US/NC/Durham/history

Overview

Historical notes on Durham, NC, eventually to be expanded into a more complete history when there is enough material.

This page is a seed article. You can help HTYP water it: make a request to expand a given page and/or donate to help give us more writing-hours!

Related Pages

• Royal Ice Cream: site of very early civil rights sit-in; now demolished

Vickers Woods and Morehead Hill

According to an article in the 2005-11-05 Durham News (Real Estate section, "History in the Making" by Nancy E. Oates, Real Estate Editor, p.B-1):

Prior to the turn of the 20th century, Durham's wealthy businessmen lived near their factories and mills, along with the laborers who worked for them. But in the late 1800s, a trend began of business owners building their houses somewhat removed from downtown. William Gaston Vickers, Durham's first superintendant of schools, owned a farm much of which was called Vickers Woods. As development sprung up around his acreage, he developed part of his land by building affordable houses for working class families. The highest land, along what became Vickers Avenue, he saved for larger homes for the upwardly mobile. After the expressway cut through the northeast corner of Morehead Hill, residents worked to have the neighborhood deemed a national historic district.

B.C. Powder

According to an article in the 2006-01-07 Durham News (Section A, "First Century B.C."), the B.C. Powder company started in the Five Points Drug Co. at the corner of Main and Chapel Hill Streets in Downtown Durham in 1906 when Germain Bernard and Commodore T. Council create a headache relief powder and begin selling it there; the B.C. Remedy Company was incorporated in 1907 and was bought by Block Drug Company in 1967 which in turn was bought by international pharmaceutical behemoth GlaxoSmithKline in 2001 for $1.24 billion.

Bragtown

• 2006-05-22 Why Bragtown?

Technological History

• TUCC, the Triangle Universities Computation Center

General Links

• Historic Preservation Society of Durham, NC (includes historic neighborhoods)
• Endangered Durham: pictures and history of demolished Durham buildings

News Articles

• 2006-07-15 a little bit of housekeeping: renovation of the White Cross Community Center on Erwin Road; includes some historical details