Landmarks

All Landmarks
Ghost Landmarks*


Schools
Public Elementary Schools
Public Middle Schools
Public Secondary Schools
Public High Schools


Religious Buildings
Public Buildings
Commercial Buildings
Transportation
Hotels
Visitor/Tourist Centers
Entertainment



* Denotes landmarks that no longer exist.

1976 Main Library
Durham County opened its libraries' main branch, which was located on Roxboro Street, in 1980 to replace the long-since outgrown 1920s building on which was located on Main Street. The building's design complements that of the nearby Fire Station No. 1 and City Hall Annex (formerly Durham Police Headquarters).
Academy of Music *
In 1903, the city opened a municipal performance hall, called the Academy of Music, on the block now occupied by CCB Plaza. It was razed in 1924 to make way for a hotel.
American Tobacco (redevelopment and factory)
The American Tobacco Company manufactured cigarettes at the Durham factory until 1987. Raleigh businessman Jim Goodmon acquired the property and redeveloped it for office, restaurant and residential use in the early 2000s.
Durham Armory
The yellow-brick Durham Armory at Foster Street and the Morgan Street segment of the Downtown Loop was built between 1935 and 1937 under the auspices of the federal Public Works Administration.
Durham Arts Council
Constructed in 1904 for Durham Central High School, the present Durham Arts Council Building was remodeled for city offices in 1926 and served as City Hall until 1977. The Arts Council moved into the building in 1978.
Baptist Female Seminary (also known as Durham Female Institute and Durham Baptist Seminary)
Established in 1881 by Atlas Rigsbee; the Baptist Female Seminary closed by 1902, possibly due to the growth of public schooling.
BC Powder Factory (Measurement Inc.)
Now headquarters for the nationwide standardized testing firm, Measurement Inc., the monumental building at Morris and Corporation streets was originally a factory for BC Powder--a headache remedy invented in Durham.
Beth El Synagogue
Beth El, Durhams oldest Jewish congregation, built its current synagogue on Watts Street in 1957. The synagogue moved there from a 1921 place of worship at Queen and Holloway streets that no longer stands.
Bethesda Elementary School
Established more than 100 years ago, Bethesda Elementary School occupies a 1982 campus that was renovated in 1989. Its campus occupies 44 acres and its buildings enclose more than 85,000 square feet. It takes its name from the Bethesda community.
Brightleaf Square
Brightleaf Square, home to retailers, restaurants and offices, occupies the Watts and Yuille tobacco warehouses built around 1904. After the warehouses went out of use, entrepreneurs Terry Sanford Jr. and Clay Hamner bought the warehouses and remodeled them for a multi-purpose mall, which opened in late 1981.
Brogden Middle School
Brogden Middle School was opened in 1959 and remodeled in 1976 and 2000. It occupies a campus of 29 acres and its facility encloses 156,380 square feet with a capacity of 872 students.
Bullington WareHouse
The last of Durham's distinctive brick tobacco warehouses to be built, in 1927, the Bullington was renovated for residential condominiums in the early 1980s.
Burton Elementary School
1500 Mathison Street 27701
Carolina Theater (Durham Auditorium)
Opened in 1926, the Beaux Arts Carolina Theatre was designed as a live-performance hall and then remodeled as a movie theater. The theatre and currently serves as both with two cinemas added during a major renovation and restoration in the 1980s and 1990s
Carrington Middle School
227 Milton Road 27712
C.C. Spaulding Elementary School
Opened in 1954, C.C. Spaulding Elementary School is named for Charles Clinton Spaulding (1874-1952), the long-time president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co.
C.C. Thomas House
A survivor of Dillard Street's heyday as the home to tobacco tycoons, the Colonial Revival C.C. Thomas House now houses the Durham Crisis Response Center. It was built in 1909 by wholesale grocer C.C. Thomas and underwent a major renovation in 1995.
Center Theatre*
Boasting air conditioning and a mighty Wurlitzer organ, the Center Theater at Chapel Hill and Holland streets was one of downtown Durhams lavish movie houses until its razing in 1967.
Durham Central Park
The block enclosed by Foster, Hunt, Corporation and Roney streets was dubbed "Durham Central Park" in the mid-1990s, when the mostly-vacant land's development as public space was seen as a boost to downtown revitalization.
Chewning Middle School
5001 Red Mill Road 27704 3914
City Hall
As part of the 1959 Tarrant Plan for downtown redevelopment, Durham's City Hall opened in the Eastern section 1977.
City of Medicine Academy
4100 N. Roxboro Road 27704
Club Boulevard Elementary School
400 W. Club Blvd. 27704
Creekside Elementary School
5321 Ephesus Church Road 27707
Bull Durham Athletic Ballpark
The "Old Bull Building" at Pettigrew and Blackwell streets was the largest tobacco factory in the world when the W.T. Blackwell Co. built it in 1874 to manufacture its trademark Bull Durham brand. The Blackwell company became part of the American Tobacco Co. in 1899.
Durham Performing Arts Center
Opened in 2008, the Durham Performing Arts Center--commonly referred to as "D-PAC"--holds a 2,800-seat theater, the largest performance hall between Richmond and Atlanta.
Duke Memorial United Methodist Church
The Duke Memorial United Methodist Church, named for the Washington Duke family, first held services in its present sanctuary in 1912. The congregation began in 1885 as a Sunday school conducted in the Duke cigarette factory.
Durham Bulls Athletic Park
Opened in 1995, the Durham Bulls Athletic Park (or "DBAP") replaced the 1939 Bull Durham Athletic Park as home to the Durham Bulls Baseball Club in anticipation of the team's elevation from A to AAA stature, requiring a larger stadium.
Durham Centre Building
Durham businessman Franklin Wittenberg built the blue-glass high-rise on the Morgan Street section of the Downtown Loop in the mid-1980s.
Durham Convention Center
The Durham Convention Center and the hotel tower that surmounts were built in the late 1980s as a downtown-revitalization measure.
Durham County Courthouse (under construction)
Durham County broke ground in April 2010 for an 11-story, $75-million Justice Center at Mangum and Dillard streets to replace the 1978 Judicial Building it had long since outgrown.
Durham County Jail
Opened in 1996, the Durham County Detention Center--a.k.a. "Jail"--has capacity for about 570 inmates. The county built it after former inmates sued over conditions in the existing jail which was located on the top floor of the Judicial Building on Main Street.
Durham Rescue Mission
The Durham Rescue Mission, serving the addicted and otherwise homeless, occupies the former Fuller Memorial Presbyterian Church building at Main Street and Alston Avenue. Founded in 1974 by minister Ernie Mills, the Rescue Mission bought the church and moved in in 1978.
Durham School of the Arts
The present Durham School of the Arts campus was a new Central High School when it opened in 1923. Later renamed "Durham High School," it was converted to a middle-high school emphasizing the arts after the city and county school systems merged in 1992.
Durham Skate Park
In 2009, the city recreation department opened a skateboard park on a sloping lot beside Liberty Warehouse, as part of Durham Central Park. A story goes that Mayor Bill Bell, stopping by one Sunday soon after its opening, received a round of applause from a crowd of skateboarders enjoying the new amenity.
Easley Elementary School
Opened in 1989, Easley Elementary School occupies 71,000 square feet on a 19-acre campus and has an official capacity of 522 students. The school was named for Howard Easley, a Duke University education professor and Durham County commissioner from 1966 until 1982 who donated the land for the school.
Eastway Elementary School
Eastway Elementary School, at Alston Avenue and Taylor Street, opened in 1995 and replaced the aged East End and Holloway Street school buildings in East Durham. The 78,000-square foot school was designed to accommodate 600 pupils.
E.K. Powe Elementary School
913 9th Street Durham, NC 27705
Eno Valley Elementary School
117 Milton Road 27712
Farmers' Market
The open-air Durham Farmers' Market opened in Durham Central Park between Foster and Roney streets in 2007.
Fayetteville Street Elementary School
2905 Fayetteville Street 27707
Durham Station (2009 central bus station)
Opened in early 2009, the Durham Station on Pettigrew Street near the American Tobacco complex serves buses of the Durham Area Transit Authority, Triangle Transit Authority and the inter-city Grayhound and Trailways lines.
First Baptist Church*
In 1878, the First Baptist Church (formerly Rose of Sharon Baptist Church) replaced its wood-frame building with a brick structure, distinguished by a tall spire, on Mangum Street. It served the congregation until the present Cleveland Street building was constructed in 1924.
First Presbyterian Church
Built in 1916, the First Presbyterian Church at Main and Roxboro streets is the congregation's third at that location. Its sanctuary is distinguished by tracery stained-glass windows with the German Von Grechton glassworks
Five Points
An intersection predating Durham where road to Chapel Hill intersects Hillsborough-Raleigh road and present-day Morris Street. Muirhead Plaza, a miniature park in the east-side wedge between Main and Chapel Hill streets, is named for William Muirhead, founder of Muirhead Construction Co.
Forest View Elementary School
Mt. Sinai Road 27705
Former Durham County Library
The Colonial Revival building at 311 E. Main Street served as the Durham Public Library from 1926 until the present library opened in 1978. It is now privately owned and used for office space.
George Watts Elementary School
700 Watts Street 27701
Sherwood Githens Middle School
4800 Old Chapel Hill Road 27707
Glenn W. Elementary School
2415 E. Geer Street 27704
Golden Belt
Remodeled in 2008 for apartments, offices and gathering space, the 1901 Golden Belt Manufacturing Co. factory was built to produce cotton cloth and thread for tobacco bagsFactory operation ceased in 1996.
Hayti Heritage Center
The Hayti Heritage Center, opened in 1991, incorporates the 1892 sanctuary of St. Joseph's A.M.E. Church. which has been a major institution in Durham's African-American community since it began as a brush arbor by evangelist Edian Markham around 1870.
Heritage Square Shopping Center
Built in the mid-1980s on land cleared in the Hayti urban renewal, Heritage Square is a 69,000-square foot strip mall shopping center on Lakewood Avenue between Roxboro Road and Fayetteville Street.
Hillandale Elementary School
2730 Hillandale Road 27705
Hill Building
The 18-story Hill Building, also known as the CCB and SunTrust Building, has been Durham's most prominent downtown landmark since opening in 1937. Its upper floors have been empty due to new fire-code regulations since 2006.
Hillside High School
3727 Fayetteville Street 27707
Holton Career and Resource Cntr.
401 N. Driver St. 27703
Holt Year-Round Elementary
4019 Holt School Road 27704
Hope Valley Elementary School
3005 Dixon Road 27707
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church*
Durham's Catholic congregation built their first church at the Chapel Hill Street site in 1905, and have rebuilt and enlarged several times since - most recently in 2002-3. Originally called "St. Mary's," the church changed its name in the 1920s.
Imperial Tobacco Building
Now owned and occupied by Measurement Inc., the 100,000-square foot building on Morris Street was built in 1915 by the British Imperial Tobacco Co. to house tobacco-buying offices and storage.
J.D. Clement Early College
1801 Fayetteville Street 27707
J.L. Page & Sons Grocery *
The Page family opened its new neighborhood grocery building in the 1930s after retailing food in another location two blocks south. The building, listed in the 1982 Durham Architectural and Historic Inventory, remains in its original form.
Jordan High School
6806 Garrett Road 27707
Judicial Building
Opened in 1978, a full year behind schedule, the Durham County Judicial Building took over court and district-attorney functions from the 1916 Courthouse across from Main Street.
Kress Building
Standing at the southwest corner of Main and Mangum streets, the Kress Building is representative of numerous buildings the S.H. Kress Co. had built for its dimestores in the 1930s. The facade of glazed terra cotta and stone makes it uniquely colorful among downtown Durham's historic commercial buildings.
Lakeview Secondary School
3507 Dearborn Drive 27704
Lakewood Elementary School
2520 Vesson Avenue 27707
Lakewood Montessori Middle School
700 Watts Street 27701
Lakewood Shopping Center
Lakewood Shopping Center is a strip mall shopping center that opened in 1960 at the former site of Lakewood Park -- an attraction built in 1902 by the Durham Traction Co. at the end of its streetcar line.
Liberty Warehouse
The Liberty Warehouse is the last of 13 tobacco auction houses that operated in Durham from 1872 to 1987. Since the closure of the downtown tobacco market, the facility has been used primarily for storage.
Liggett & Myers Complex
Liggett and Myers opened its six-story, 340,000-square foot "New Factory" in 1948. Until the mid-1980s,the building adorned a lighted billboard on the roof advertising Chesterfield cigarettes--hence the nickname, "Chesterfield Building."
Lincoln Hospital Site
Lincoln Hospital, which served African-Americans during the era of segregation, opened in 1901 on Proctor Street and moved to a new building on Fayetteville Street in 1924. The building was demolished in 1983.
Little River Elementary School
2315 Snow Hill Road 27712
Lowe's Grove Middle School
4418 S. Alston Avenue 27713
Main Post Office
The Neoclassical Main Post Office at Chapel Hill Street and Rigsbee Avenue opened in 1934, replacing a 1904 Post Office at the Hill Building site at Main and Corcoran.
Major
The bronze bull statue in CCB Plaza is nicknamed "Major" in honor of the late Central Carolina Bank president George Watts Hill, who earned that rank during service in World War II.
Mangum Elementary School
9008 Quail Roost Road Bahama 27503
Merrick-Moore Elementary School
2325 Cheek Road 27704
Middle College HS at DTCC
1616 Cooper Street 27703
Morehead Montessori School
909 Cobb Street 27707
North Carolina Central University
Opened in 1910 as the National Religious Training School and Chatauqua, North Carolina Central University became the United States' first liberal-arts college for African-Americans after the state took over its operation in 1923.
North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company Building
Demonstrating the company's success, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance built a new home for itself in 1921 at 116 W. Parrish Street. After its move to Chapel Hill Street in 1965, Mechanics and Farmers Bank took over the building and continues to operate a branch there.
Neal Middle School
201 Baptist Road 27704
Northern High School
117 Tom Wilkinson Road 27712
Oak Grove Elementary School
3810 Wake Forest Road 27703
Old Courthouse
The NeoClassical building at 200 East Main Street served as Durham County's judicial center from its opening in 1916 until 1978, and is still known as the "Old Courthouse." It houses Durham County offices and the county commissioners' meeting chamber.
Parkwood Elementary School
5207 Revere Road 27713
Pauli Murray Place
A cul-de-sac residential development off the 1100 block of Jackson Street, Pauli Murray Place is named for the author, attorney and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray, who grew up in Durham in the 1910s.
Pearsontown Elementary School
4915 Barbee Road 27713
Performance Learning Center
401 N. Driver St. 27703
Railroad Underpass
First constructed in 1923, the Railroad underpass was built to alleviate congestion of street and rail traffic on a major vehicle artery.
Riverside High School
3218 Rose of Sharon Road 27712
R.N. Harris Elementary School
1520 Cooper Street 27703
Rogers-Herr Middle School
911 Cornwallis Road 27707
Rolling Hills
Once at the middle of Durham's Hayti section, Rolling Hills is a 20-acre tract at Lakewood Avenue and Roxboro Street where several private developers have attempted to develop a residential subdivision since 1985. After the second failure, the city repossessed unsold property there and has undertaken a third redevelopment.
Sandy Ridge Elementary School
1417 Old Oxford Highway 27704
Scarborough House
The Colonial Revival residence at 1406 Fayetteville Street was built by J.C. Scarborough Sr., founding partner in the still-operating Scarborough and Hargett Funeral Home business.
Second Bus Station*
Late 20s/early 30s, Mangum and Rigsbee streets
Shepard Middle School
2401 Dakota Street 27707
Southern High School
800 Clayton Road 27703
Southern School of Engineering
800 Clayton Road 27703
Southwest Elementary School
2320 Cook Road 27713
Spring Valley Elementary School
2051 Northern Durham Parkway 27703
Stanford L. Warren Library
Having recently undergone renovations and expansions, the Stanford L. Warren Library was built in 1940 as an African-American establishment.
St. Joseph's AME Church
Established in 1869 a half-block from the building's current location, the extant structure was built in 1891.
Stone Hackney Markham House
A survivor of Dillard Street's heyday as home to tobacco tycoons, the Markham House was built in 1890 by merchant William H. Stone and remains a private residence.
St. Philip's Episcopal Church
First built in 1800, the Gothic Revival St. Philips Episcopal Church still stands at its original place of worship location at 403 E. Main Street.
Temple Building
Built in 1909, the Temple Building is so called because its upper floors were, for many years, meeting places for the Elks and Odd Fellows lodges. The distinctive roof, with its wide overhang, was built with tiles left over from the second Watts Hospital (now North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics).
Trinity United Methodist Church
Trinity United Methodist Church is Durham's oldest continuous congregation, tracing its history to an 1830 revival at a place called Orange Grove on the Hillsborough-Raleigh road in present-day East Durham. William R. Herndon donated a house for a place of worship in 1832, when the congregation had 30 members.
Trust Building
The six-story office building with the distinctive (if obscured) curved southeast corner was built in 1905 for banker John Sprunt Hill and was home to his Durham Loan and Trust Co - forerunner of Central Carolina Bank. Tradition holds that it was North Carolina's tallest building at the time of its construction.
Union Station
Demolished for the Downtown Loop and a parking garage in 1968, Union Station stood at the south end of Church Street and served all railroad passengers arriving at and leaving from Durham. Built in 1905, it was distinguished by ornate brickwork an Italianate square tower.
The Venable Center
The brick building at the corner of Roxboro and Pettigrew streets was renovated in the mid-2000s into office and laboratory space. Originally, established as a warehouse for the Venable Tobacco Co.
Washington Duke Hotel, also known as the Jack Tar or Durham Hotel*
The building on the east side of CCB Plaza was an early-1960s addition to the Jack Tar (later Durham) Hotel to accommodate a parking garage and rooftop swimming pool.
West Village
Since its renovation into apartments, shops and offices in 1999, the Liggett & Myers Tobacco factory complex has been called "West Village." In addition to the additional uses of the space, the building still includes the 1884 factory of W. Duke Sons & Co.
W.G. Pearson Elementary School
W.G. Pearson Magnet Middle School occupies the former W.G. Pearson Elementary building, on Merrick Street. W.G. Pearson was an African-American businessman and educator in Durham during the early 1900s.
W.G. Pearson Middle
W.G. Pearson Magnet Middle School occupies the former W.G. Pearson Elementary building, on Merrick Street. W.G. Pearson was an African American businessman and educator in Durham during the early 1900s.
White Rock Baptist Church
Originally standing near the northern end of Fayetteville Street in Hayti's heart, White Rock is Durham's oldest African-American congregation, dating to 1866. The church relocated south, beyond Cornwallis Road, when its building was taken for Durham Freeway construction.
Whitted School Building
The monumental school building on Umstead Street between Fayetteville and Roxboro was originally Hillside Park High School Durham's first full high school for African-Americans. Its use as a school ended in the mid-1970s.
Y.E. Smith Elementary School
2410 E. Main Street 27703