north side of 1108 Broad, 10.24.53
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
1108 Broad was built in the late 1930s as a storefront for the Pickard Roofing Company. By the late 1940s, Colonial Stores Grocery had moved from a smaller space next door at 1106 Broad into this building.
By 1954, Colonial Stores had built a modern supermarket to the north of this building, and the building was occupied by Browning and Garrard Pluming Company and "Rich Plan of Durham Inc. frozen foods."
1106-1116 Broad, 10.20.62
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
By 1965, it had become Norge Village Laundry, which it remained until ~1992.
In ~1992, it became home to the now iconic Green Room, which started life in the mid 1960s across the street as the Broad Street Sport Shop. Many people think that the Green Room is far older than that in this location - its aged appearance now, and in 1988's Bull Durham (across the street) probably cemented that notion. I wrote up some memories of Durham's pool hall culture at the 1119 Broad Street post.
1108 remains the Green Room today, a well-beloved place for a game of pool.
1108 Broad, 07.26.09
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Rabu, 21 Oktober 2009
Selasa, 20 Oktober 2009
1106 BROAD
1106 Broad, 06.27.09
1106 Broad is a more modern facade built upon at earlier structure, the Johnson-Prevost Dry Cleaning Plant, which was located here by the late 1920s. The facade appears to have been modified by the 1940s, briefly housing a Colonial Store grocery and C &F Dry Cleaners before Colonial Stores made successive moves northward in this block. By 1952, it housed C&F Dry Cleaners alone, which had been replaced by a branch of Durham's New Method Laundry by the 1960s.
By 1965, it housed Troy's Hi-Fi Stereo, later called Troy's Stereo Center. Between 1970 and 1975, this became Soundhaus. 1106 1/2 was established, which housed House of 1000 Picture Frames.
It currently houses the House of Frames / Craven Allen Gallery.
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Senin, 19 Oktober 2009
1102-1104 BROAD
1102-1104 Broad St., 06.27.09
1102-1104 Broad was built in the late 1940s, initially housing Sanders Florist at 1102 and the Hostess Restaurant at 1104. In ~1974, 1104 became the location of Somethyme, Mary Bacon's restaurant that was the forerunner for Pyewacket in Chapel Hill, and the very recently dearly departed Anotherthyme, located at 111 N. Gregson. Somethyme was here until 1986, and was followed by the Seventh Street Restaurant.
There have been a variety of other restaurants and clubs here in the intervening years, including several in the basement space under 1104.
Currently, the building houses the Palace International restaurant at 1102 and Joe VanGogh coffee shop at 1104.
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Minggu, 18 Oktober 2009
1123 BROAD ESSO STATION
1123 Broad, 1930s.
(Courtesy Joyce Tipton)
By the mid-1920s, the southwest corner of Broad and West Club had become a Standard Oil Co. Service Station. By 1941, this had become Dodson's filling station, which became an Esso station by 1948, and Dodson and Faucette Exxon by the 1960s.
Looking northwest, 1950s. The Esso service station is visible beyond 1131-1139 Broad St.
(Courtesy Barry Norman.)
I'm not sure when the service station went out of business/was torn down, but it appears to have been out of business by 1985. By the early 1990s, a Napa auto parts store had been built here, which has since become United Imports Auto Parts.
1123 Broad, 07.26.09
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Kamis, 15 Oktober 2009
1113-1117 BROAD (1131-1139 BROAD)
1113-1117 Broad, late 1950s.
(Courtesy Barry Norman)
1113 Broad St. was a frame commercial structure built in the 1920 as Callahan's Drug Store. The Hospital Barber Shop shared space with Callahan's by the 1930s. By 1941, 1113 housed The Owl - which is listed as a "confrs" (confectioners.) I'm not sure if this means pastries or candies or both - perhaps someone can enlighten me.
In the mid-1940s, what is now 1115-1117 Broad was built adjacent to 1113. Oddly, the original address was 1131-1139 Broad, despite the fact that it was built mid-block, with lower number (1123) to the north. I was quite confused by the city directories for awhile.
1131 housed Moon's Beauty Salon and Gift Shop, 1135-7 the Broadway Food Center grocery, and 1139 the Broad St. Drug Company in 1948.
In 1952, 1113 had become The Owl confectioners and Repair Shop, a natural combination. 1131 still housed Moon's beauty salon, and Broad St. Drug Co. had taken over 1135-7. Glenn-Crabtree Hardware Co. was located at 1139.
By 1960, 1113, the ever-pliable Owl, had transformed into a record shop and beer shop. By 1965, it became Maitland's Top Hat Tavern. The Rolling Pin Bake Shop was located at 1115. 1137 housed the Broad Street Sport Shop, a pool hall.
By 1970, 1117 (1135) had become the Broad Street Appliance Center, and 1119 (1137) still housed the Broad Street Sport Shop.
In 1975, 1115 was H&R Block, 1117 was Kirby Distributing, and 1119 the Broad Street Sport Shop.
Looking north, 1988.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)
In 1988, it appears the Top Hat Tavern was torn down. In 1990, the Broad Street Sport Shop became known as the Green Room, after being featured in the movie "Bull Durham," shot in ~1987.
As an aside, Durham has a pool hall culture/history that is largely forgotten at this point. I've hit on a few of these locations: The Union Sport Shop, the Duke Sport Shop, the Brass Rail, the Midway Sport Shop, Murray's Sport Shop, and I'm sure a multitude of others that I'm unaware of . A correspondent who went to Duke in the 1960s but spent more time in Durham becoming a serious pool player passed along these memories of the Duke Sport Shop at Five Points, and some commentary on the Broad Street Sport Shop:
"I spent many hundreds of hours in the Duke Sport Shop, but by the time I started playing pool (early 1965) it was right on West Main, just west of Five Points on the north side of the street. Tons of memories of that place:
---the catcalls you got from the peanut gallery every time you walked by with a woman, or if you were part of an anti-war march. They'd walk right up to the door and let you hear it loud and clear----but they never mentioned it later when you came in to play.
---the clock on the wall that ran backwards
---an old Mynah Bird who greeted the passage of about every ten seconds with a screeching cry of "YOUR MAMMY!!" The players got totally used to it after a while.
---the practice of salting the opening of your beer can to take away the tinny taste; and the habit of stuffing peanuts into the mouth of your Coke bottle to act as a filter of something or other (I never quite figured that one out)
---a rack "boy" who was actually a one armed man in his late 50's who was a dead ringer for Nikita Khrushchev. I still don't know how he could rack the balls so tightly with one hand.
---a local hustler named Tank, who was a Drew Carey lookalike who beat just about everybody but was rumored to cry at times if a road player cleaned him out
---the tobacco farmers who would blow much of the money they'd just made during the auction season, both at the Duke Sport Shop and at the Brass Rail
---and the highlight (to me) of the place, which was maybe the best snooker table in existence, 5 ft x 10 ft with pockets tight as a drum, and a nearly permanent five dollar ring game that anyone could join. If you could run out on that table, you could run out on any table in the world."
"Nice to know that The Green Room is still around. Bull Durham had to have rescued that place from the graveyard, since when it was in its original location across the street in the mid-80's (I was there a few times in 1984-85) it was the sorriest pool room in Durham. Terrible equipment, mediocre players and no action at all. The only reason that they chose it was obviously because at the time the movie was made it was the only pool room left in Durham. It was comical to see how they made it out to be the sort of place that actually had ever had more than five people in there---that seldom happened in real life, at least not before the movie made it into a minor tourist attraction."
In 1992, the Green Room moved across the street to 1108 Broad, where it remains a fixture as the last real pool hall in Durham.
1113 housed Altered Image Beauty Salon, 1115 the Mattress Outlet, 1117 "Special Flowers", 1117 1/2 Flippers Bar and Grill.
The entire span is owned by the adjacent Clements Funeral Home.
Looking northwest, 07.26.09
You've got me as to whether there are actually any operating businesses in here - it's incredible how moribund these storefronts are compared to the vibrant uses across the street. I don't think I'm assuming too much to think that Clements is only into this for the land/potential parking - and isn't exactly motivated to invest money to improve the appearance of these storefronts or attract interesting tenants. I'm beginning to think that there is some rule in effect in Durham - no active storefront can exist directly across the street from another active storefront. Except at Main 'Street' at Southpoint, of course.
I mentioned the waste of surface parking endemic to funeral homes and churches yesterday, and how damaging this was to the urban environment. We generally struggle with our addiction to immediately available and proximate parking in the urban environment as it is, but these high volume, low-duration uses are particularly problematic. Because parking is primarily a privately-delivered amenity, we end up with each private entity trying to solve its own parking problem, which is an inefficient use of land.
The best the public sector can typically do in practice is to eliminate ordinances mandating required parking, which is helpful in not oversizing private parking beyond what that business demands, but does little to size neighborhood/district parking for total neighborhood/district demand. Beyond publicly-provided parking, how do you get private entities to share their parking? It's unlikely that anyone is going to pay them for it unless land becomes expensive enough that each entity can't go around turning the lot next to them into surface parking.
I don't have a clear answer for this - we're terribly demanding of parking here, in my opinion. I can never believe complaints about having to parallel park and walk a block or two. If you're willing to do that, you'll never have too much trouble parking around Durham, in my experience. If everyone's parking would shrink by 40% at the same time, we'd all be fine, but individual businesses don't dare shrink their available parking too much, lest someone drive down the street to the competing Big Swath O' Asphalt Store.
I'd like to see some kind of incentive system for reducing parking - property tax reduction for ratios less than x/square feet or unit - or something similar. And perhaps entities that have a high probability for shared use - churches, schools, funeral homes, etc. - could trigger a shared use mandate of some kind. Ideas?
Find this spot on a Google Map.
Rabu, 14 Oktober 2009
Selasa, 13 Oktober 2009
1105-1109 BROAD STREET
Clyde Kelly Funeral Home, 1950.
1105 Broad Street appears to have been the home of JE Smith before its conversion to the Clyde Kelly funeral home in the late 1930s or early 1940s. The business became the Clements Funeral Home in the late 1950s.
The business is still in operation today. The house is somewhere behind all that stuff in front.
1105-1109 Broad St., 06.27.09
The funeral home has continued to acquire land to the north to expand parking, which I'll write more about in my next post. Like churches, funeral homes eat up immense amounts of surface parking for very intermittent peak usage - a similar situation exists behind Howerton-Bryant and Hall-Wynne on West Main St. These huge swaths of asphalt are particularly difficult in urban areas - ideally, these type of institutions come up with shared parking arrangements with nearby neighbors, but in practice, outside of major metro areas, it rarely happens.
Find this spot on a Google Map.
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