GEORGE WATTS ELEMENTARY

Watts Elementary at or near completion, 1918

George Watts Elementary is the oldest school building in Durham still serving in its original capacity. (The oldest extant school building is the former YE Smith school on South Driver St.)

Watts Elementary was built in 1918 according to the design of architect C. Miller Euler. Originally symmetrical, with a combination of Deco and neoclassical elements, the school was placed at the northeastern edge of rapidly developing Trinity Park.


Circa 1920 bird's eye view of Trinity College and Trinity Park, with the Watts School visible at the edge of the housing development.

Below, H. Lee Waters film footage of Watts Elementary in the late 1930s. By this point, the right entry to the school had been widened/modified.




Watts School, 1950s.

Additions have been made to the west of the original school building; the school remains a vibrant part of the neighborhood, and, as one would expect, appears to have a great deal of parental (and alumni) involvement. I'm always thrilled to see neighborhood schools thriving (at least from an outsider's perspective.) The logic behind locating schools where kids can neither walk nor bike to them seems decidedly twisted to me.


Watts School, 10.03.09

Find this spot on a Google Map.


36.008199,-78.910762

Mystery Photo - 03.25.10

Durham, late 1960s.

313 WEST MAIN ST.

300 West Main St. looking east, 1900.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection)

313 West Main is one of those downtown commercial structures that may be, in Durham terms, quite old, or sequentially replaced, or modified so heavily over the years that it isn't easily tied to its origins.

Regardless, the earliest concentration of commercial structures that could be called 'downtown' clustered between Depot (Corcoran) St. and Roxboro Road. The area west of Depot/Corcoran to Five Points was largely a mixture of frame dwellings, small frame stores, frame warehouses, and the like. By the 1890-1900 era, this had begun to change; buildings such as the structure on the northeast corner of West Chapel Hill and Morris St. (the heavily-modified remnant of which is in the news of late given its pending sale by the city) and the original Armory Building began to appear in the Five Points area.

It is during this period that a masonry structure was built at 313 West Main (although the address was different at the time.) In the picture above, taken from near Five Points looking east on West Main St., you can see the Armory Building, the smaller two story structure to its right, and the preponderance of frame storefronts/warehouses that typified the area in the decade prior to 1900.

This structure housed the Durham Steam Laundry and the Durham Box Co. in the late 1890s. By the first decade of the 20th century, it is listed as the location of the Durham Steam Laundry, but no longer the box purveyors.


Looking west along West Main St., 1905. In the left foreground, one can see the three-story Kronheimer Building at 315 West Main. 313 is immediately to its left/foreground, and the towers of the Armory Building are visible to its left, in the immediate foreground.

By 1907, the Steam Laundry moved into the Armory Building, and 313 became a plumbing supply store.

By 1913, it appears that the building may be the same, but its footprint is deeper than in 1907. The Armory Building to its east has been demolished or heavily modified into two shorter structures.


1910s view, showing the three structures between the CD Kenney and new Armory Building at 301 West Main. and the Kronheimer Building. 313 is almost completely obscured by the utility poles.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection)

In 1926, the Hill Building replaced the two structures that may or may not have been part of the old Armory building. At that time, 313 was either replaced or heavily remodeled to approximate its current form. The picture below barely shows the front facade, to the right of the Hill Building, but the simple stuccoed pilasters are visible; it also appears to originally have had a structural awning of some sort, suggesting perhaps a more Spanish Revival form than is evident now.


(Courtesy Durham County Library)

By the 40s, 313 West Main housed the Kinney Company shoe store.


Looking at 301, 313, and 315 West Main, 11.25.48
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

A 1950s color shot suggests that the facade may have been red.


1950s view of the structure, looking east on West Main St.
(Courtesy Duke University)

By the mid-1950s, the facade signage/style had been changed to read "Kinney's Shoes"


09.18.55 view of the same three buildings, with the mostly demolished 301 West Main (2nd Armory building) in the foreground.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


1960s view of the facade.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

By the 1970s, it appears that Kinney's Shoes closed. I haven't done the city directory research to identify what was housed in the building from the 1970s-1990s, so feel free to fill me in.

In 2001, the Republik, a creative agency, renovated the building for their offices. They remained here until 2009, when they moved to Rigsbee Ave., and the building became home to Heather Garrett Design.


313 West Main, 02.24.10

Find this spot on a Google Map.


35.996167,-78.902986

Gulf Station Saved?

In better news, it appears that Bob Chapman plans to restore the fantastic little former Gulf Station at the southeast corner of W. Geer and Foster. The Herald-Sun has more details on their site.

Rivera House Demolished?

Hat tip to AW for passing along the news that Central has demolished the Rivera House. Has anyone else been by there, and does anyone know if they got permission to do so? Last word was that the demolition was denied after NCSHPO declared the house of statewide significance.

Between this, the 500 block of East Main, and the Graybar Building, the past year has not been a boon for preservation in Durham. All demolitions were by public/publicly-funded entities as well - which has always been the big problem in Durham, and evidently always will be.

Mystery Photo - 03.11.10

(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection - Wyatt Dixon Collection)

MERRITT HOUSE

View of Faculty Row, looking north. The Merritt House is to the right - only a piece of the Pegram House is visible. Epworth Hall is visible at the end of the road.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection)


Part of an excellent map of Trinity College in 1902 from Digital Durham's collection
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. Scanned by Digital Durham)

I'd have to consider this post a placeholder of sorts, as I have very little information regarding the fifth and last Faculty Row house, labelled above as the "Merritt House." I've been unable to determine anything about Merritt, and I'm not sure who the other occupants of the house might be. I welcome the input of some intrepid ED readers...


Merritt House, 1913.


View from the tower of the original Washington Duke building, 1897, looking southeast towards downtown. The Pegram house is in the left foreground, and the Merritt House is in the right foreground. In the immediate background is the original Watts Hospital.

The Merritt House is the only one of the five Faculty Row houses to not be moved intact off of the campus. Evidently, it was disassembled and the materials used to construct a house in Trinity Heights, which was later demolished. I don't know where this house was located.

Find this spot on a Google Map.


36.003601,-78.912746

BASSETT HOUSE

1902 Trinity College map.
(Courtesy Duke Archives / Digitized by Digital Durham)

One of the four (out of an original five) surviving houses from Trinity College's 'Faculty Row', the house currently located at 1017 West Trinity Avenue is most well known as the house of John Spencer Bassett, a Trinity College History professor. Bassett, in turn, is most well known for what became known as the 'Bassett Affair' of 1903.


1913 overlay on present day satellite photo.

Bassett was born in 1867 and graduated from Trinity College (in Randolph County) in 1886; he taught "public school in Durham" (presumably at the City Graded School in the old Wright Factory on West Main) before leaving to complete a PhD in History from Johns Hopkins.

Bassett joined the faculty at Trinity College . Among local history geeks, he is known for his efforts (and that of his students so tasked) to gather local oral histories - many of the stories and information we have about places like Pinhook are as a result of their efforts. Bassett became a driving force behind the Trinity Historical Society (founded by Stephen B. Weeks, another early NC historian and 'grandson-in-law' Senator Willie P. Mangum who is buried in the cemetery at the Walnut Hall site) and mobilized the entire community to collect and archive items important to Southern history.

I'll quote from Bassett's history page on the Duke Archives website:

Students, administrators, and alumni combed their attics donating Confederate money, Indian relics, travel souvenirs, and political memorabilia as well as volumes of books, pamphlets, religious and secular newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. After a few years Bassett proudly reported to Adams [Bassett's mentor and professor at Hopkins] that over 2,000 documents had been collected for use in primary research. Soon "manager of the library" was added to his varied duties.

In 1906 an analysis of society meetings revealed that historical presentations had been made by 53 students, 38 faculty and 6 visiting scholars. Following the Hopkins example of a series of published research, Bassett began an annual publication of historical papers of the Trinity society in 1897. At first a cheaply reproduced set of reprints of student articles from the campus magazine, The Archive, the series became more sophisticated and widely distributed when the administration enthusiastically endorsed it. Some noteworthy early articles were on the Ku Klux Klan, the North Carolina Manumission Society, and the North Carolina Governor during Reconstruction, William W. Holden. Bassett proudly wrote Adams, "So far as I know, this is but one of three [academic] historical publications in the South. It is the only one in North Carolina."

The society also sponsored an annual patriotic town-gown civic rally intentionally set on February 22, the birth of George Washington, and not on a date commemorating a Confederate hero. Of the historical society a respected historian later wrote, "There is reason to believe no local historical association ever succeeded better than the Society at Trinity College in effecting its program." In yet another corollary to his passion for learning, Bassett launched a secret student honor society based on academic distinction and service. Named 9019, presumably because nineteen qualifying members had averages of above ninety, the society was a precursor to Phi Beta Kappa which was chartered in 1919.

Surprisingly these extracurricular endeavors were carried on despite a teaching load of fifteen and sometimes eighteen hours a semester. Growing slowly in its early years in Durham, Trinity did not have the means to support more than a single faculty member per discipline. Having to teach history courses far afield of his primary interests, Bassett once privately lamented over the continuance of a "troublesome" French class. Intermittently he introduced new courses such as a senior seminar in Contemporary History which emphasized class reports with special attention to Southern development. Another course, the History of North Carolina, offered students a chance "to learn methods of original research and to gain an impetus to historical writing and the collection of historical materials."

Extremely popular on campus and confident in his ability which was earning accolades in the region and nation, Bassett, nevertheless, had periodic misgivings about life at Trinity and in his native South. He believed his salary to be inadequate for growing family responsibilities and the teaching load constantly interfered with time for research and writing. He also became exasperated at the slow pace of change in the region. Seeking a wider audience than a single college campus, he successfully launched a journal of thought and action, The South Atlantic Quarterly, in 1902.

Bassett also made significant contributions to methods of study, archiving, and thought within the field of history - as further detailed on this Duke archives page.

The South Atlantic Quarterly would soon become a well-known and reputable academic journal, which is still published today. Interestingly, William Wannamaker, whose house sat and sits next door to Bassett's would become later become editor of the SAQ.

His efforts within Trinity and Durham, and in founding the SAQ would give Bassett a memorable place in the history of the college and town, but he is remembered by a broader audience for what would become known as the "Bassett Affair."

Bassett had begun writing on the topic of race and the South from the earliest issues of the SAQ. He published an article entitled "Two Negro Leaders" in which he gave an insightful analysis of the philosophies of WEB DuBois and Booker T. Washington, comparing and contrasting the two schools of thought. It's important to place this in context - North Carolina in 1902 was 4 years removed from the 1898 Wilmington riot and massacre of African-Americans, and fully in the throes of the re-entrenchment of Southern white power following reconstruction. For a white male to write an article in the south treating WEB DuBois and Booker T. Washington as not only worthwhile of consideration, but philsophers in their own right was, to say the least, against the grain. While this article did not gain significant recognition, Bassett showed that his desire was to directly challenge the Southern orthodoxy, and that he would not be ignored in that effort. In October 1903, Bassett published an article in the SAQ called "Stirring Up the Fires of Race Antipathy," which would ignite significant controversy and become a seminal moment in the development of the concept of academic freedom. Again, from the Duke Archives:

To gain attention, Bassett later admitted to doing a very unprofessional thing. With galley proofs of an editorial in hand, he inserted a sentence praising the life of Booker T. Washington and ranking him second in comparison to Robert E. Lee of Southerners born in a hundred years. [ "...Booker T. Washington [is] the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years..."] Such a sentiment invited controversy at a time when race baiting was commonplace due to the revival of bitter partisan politics with the division of the Democratic Party and the rise of the Populist third party and revival of the Republican Party. State Democratic leaders in nearby Raleigh who were also represented on the Trinity College Board of Trustees demanded that Professor Bassett be fired. When the attack spread to the college and parents were urged to withdraw their children from school and churchmen were encouraged not to recommend the college to prospective students, Bassett offered his resignation. Lines clearly were drawn between a partisan Democratic press that blatantly referred to the historian as "Professor bASSett" who threatened the accepted "southern way of life" and between proponents of the then developing concept of academic freedom. On December 2, 1903, at about 3:00 a. m., the Trinity Board of Trustees voted 18 to 7 not to accept the resignation of Bassett. Jubilant students who had been listening to the debate through sky lights and heating registers built bonfires and celebrated until dawn. It was later revealed that President Kilgo and the college faculty were prepared to resign if the trustees had voted to dismiss Bassett. A year later President Theodore Roosevelt spoke in Durham extolling Trinity's courageous stand for academic freedom.


Roosevelt speaking from his open train platform - looking northwest from West Pettigrew St. (north of the later Smith Warehouse) across the railroad tracks towards the main entrance to Trinity College on West Main St. The main building (the Washington Duke Building) is in the background. Note also the stopped streetcars on West Main St. with people sitting on the roofs.
(Courtesy Duke Archives)

Despite predictions of the demise of Trinity College following the support for Bassett, enrollment grew, and the 'Affair' became known as a brave stand that gave strength to the ethic of academic freedom nationally.

Bassett began construction of a new house on Guess Road, now 410 N. Buchanan Blvd. in 1905. I'm unsure as to whether he ever lived in the house, as he accepted an offer to teach at Smith College and moved to Northampton, MA in 1906. Per the Duke Archives:

Bassett never commented publicly on his move but he alluded to several reasons in private correspondence. There was no question that he welcomed a reduced teaching load with increased time for research and writing. He also looked forward to living in New England. He confided to his Trinity colleague, William K. Boyd, that the South was too used to antiquarianism and arousement instead of history and scholarly thinking , a state, he believed, any cultured community ought to have long passed. He also tired of the tension he felt between his role as a scholar and the pull to be a reformer in a region he cared very much about. He concluded that he could not write history and direct public sentiment at the same time. His decided first choice was to write history. Bassett corresponded with numerous friends in the South throughout his life and he worked diligently to get southern topics included in meetings of professional associations. Living until 1928, he never lost his love for his native region, although he never regretted his move north either.

Bassett's Faculty Row house was moved with the other Faculty Row houses in 1916, when Guess Road was widened and the wall around Trinity College was built. It was relocated to 1017 West Trinity Avenue, where it still stands.


Bassett House, 02.21.10

Find this spot on a Google Map.


36.005289,-78.909677

Mystery Photo - 03.04.10

(Courtesy UNC, Billy Barnes Collection)

The question is, can you tell where the photo is taken from? In the background, left to right:
NC Mutual Bldg
American Tobacco
Austin-Heaton Flour Mill

CRANFORD-WANNAMAKER HOUSE

Cranford-Wannamaker house from Faculty Row, 1890s
(Courtesy Duke Archives.

Another of the four remaining of the five original five Faculty Row houses on the campus of Trinity College now sits at 1019 West Trinity Avenue. Built contemporaneously with the original college in 1891, the house was built according to plans of an unknown New York architect, and was perhaps the most elaborate of the five. The present crenelated tower originally supported an onion-shaped dome at its peak, which was removed around 1900.


1902 Map of Trinity College.
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. Scanned by Digital Durham)


1913 Sanborn overlay on present-day satellite imagery.

As with all of the Faculty Row houses, this one provided housing for several professors during its tenure on the college campus. The first was William Cranford, a professor of Greek and later a Dean of the College. The most renowned occupant was William H. Wannamaker, who held multiple administrative posts at the college, helped build the athletics program at the college, and became editor of the South Atlantic Quarterly

The house was moved to 1019 West Trinity Avenue in 1916 when Guess Road (Buchanan Blvd.) was widened and the stone wall was built around the Trinity College campus. It still stands at this location.


1019 W. Trinity, 02.21.10

Find this spot on a Google Map.


36.005347,-78.909954

CROWELL HOUSE

Faculty Row houses, 1902 - the house is labelled as the "Mims" house
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. Scanned by Digital Durham)

Another of the 'Faculty Row' houses built by Trinity College in 1891 during the original Durham campus construction is known as the Crowell House, for its first occupant, John Franklin Crowell. All five Faculty Row houses were built from plans ordered from a New York architect. FPer the historic inventory:

"Crowell was President of Trinity College from 1887 to 1895 and the director of the move of the college from Randolph County to Durham in 1892. He was a strong believer in the academic advantages provided by an urban environment; beyond promoting the move to Durham, Crowell worked very hard to improve the educational facilities of the college and to upgrade its faculty. In addition to teaching, administering the college, and cataloging the combined book collections of the Literary Society, Crowell introduced intercollegiate football to Trinity College. In the early years of the 20th century, he pursued a second distinguished career as an economist and statistician in New York."


1913 Sanborn map overlay showing the location of the Crowell House.

Four of the Faculty Row houses were moved intact from the campus in 1916, and the fifth was dismantled. The widening of Guess Road and the construction of the stone wall around the campus prompted the college to insist upon the removal of the houses. They gave them to the professors living in the houses at the time, although it seems that it was up to the professors to move them.

The Crowell House was moved to 504 Watts St., where it remains, intact.


Crowell House, 02.21.10

Find this spot on a Google Map.


36.00589,-78.910926