Simmons Street

Simmons Street is probably named for Alfred Simmons, who is shown on a 1938 plat as owning two lots at the northeast corner of Simmons and Colfax streets.

Simmons was originally laid out as "Sherman Street," as shown on a 1912 plat of Mrs. A.H. Stokes's property on Fayetteville Street. The name had been changed by 1925, when a city map shows the street running irregularly east from Merrick to Alston Avenue - its present-day extent.

The segment of Simmons Street between Merrick and Lincoln was closed for W.G. Pearson Elementary School's construction in 1928; by the mid-1930s, a westward extension was opened from Merrick to Fayetteville Street. The easternmost block of Simmons, between Hickory Street and Alston Avenue, was eliminated in the 1960s for Alston's interchanged with the Durham Freeway.