BERRY-AUERBACH HOUSE / 'THE COMPOUND'

Looking west on West Club Blvd. from Norton St., 1950s - the Berry House is the first fully-visible house on the right.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

Thank you to David Auerbach for much of the information contained in this post

The house at West Club Boulevard (originally North Road) was built by Thomas Berry - although the register of deeds has wonderfully digitized most of their records, their index fails in this case, and I can only say that Thomas and his wife Mary appear in the city directory between 1920 and 1923. Whether Thomas built the house himself is unclear; David Auerbach notes that during restoration, they found a baseboard with "Berry" written in crayon on the reverse.

Per information provided to David by Berry family members, the original house had an outhouse in the backyard, as well as a concrete basin which was to be filled with water to keep items cool in the summer. The extended Berry family evidently lived in the house; the relative noted that two Berry aunts were traveling salespeople - they would leave an extension ladder in the front yard to allow them to enter the upstairs bedrooms when arriving home late at night from sales trips without disturbing the family.

One of the distinctive elements of the Berry property was its large size - although I'm unable to find the deed, I'm assuming that, like the houses next to it, the land was subdivided from the Clements farm in the early 1920s. The 1.2 acres, however, was larger than the adjoining properties, and extended far into the center of the block.


Bird's eye view of the rear of the houses on West Club, showing the large amount of open land behind the Berry House, 1960.

The house appears to have changed hands several times during the 1960s and 1970s, becoming a rooming house at some point. It was purchased by David Auerbach and his wife in 1986, and renovated.

David recounts that he wondered what to do with the copious land behind the Berry House for a number of years; he provided for its use by grad students in Botany at Duke among other users.

After Ms. Couch, who lived in the Young-Cole-Couch house next door died in the early 90s "while digging up potatoes in her backyard," her heirs were willing to sell a rear portion of that lot to David, thus connecting the large rear portion of his lot with Norton Street. David reports that he had been interested in co-housing, and this opportunity allowed that seed to germinate - with driveway access to the rear of the lot, he could potentially develop the 1.2 acres into a co-housing community.

David and his wife Cat Warren enlisted the help of Giles Blunden to design a new house for themselves to the rear of the Berry House, and to advise them on co-housing development. From the beginning, the process was challenging - although the City of Durham ordinance provided allowances for co-housing types of development, the process was designed for plots larger than 4 acres. A complicated process of teasing apart the ordinance, seeking variances, and enlisting allies in the planning department ensued, eventually resulting in approval for the development of 'The Compound.'

A house on Norton was completed first, in 2002, followed by the construction of David and Cat's new house in August 2003.


New Auerbach-Warren house under construction, 02.19.03
(Courtesy David Auerbach)

A house in the SE corner of the property was completed in November 2003, and the last house - in the southwest corner of the property, was completed in 2004 - thus completing the 5 house development. A center 'common area' (completed with cross-easements) consists of a large brick oven and garden area, as well as a common driveway/parking area on Norton St.


Berry House from West Club Blvd., 06.13.10.


Bird's eye view of the property ~2008


The Auerbach-Warren house, 06.13.10.


House on Norton, 06.13.10


Two houses at the south end of the property, 06.13.10


Common brick oven and garden, 06.13.10

Find this spot on a Google Map.

36.016313,-78.906401

YOUNG-COLE-COUCH HOUSE

Young-Cole-Couch House, 05.23.10.

Thanks to Preservation Durham and Heather Wagner for supplying the following history

The land on which the Cole-Couch house stands was owned initially by the W. P. Clements family. According to the 1905 deed for the property, the Clements owned an existing house on the adjacent property to the east, what was later described as the T. E. Berry land (plat book 9/pg 66). In 1905, W.H. Young bought the lot on the southeast corner of what is now Club Boulevard and Norton Street and likely constructed the house soon after. In 1910, he purchased from the Clements and additional fifteen-foot wide strip of land on the east side of his property.

The house and both lots (now listed as a single parcel) were sold to Annie B. Battle in 1912, who in turn sold the property to G. Ed. Cole in 1917. Cole was a farmer who bought and sold land throughout the neighborhood in the 1910s and 1920s. It is likely that the house was enlarged either by Ms. Battle or by the Cole family in the early years of their ownership. Cole, his wife Mattie Wilkerson Cole, and their four children presumably lived in the house immediately after its purchase in 1917, though the portion of Club Boulevard west of Watts Hospital does not appear in city directories until 1927.

Bruce Lowry, who was living on Burch Avenue in 1922, began work in Durham as a bookkeeper for a Durham hosiery mill before joining the Durham fire department in 1924. Lowry married Cole’s daughter Pauline and moved into the Cole Homeplace by 1928 when both G. Ed. Cole and Bruce Lowry were listed in the city directory. G. Ed. Cole died in 1931, after which Bruce and Pauline Cole Lowry purchased the property. The Lowry’s lived in the home until 1938 when the sold the property to John Bunyan Couch and his wife, Lida Graham Couch.


Aerial of Norton and Club with the Young-Cole-Couch house on the right, 1950s.


Looking west on West Club Blvd. from Norton St., 1950s.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

John B. Couch, an employee of the American Tobacco Company, lived in the home with his wife and three children until his death in 1964. Mrs. Lida G. Couch likely passed away in 1995, though she is not listed in the Durham County Cemetery Directory, so no exact date is known. Her heirs sold the property in early 1996 to Diane Heffner, who had been renting the property. Ms. Heffner lived in the house until 2006 when she sold the property to current owner, David Rollins.

Find this spot on a Google Map.

36.016628,-78.906773

DC MAY HOUSE

Davis-May House, 1980

The land extending from Demerius Dollar's land (to give the origin of two TP street names - DD owned several tracts of land north and south of Club Blvd. along what became Dollar Ave.) to what became Norton St. was, in the 19th century, part of the large extent of WP Clements' land. He sold several lots to WH Young, who built the Young-Cole-Couch house at 911 West Club in 1905. In 1909, Young sold this large lot to the west of his house to WA Hewitt, who in turn sold it to George L. and Evelyn Murray Davis in 1913. They likely built the the Queen Anne Victorian at 915 West Club Blvd house soon after they purchased the lot; Davis was a factory manager at the American Tobacco company.

In 1920, the Davis family sold the house to DC May and his wife Maude. I don't think anyone ever called DC by his given name - Daisy Cleveland.

DC May was born in 1883 "10 miles east of Durham," attended Cherry Grove School, and at the age of 16 began his apprenticeship as a painter. His first painting job was the Golden Belt Manufacturing Company. A few years later he painted the entire spire of the original Trinity Methodist Church "using no equipment other than a rope supporting his body."

He went into business for himself in 1908, and built a large painting contractor firm over the subsequent decades. His company was originally located in the 400 block of Morgan St. and, long after his death, in the Imperial Tobacco Building. (Until it sold to Measurement Inc. in 2003.)

DC May died in 1944, and his business was taken over by his sons, Ned and Mike May - he had conveyed the house and land to them in 1943, and the family continued to live in the house at Norton and West Club.



In later years, the house was divided into apartments, with a member/members of the May family remaining in the house into the 1980s.

By the late 1990s, the house was abandoned. There were several attempts to save the house, but it was sold by the May family in 2005 to a developer ("Secondlook Homes, LLC") who had no interest in saving the house, either through renovation or moving - Carrie Mowry at Preservation Durham made a valiant attempt at the time. However, it seemingly completely disappeared one night - so completely that we actually wondered if it had been moved.

Alas, it had not, and the large lot was subdivided for multiple houses - I'm less annoyed by one turned away from Club towards Norton than the one facing West Club with a large privacy fence (and no gate) between the front of the house and the sidewalk on West Club.


New houses under construction on the site of the DC May house, 03.16.08


Site of the DC May house, 05.23.10 - only the steps remain.


Find this spot on a Google Map.

36.016486,-78.907237