1025 MONMOUTH - SALMON APARTMENTS (NO 1)

1025 Monmouth, 1980

Even when I don't have time to do in-depth research, I just love these 1920s-1930s apartment buildings.


1025 Monmouth, 02.24.10

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36.006384,-78.910469

SALMON HOUSE

Salmon House, 1980

Per the historic inventory, Edward Currin built the house at 512 Watts St. in ~1908. Currin moved to Richmond in 1910, and leaed the house for 3 years. In 1913, he sold the house to John T. Salmon, a local contractor. Salmon moved away in 1931. In 1935, a fire seriously damaged the house, and Salmon, who had been leasing the structure as apartments, rebuilt the house from the original foundation, reproducing the original detail and adding a rear wing.

The house was leased as apartments after reconstruction, termed the "Salmon Apartments No. 2." (The Salmon Apartments are located directly to the east of this building at 1025 Monmouth) and has remained an apartment building since that time.



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36.006396,-78.910943

BASSETT-BROWN HOUSE

John Spencer Bassett, whose tenure at Trinity College and importance in the growth of academic freedom via the 'Bassett Affair' I've previously profiled lived in one of the Faculty Row houses until 1905, when he started construction on the house at 410 N. Buchanan Blvd. Per the Duke Archives, Bassett left for Northampton, MA in 1906.

It's difficult to track who lived in the house from 1906 to 1919, but it appears that perhaps the Loveless family lived in the house in 1907-1911. Frank C. Brown, English professor at Trinity College (who had lived on Faculty Row as well) moved into the house at 410 N. Buchanan in 1916 after the Faculty Row houses were moved off campus. He and his wife lived in the house through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. It appears that his wife Mary lived in the house through ~1955, at which point it was occupied by Josiah Murray.

It appears that local realtor and City Council member Eugene Brown and his wife bought the house from the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man in 1980, and still reside in the house.





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36.006261,-78.911969

500 WATTS

500 Watts, northeast, 1926


500 Watts, northeast, 07.25.10

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36.00569,-78.91087

DUKE-WANNAMAKER HOUSE / RHINE INSTITUTE / DUKE CATHOLIC CENTER

Duke-Wannamaker House, 1980.

A house with a rather unique history sits at 402 N. Buchanan Blvd.

Per the historic inventory, BN Duke had this house built for the use of Trinity College at some point prior to 1920. It was used as a boarding house for professors and, during the Women's College years, a women's dormitory before being purchased by WH Wannamaker.

The house seems to appear in the city directories in 1919, occupied by WH Wannamaker. It seems likely that Wannamaker either built or occupied the house when his house on Faculty Row (which he was living in as of 1915) was moved to W. Trinity Ave. in 1916. Wannamaker was a professor of German, Dean of Trinity College, and a Vice Chancellor of Duke. He also was editor of the South Atlantic Quarterly

Wannamaker appears to have been no longer living in the house by 1934, at which point it was occupied by Rev. George Matthis. By 1940, it was occupied by Albert Kenyon. By 1944, Rev. Dwight M. Chalmers. By 1950, the house had been converted into apartments.

It remained apartments until 1965, when it was donated by "Mrs. Avery" per the historic inventory to the no-longer-so-welcome-on-campus Rhine Institute - i.e. the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, i.e. the former Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, which had been housed in the West Duke Building on East Campus since 1927, when it was founded by William McDougall and Joseph Rhine. The FRNM was housed at 402 N. Buchanan from 1965-2002, where its denizens studied psychics using


"modern techniques that allow more subtle measurements of psi, such as by looking at the physiological changes or bioenergy characteristics of psychics and healers, or by measuring the telepathic awareness of emotional targets in a simulated dream-like situation. Efforts are made to detect clues that come directly from the psi experiencers themselves, whether they are healers, intuitives, or simply ordinary people who have these extraordinary experiences."

In 2002, the FRNM moved to a new building on Campus Walk Avenue. With the institute so exorcised (you have no idea how long I've been waiting to use this line) the building was claimed by the Duke Catholic Center, who renovated the house with an abundance of vinyl siding and windows; they continue to occupy the house today.


402 N. Buchanan, 03.13.10

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36.005768,-78.912131

FLOWERS-SPEARS HOUSE

Flowers-Spears House, 1980

Per the historic inventory, WW Flowers, president of the Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company commissioned well-known Charlotte architecture firm CC Hook to design the house at 501 Watts St. for his father, George Washington Flowers in the early 1910s.


Rear of the Flowers-Spears House, 06.19.57

The contractor was John T. Salmon, who lived nearby at 512 Watts. St. Flowers evidently attached stipulations to the deed that the house always serve as a family gathering place. By the 1970s, it was occupied by Estelle Flowers Spears, WW Flowers' sister. It remains in the Spears family.



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36.005786,-78.911547

200 WATTS - WEST SIDE

200 block of Watts St., west side, looking south - 1926. The Beverly Apartments are visible at the end of the block.


Same block, 07.26.10

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36.002956,-78.911492

This way to Lakewood Amusement Park....

Many thanks to reader H.E., who alerted me that, courtesy of our NCDOT-denuded streets downtown, cobblestones and streetcar tracks were now visible along Kent Street. Many readers will know/remember that this route extended west from downtown along Chapel Hill St., turning southwest at Kent on its way to Lakewood Amusement Park at the end of the line. See this post I did ~3 years ago for a map I made of the rail lines in Durham during the early 20th century.

Very exciting to have these tracks see the light of day again. I'm hoping that these will be reburied, unlike the ones pulled up downtown during our streetscape work - it makes me glad to know that this archeological stratum is preserved beneath the asphalt.


Tracks and cobblestones on Kent St., 07.24.10


Tracks and cobblestones on Kent St., 07.24.10

Below, the curve at Kent and Morehead....


07.24.10

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35.992064,-78.91979

EAKES HOUSE - 301 WATTS

Eakes House, 1980

The land on which the Eakes-Mabry house sits was purchased in 1909 by JS Hall, of the Hall-Wynne Funeral Home and sold in August 1909 to John L. Eakes, proprietor of the Model Steam Laundry on West Main St. It appears that Hall sold only the land, Eakes built the house. By 1923, it was the home of Jesse Ormond, a teacher at Trinity College, and by the 1950s-1960s, Mrs. Myrtle Harris lived in the house.


Eakes House, 10.03.09

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36.003605,-78.911528

NACHAMSON HOUSE

Nachamson House, 1980

The Nachamson House, another Renaissance Revival house on Minerva - though not as grand as the Kronheimer house, was built by another downtown Durham retailer. Eli and Jenny Nachamson moved to Durham from Kinston in the mid-1920s to start the United Dollar Stores Company on West Main St. They built the house on Minerva St. in 1928. Their daughter, Sara Nachamson Evans, married 'Mutt' Evans, and that couple assumed ownership of the store.


Nachamson House, 07.20.10


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36.004247,-78.90884

KRONHEIMER HOUSE

Kronheimer House, 1925.

Benjamin Franklin Kronheimer built the Kronheimer Department Store at 315 West Main St. around ~1900 ; Kronheimer built his Renaissance Revival residence in Trinity Park in the early to mid 1920s . Kronheimer only lived in the house a few years, as he died in 1938.


Kronheimer House, 1980.

Unfortunately, I can find little or nothing in the secondary sources about Kronheimer or Kronheimer's beyond this - if anyone wishes to do the primary research to expound upon this information, please feel free to comment.


Kronheimer House, 10.03.09

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36.004205,-78.909731

HARVEY STONE HOUSE - 1020 URBAN

Harvey Stone House, 1940


Harvey Stone House, 1980

The Harvey Stone house is particularly intriguing for its chronologic incongruity with its neighbors - although it is now part of a full block, it sat slightly apart from the concentration of housing development along Watts and Guess Road during the first decade of the 20th century. Stone was a contractor and house mover.


Aerial over Trinity College ~1920 - the roof of the Harvey Stone house can be seen in the background, just beyond the George Watts School. By this period, development had progressed north on Watts Street to be within 1/2 block of the house.


Harvey Stone House, 03.13.10

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36.008963,-78.909725

WATTS STREET BAPTIST CHURCH

Watts Street Baptist Church, 1925

Watts Street Baptist Church was organized in 1923 to accomodate a growing Baptist community in north/west Durham that was somewhat far from First Baptist and Second/Temple Baptist.

The initial group raised funds for a sanctuary, which was built in the Gothic Revival style, using stone similar to that utilized for the wall constructed around now-East Campus.


Watts Street Baptist Church, 1950s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

It remains an active congregation.


Watts Street Baptist, 10.03.09.

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36.009103,-78.910731

EVANS HOUSE - 1021 DACIAN

Still frame from HLW film of Durham, showing the Evans house soon after construction, ~1940

The Evans house was built in 1937 by Eli Evans and his wife Sara; Evans had come to Chapel Hill to attend UNC from Fayetteville, and Sara had come to Durham with her parents, the Nachamsons, who started United Dollar Stores on West Main Street. Eli and Sara were married in 1928 and took over the United Dollar Stores - which would become Evans' United Department Store - in 1929.

I'm unsure where they lived prior to commissioning this house, but they hired Durham architects Atwood and Weeks to design the house in a very-unique-for-Durham International Style in 1938. Per the Historic Inventory, "the builder of the house tested the design by constructing clay models to be sure that the curved wall of glass brick would be structurally sound."

The house was built as a duplex, and the Evans rented out the second floor apartment. They lived in the house until 1950, when they moved to another modernist house at 1401 Forestview in Forest Hills. Evans would serve Durham as its mayor from 1951-1963.

The house later became a sorority house, per the historic inventory, with the large basement "used as a game room." It was subsequently further divided into apartments. In 1994, the then-owners received a Pyne award from Preservation Durham for restoration of the house.


Evans House, 03.13.10

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36.007406,-78.910087

322-328 WEST MAIN / UNITED DEPARTMENT STORE / BELK-LEGGETT

United Dollar Stores Company was started by Eli and Jenny Nachamson after they moved from Kinston to Durham in 1921 - the Nachamson family had evidently been successful retailers in the eastern part of North Carolina for at least a generation prior to their move, though I have no details. The United Dollar Store first appears in the city directories at 319-321 West Main in 1923. Their daughter Sara attended Duke University during the late 1920s, and began to manage the store when her father fell ill.

In January 1928, she married Emmanuel J. ("Mutt") Evans, who had come to UNC from Fayetteville, at the Washington Duke Hotel - the couple became the sole owners and proprietors of the store in 1929, and the buildings at 322-328 West Main were built by the late 1920s, taking the place of earlier frame structures. At some point thereafter, it became known as "Evans United Dollar Store"


United Dollar Stores - around 1940.


Aerial showing the United and Belk facades along the north side of the 300 block of West Main St., late 1940s.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

In the 1950s, 'Mutt' Evans became mayor of Durham and served for six terms, holding together a diverse coalition of interests. United had been notable as one of the very few white-owned establishments that served African-Americans and had an integrated lunch counter. (There is an interesting anecdote in the excellent "The Provincials," written by Evans' son Eli, about how a judge told Evans that he would need to segregate the lunch counter; Evan refused, telling the judge (Bus Borland,) "Bus, you'll have to close the store if you want me to do that." Evans counsel discovered that the legal precedent had only included seated counters - so Evans raised the entire counter to elbow height and took out to stools, arguing that the case law didn't apply to standing counters. The judge agreed.)


Evans United, 06.08.58.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

In the early 1960s, it became clear that neither of the Evans children were going to take over the family business, and Sara and Mutt sold the business to Belk, which expanded into the former United buildings. In bricking up the windows and covering the facades, they managed to make 326-328 partly collapse.


326-328 West Main (the westernmost buildings) suffered a partial collapse during all of the manipulation of its facade.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The completed facade, 1962. Looking east on West Main St.

(Courtesy Durham County Library)

Belk lasted longer than most of the other department stores downtown. But eventually, the lure of the mall was too much, and in 1975, Belk departed for the now-departed South Square. After attempts to sell the building (and attempts to find a 'shopping center' tenant to turn it into a "minimall" by the Zuchelli, Hunter and Assoc. consulting firm, hired by Nello Teer to "try to bring something back to downtown") the owners prepared to demolish the buildings. John Flowers, president of the Historic Preservation Society, said that the historic society had no interest in the future of the building, according to contemporaneous Herald-Sun article - that this group of buildings "[was] not a great piece of architecture." There was a great deal of conviction that the vacant lot would be more appealing for future development than the buildings.

In August 1977, the buildings were torn down.


Looking northwest, August 1977.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)


Looking south, August 1977.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)


Looking southeast, August 1977.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)


Looking northeast.
(Courtesy Durham County Library)

The development never came - as was the case with any number of 'speculative demolitions' downtown. This space became surface parking, which it remains.


Site of 326-328 West Main, 02.11.10

I hope that Self-Help, the owner of this parking lot, eventually brings facades back to the north side of West Main St. along this block - it would be truly transformative. There is the opportunity to leave the access to Ninth St. Bakery open from East Chapel Hill, with some accompanying parking there - perhaps NSB would actually occupy one of the storefronts on West Main.

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35.996607,-78.90318

610 NORTH BUCHANAN - TYREE HOUSE / 'LACROSSE HOUSE'

610 N. Buchanan Blvd., 1980
(Courtesy State Archives)

The land on which 610 Buchanan sat was conveyed with the land on the corner of N. Buchanan and Urban in 1912 from RO Everett to Wayne V. O'Briant. O'Briant sold off one of the lots, which would become 610 N. Buchanan, to William A. Tyree and his wife Helen in September 1926 - they likely built the house on the lot soon thereafter.

William was a Durham native and a 1922 graduate of Trinity College - he would go on to become director of the "Business Division" at Duke, an instructor at Duke, and a "field spec" (not sure what that is) at Duke. Helen and William's son Fred would grow up in the house during the 1940s and 50s and become a 1961 Duke graduate, living in the house while he attended Duke.


Captioned "Wreck on Buchanan Blvd." July 22, 1961.
(Courtesy Herald-Sun)

It appears that the Tyree family lived at 610 N. Buchanan until the death of William Tyree in 1990 - when the estate sold the property to Guy Solie. It then became part of the Trinity Properties/Solie empire of college student housing in Trinity Park until 2006, when Duke - in an effort to mitigate some of the conflict between the up-lifted houses of Trinity Park and the one-college-student-on-the lease/10-in-the-house nature of the Solie properties - purchased multiple Solie properties, reselling them to renovators.

Before that could happen with 610 N. Buchanan, however, the 'Duke Lacrosse Scandal' occurred, with the house accused as the venue of perpetration. Since then, and since the dismissal of that case, the house has stood empty.

On July 12, 2010, Duke demolished the house, without a public plan as to what to do with the lot.


Demolition of 610 N. Buchanan, 07.12.10
(Courtesy WRAL)

The quotes in the WRAL story are telling as to the unfortunate motivation - the house reminds people of something they'd like to forget, and I'm sure they'd like to obviate any future ability to point to the 'Duke Lacrosse House.'


610 North Buchanan, 07.12.10

Which is all rather unfortunate, because it was a nice enough little house - I'm sure it had some physical deterioration that was fixable by someone who isn't scared of broken houses. But all sorts of unfortunate or unpleasant things happen in houses - I would contend that the most effective way to move that property on from circa 2006 would have been to see it renovated and occupied by some nice people that would write a new chapter in its history. But for many, somehow putting the house (and its 80 year pre-lacrosse history) in the dump solves - something. I like to say that the great fault of old houses is that, unlike their occupants who break the law or anger people in some way, they can't run away when angry/upset/impotent-feeling people need to vent their frustration somewhere.

But I am sure that Duke's plan is actually to build a faux/ replicant Duke Lacrosse House in place of the Tyree house, in order to 'preserve it' - but in a new, improved way.

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36.008323,-78.91205

WATTS STREET GROCERY / 1202 WATTS STREET

Former Watts Street Grocery, 1980.

There actually was a Watts (Street) Grocery before the restaurant of the same name opened in fall of 2007. Serving Trinity Park since, at the latest, the 1920s, the Watts Street Grocery was helmed by Robert C. Berry from the early 1930s to the mid 1940s. In the late 1940s, Jack Ennis was the proprietor. From 1950 to 1980, Mr. and Mrs. Ira J. Welch operated the store, which "handle[d] a general line of groceries and meats." In 1980, the store closed. I am unsure as to whether there were additional commercial uses of the store (such as "The Home Makers Shoppe") after that point, but it currently is used as shared office/studio space.


1202 Watts St., 10.09.09

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