The brick building at the corner of Roxboro and Pettigrew streets was renovated in the mid-2000s into office and laboratory space. Originally, it was a warehouse for the Venable Tobacco Co., organized in 1907 as a Durham subsidiary of the Dibrell Brothers tobacco business of Danville, Va.

Dibrell dried raw tobacco for shipment to manufacturers worldwide. After the complex was abandoned for tobacco use, it was operated for a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s as an "arts incubator," with space leased for studios and a theater company.