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

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

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36.008199,-78.910762