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

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36.017318,-78.918794

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

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36.016531,-78.918938

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

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36.016067,-78.91903

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.

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36.01593,-78.919038

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.

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36.015784,-78.919023

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

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36.016959,-78.919477

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?

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36.016557,-78.919491

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.

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36.0159,-78.919565

TATE HOUSE - 1001 EDITH STREET (FORMER 1704 MARKHAM)

Many thanks to John Martin, owner of the house, who collected and wrote much of the history I've incorporated into the text below

1001 Edith Street spent the first ~90 years of its life as 1704 A Street / College Road / West Markham Avenue. The house was built ~1910-1911 by R.M Hobgood, who is listed in city directories as a postal clerk. He bought several adjacent lots in West Durham in the early 1900’s for between $165 and $200 apiece. Because R.M. Hobgood is listed in city directories as living on Elizabeth St., he probably built this house as an investment.

The house changed hands several times after 1911 before being bought by W.G. Tate in May 1920. One of the city directories lists Tate as being an agent for Imperial Life Insurance Co. City directories list it as the home address of W.G. Tate, but a 1925 city directory also lists 1704 ½ as a grocery.

In 1933 W.G. Tate sold the house to Erwin Mills and moved to 1111 Broad St; the house appears to have been a rental house for the remainder of its life on West Markham. The house passed to Burlington Industries Foundation in 1965, after Burlingotn Industries took over Erwin Mill; the company gave the house to Duke University the same year. Duke owned the house from 1965 to 1979.

The house was originally L-shaped with two front rooms separated by a central hall. Behind the parlor on the left (as you came in the front door) were two more rooms, which could also be reached from the rear of the central hall via a porch that stretched the length of the house, alongside the back two rooms. There were fireplaces in the front parlor and in the room directly behind it. This is a fairly typical pattern for the single story, 'triple-A roofline' houses built throughout Durham in the early 20th century. They typically varied in the existence and size of the wing extending back from the front hall-and-parlor.

Frequently, these houses were expanded by enclosing the rear porch along the wing with various types of shed roof additions, additional wings, etc. At some point, the 1704 Markham was expanded in this way, adding another room, a bath, and an extension of the back room. This back room may always have been used as a kitchen, but it is also possible that it was used as the "grocery" in the mid-twenties. Or, possibly, one of the newly enclosed porch rooms was the "grocery” at 1704 ½ College Road.

In 1979, Duke sold the house to Joe Sica, who owned a large amount of rental property near Duke campus. Joe Sica sold the house in 1992 to Jeff Monsein who rented it until 2006.


1704 Markham, mid 1990s.

By 2007, the house had been empty and boarded for some time. I profiled it here when it became clear that Mr. Monsein intended to tear the structure down to replace it with something larger.


1704 Markham, January 2007.

At that time, I focused primarily on the weakness of our local historic district ordinance - its inability to prevent demolition of any structure rather than simply delay demolition for a year. In February 2007, the historic preservation commission approved a one year delay prior to the demolition of this house.

However, as I've said before - and others have said when I've expressed my consternation over our hamstrung preservation ordinance - it's better than nothing.

In this case, the delay turned out to be considerably better than nothing. The time afforded by the historic preservation commission delay allowed John Schelp and Carrie Mowry to persuade Jeff Monsein to give the house to a person who would move it and restore it. John Martin read about the house here and began to explore the possibility.

John Martin writes:

"I originally got interested because I had two lots behind my (now former) house on Club, and it seemed like a no-brainer. I called David Parker, the contractor, to go look at the house on Markham with that in mind. He told me, 'if you decide you're not interested, I might be.' His lot at 2100 W Knox St was about a half acre, very deep, but not wide. He had been thinking for a long time about subdividing it and building a house on the back part facing out on Edith St."

"We looked at the house with Carrie Mowry. I asked David what he was interested in doing if I passed on it, and he mentioned his lot. So, Carrie, David, and I went over and looked at it. To make a long story short: Edith St. seemed like a better location on any number of grounds. It was closer to Markham; the house fit the neighborhood; ultimately the house fixed up would be worth more on Edith St. than on Linfield Dr. (behind Club)."

It took awhile to put together all of the necessary arrangements. To Mr. Monsein's credit, he did not demolish the house in February 2008, when he was legally able to do so. He delayed his plans until April 2008, when John Martin had engaged Kountry Boy house movers (who have done every house move I've been involved with around here,) secured all of the endless permits and permissions from the city, purchased the lot, etc.


1704 Markham, ready to move, 04.10.08




1704 Markham, ready to move, 04.10.08

The house was moved on May 18, 2008 from Markham Ave. to Edith St. Media attention led to a reasonable crowd of people on hand to watch the big move. (The back wing of the house had been moved prior to the photos I took below.) The later porch-enclosure portions of the house were not moved.

























(You'll note that a good chunk of the roof was sliced off for the move. As an aside, one of the unfortunate realities that a potential house move faces is the byzantine congestion of the airspace above our roads and houses with a mess of electrical, phone, and cable lines. This is by no means the only reason why houses were commonly moved around in the late 19th/early 20th century but rarely now, but it is a significant contributor to the decline. When I used to put tons of volunteer time in for Preservation Durham trying to prevent houses from being demolished, we moved the Stanford Warren house and the Blackman House to save them from demolition. The extraordinary cost charged by the utility companies to temporarily take down lines nearly sunk these moves. If you're moving a single story house, you may be lucky, and the lines can simply be lifted by someone on top of the house as the house goes by. If you are moving a two story house, you typically need to cut it into chunks and then reassemble it, like the Sweaney House. Despite the assurances of the 1927 comprehensive plan of Durham that the power and telephone lines would likely be buried in 10 years time, we aren't much closer to that than we were in 1927. The cost to do so remains exorbitant, and it is hard for me to believe that the cost needs to be as high as the utility companies require through their specifications. I recently priced burying the power infrastructure over a 1 1/2 block span with Duke Power. The rough estimate was $750,000 (although they noted that I could do this a lot cheaper - $500,000 without using their contractors, and the state mandated 34% markup.))

Back to the Tate House, now 1001 Edith Street - getting the house on a foundation and commencing restoration began immediately.

John and his contractor rebuilt the central hallway by restoring the wall that separated it from the front parlor, matching the original wainscoting. He repaired or matched the original door and window moldings, restored the bead board ceilings, repaired the original windows and doors, refinished the original quarter-sawn, heart-pine floors, and found restored 1920’s light fixtures for the hallway. The chimney could not be moved and was removed by the house movers. He created a new fireplace with gas logs, and restored the original mantel.

On the exterior, he removed the vinyl siding and replaced the roof (which was badly damaged by the move.) He stripped paint from the original siding, repaired it where necessary, and installed matching wood siding on the addition. He rebuilt the porch and restored the original railings and millwork. He chose paint colors from the period in which the house was built, though in all probability, a modest house like this was probably originally painted white or gray.

He added two bedrooms, a bath, and closets to the back of the house. Those two bedrooms were essentially mirror images of the front two rooms. Thus the original ell shape was turned into a U-shape. The back part is connected to the front of the house by a hallway where the side porch once was. Off that hallway he built a new bathroom, laundry room, and breakfast area opposite the dining room and kitchen.

John moved in on November 22, 2008, and loves how the house turned out.


1001 Edith Street 09.05.09


Living room the day of the move (OWD's John Schelp inspects the room from inside the fireplace)


Living room, 09.05.09

John is generous enough to share the economics of this deal - as I think doing this just seems to most people, unfortunately, like an impossibility, or some extraordinary thing that must make no economic sense.

Lot: $30,000
House Move: $30,000
Renovation and additions to the house: ~$150,000

The sunk costs in the 1931 square foot house are now $210,000. A 1350 square foot house nearby on Virgie St. recently went under contract quickly for $269,500.

In short, even if we must look at this house and the move on purely economic terms, it makes sense. A half-century of promotion by the home-building industry et al has taught us the proper thing to do with a vacant lot where you want to live is to build a new house. To be more fair than that, some folks want to build something specific to what they desire.

But I don't think moving a house even comes up as a consideration for 99% of the people looking for a house. And, to be clear, my strong preference is certainly for houses to be renovated in their existing historic districts/neighborhoods.

But given the quantity and pace of teardowns in Durham, I wish that even 10% of those houses had been moved to somewhere that people would give them some love. Let's face it - beautiful historic houses sitting worn and vacant in East Durham - maybe sitting on the market for $50,000 - would be renovated and worth 4-9 times that in 'northwest-central-Durham'. The problem with the housing in northeasterly and some of south-southwesterly Durham is an socioeconomic problem, not an architectural problem, which is why code enforcement so often leads to demolition. Code enforcement doesn't get people a job, or change the rental market for a landlord. So while I would personally encourage people to take personal responsibility for getting the drug dealers off of a particular street by moving there yourself and helping your new neighbors to fight the fight, I recognize that isn't for everyone.

While I cringe at how it could be abused, it would be good to see some sort of matchmaking marketplace for house moving, where vacant lots and houses that could be had for free because someone is going to tear them down could meet. The good thing about the internet is that such a thing can be created cheaply, so that a middleman making money off said deals and worsening the economics isn't really necessary. I'd hardly be a big fan if we emptied East Durham of houses, sprinkling them around the west side of town, or the suburbs, but it would be better than teardowns.

I hope, at least, John Martin's success story with 1001 Edith Street encourages other people to consider house moving. For instance, if the houses at 804 and 806 Jackson St.are unable to be saved (they face an owner problem, not a socioeconomic problem) I would hope that they could find a new home in their neighborhood, where Self-Help, Habitat, et al have been erecting copious new construction, rather than be torn down.

This marks my fifth post about the Tate House, and hopefully my last - I really enjoy writing about happy endings in the world of preservation.

Original Location:

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Current Location:
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36.010066,-78.918855


36.015023,-78.923176

SCARBORO'S FOOD STORE / WELLSPRING GROCERY / MAGNOLIA GRILL

Ninth St., looking northeast, ~1980.

Floyd Wright opened a grocery on this corner between 1926 and 1930. By the late 1930s, this grocery had been taken over by long-time County Commissioner Dewey Scarboro, who lived next door at 1006 Ninth St. Per the Old West Durham website, Scarboro's Food Store was a favorite stop for children from EK Powe School, located across the street. In ~1947, Scarboro demolished the original frame store which sat at the corner replaced it with a masonry structure, pictured above.

Mr. Scarboro closed his store in 1978, although he continued to live next door into the mid-1980s.

In 1981, Lex and Anne Alexander opened Wellspring Grocery in the space, just two blocks away from the original Durham Food Co-Op on Broad St. (aka the People's Intergalactic Food Conspiracy No. 1.) Offering a vegetarian selection, but open to all consumers, unlike the original food co-op, Wellspring quickly gained a loyal following. In 1986, the grocery moved 3 blocks south to a new building on the southwest corner of Hillsborough and Ninth Street. They would later moved to the former A&P on Broad Street and become part of the Whole Foods chain.

After the departure of Wellspring, a husband and wife team - Ben and Karen Barker, who had worked locally at Chapel Hill's La Residence and Pittsboro's Fearrington House, decided to open their own restaurant in the space. After remodeling the former grocery, they opened their doors in November 1986. It remains in operation at this location, one of the most prominent restaurants in the Triangle.


Looking northeast, 09.12.09

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36.013918,-78.921624

FIRE STATION #2 (NINTH STREET)

By the 1950s, the growth of population westward, the envelopment of West Durham into the City of Durham, and the scaling of fire equipment necessitated a new fire station for Company #2, which had been located amongst the Liggett Warehouses on West Main St. since 1906

The Ninth Street property was purchased by the City from the heirs of Mrs. Ida Couch for about $7,000.

The City moved the station further out to get faster response times to fires in the residential areas and nearby schools and hospitals in West Durham. The colonial-designed fire station was built for $165,000 and was described as "one of the most modern fire stations in the South."


During Construction.
(Courtesy Barry Norman)

The station was formally dedicated on September 28, 1950 by Fire Chief Cosmo Cox.


Completed Fire Station #2, 1950.
(Courtesy Barry Norman)


Completed Fire Station #2, 1950.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun)

The station is the oldest fire station still in operation (the oldest fire station in Durham is the former Fire Station #1 at N. Mangum and City Hall Place (Holloway).)


Fire Station #2, 04.12.09

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36.0143,-78.92215

WEST DURHAM GRADED SCHOOL NO. 2 / EK POWE SCHOOL / ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

It's a bit murky as to whether a school existed at Ninth and West Knox (C) Streets prior to 1912. Per Jean Anderson, the West Durham Graded School on Swift Avenue was formed from the consolidation of Northside School and Piney Grove School. Piney Grove was located on Swift Avenue, however, she notes only that Northside was located "north of the railroad tracks."

Investigation (for anything West Durham related) is hampered by the fact that city directories don't reliably report information about West Durham prior to annexation in 1925, and the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps do not cover the area prior to 1913.

What is clear is that by 1912, the West Durham Graded School on Swift Avenue had too many students to accommodate; a new West Durham Graded School, aptly termed West Durham Graded School No. 2, was commissioned for the C and Ninth St. site.

A masonry structure, very similar to the East Durham graded school that was constructed around the same time (later YE Smith school) that still stands on South Driver St., was built at C Street and Ninth Street in 1912. Although the architect of this school is not noted, the strong similarity to the East Durham Graded School makes it likely that it was also designed by Fred Githens, of Tilton and Githens Architects of New York. (Tilton was best known for designing many public libraries nationwide, including Durham's 1921 public library.


West Durham Graded School No. 2, 1926


(Courtesy Old West Durham)

It is pertinent to note, once again, that the school system in Durham was segregated by race, and that African-American students were not allowed to attend any of the schools referenced in this post. African-American students in West Durham and the West End attended the West End School, also known as the Fitzgerald School. African-American students living farther to the west attended the Hickstown School

It appears that West Durham Graded School No. 1 only existed for a few years after the opening of WDGS No. 2. By 1921, the county school system had constructed Southside School on Erwin Road as its replacement. The West Durham Graded School No. 2 became known as Northside School.

The ongoing growth of West Durham necessitated ongoing growth of the school system. An addition was made to the rear of the Northside/WDGS 2 structure in 1924. However, this was insufficient. A large neoclassical structure, designed by Durham architects Atwood and Nash was built to the south of the 1912/24 masonry school building in 1928.


Looking northwest from B/Green St., 1930. The 1912 school building is on the right, the 1928 building on the left.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)


1928 building, looking southwest.
(Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection)

After the annexation of West Durham by the city of Durham, students attended high school at the city high school. The 1912 masonry structure at C and Ninth became the West Durham Junior High School, while the 1928 structure became the West Durham Northside Elementary School.

At some point after Erwin Mills general manager and county Board of Education member EK Powe died in 1929, the school was renamed in his honor. (Per the city directories, by the mid 1930s.)

In 1949, the original frame gymnasium was replaced with a brick structure. This was likely built by George W. Kane, general contractor.


Aerial of the school, looking northwest, early 1950s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


EK Powe, 1953
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)


1928 structure, looking southwest, 1950s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

In 1961, a classroom wing was extended to the west from the 1928 structure. Sometime in the 1960s-1970s , the 1912 school building was demolished, and, in 1975, a new classroom wing was extended north from the 1928 structure.

Today the school is a K through 5 elementary school, with a "strong Arts and Science focus." I'm not a parent, so I know little about the perceived quality of various schools, but I'm always thrilled to see the school system embrace a neighborhood school - a place that kids could conceivably walk and bike to, rather than the all-too-popular suburban behemoth sites.


1928 EK Powe school building, mostly obscured by trees, 091209.


Retaining wall around the site of the original school building, 09.12.09

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36.013256,-78.922479