Preservation Durham's Annual Old Home Tour Heads to Forest Hills

A walk through Downtown Durham quickly demonstrates that there is a drive to preserve buildings and reuse them - sometimes for other purposes, sometimes for their original purpose.  Move away from the busy city center into some of the adjacent neighborhoods and it becomes very clear that the same commitment exists for homes.

“Forest Hills is a perfect representation of the pre-war drive towards the suburbanization of American cities,” said Elizabeth Sappenfield, Preservation Durham’s home tour chairperson. “It was marketed in the 1920s as ‘a place of quiet, rest, and beauty’. It offered its residents a bucolic lifestyle with city amenities. Just over a mile from the downtown business core, it was Durham's first automobile suburb.”

Preservation Durham's Annual Old Home Tour returns to Forest Hills this year and will include seven of the neighborhood's most notable homes and two gardens, including a unique sculpture garden on Oak Drive. The tour will be April 28, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Designated as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, Forrest Hills retains traces of its pastoral origins -- a few outbuildings, a 19th-century farmhouse, a barn -- combined with the winding tree-lined streets organized around a beautiful city park and clubhouse.

Homes in Forest Hills were built between the 1920s and 1950s and are representative of several styles popular at the time, including Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, English Cottage, and mid-century Modernist. This year’s tour features four excellent examples of Tudor Revival variations, two impressive Colonial Revivals, two different interpretations of Modernism, and one rare example of Spanish Colonial Revival.

Preservation Durham's Old Home Tour annually offers hundreds of people the chance to tour historically significant neighborhoods in Durham.The tour is an important fundraiser for Preservation Durham, an organization dedicated to protecting Durham’s historic assets through action, advocacy and education.

Tickets will go on sale April 1st, and will be $20 before the day of the tour. For more information and to purchase tickets in advance, visit Preservation Durham's website. Tickets also will be available in advance at Morgan Imports, at The Regulator Bookshop, and at the Preservation Durham office.

Keeping Durham Beautiful

Durham is committed to keeping Durham beautiful. Non-profits such as Preservation Durham and Keep Durham Beautiful were created in the interest of maintaining Durham's historic charm and enhancing the Bull City's appearance. The success of such organizations is closely tied to volunteerism, collaboration with local businesses, partnerships with local government and charitable giving.  Fortunately, progress is being made on that front.

Keep Durham Beautiful recently announced a history-making $10,000 grant from the Family Fare Convenience Stores' BP Fueling Communities Program. The program provides grants to local organizations that are nominated by BP’s Branded Marketers to support the communities in which they do business.  

Charitable donations, whether monetary or in volunteer hours, are crucial to the health of this community. Kudos to Family Fare Convenience Stores, Keep Durham Beautiful, Preservation Durham and to all the organizations and individuals who are keeping Durham beautiful.

Opportunities to Tour Durham Abound

As Durham continues to grow as a visitor’s destination so has the demand for an insider’s view of the place where great things happen. Fortunately, the response to this growing demand has been overwhelming. The tours available are nearly as diverse as Durham itself, and tour topics include food, beer, nature and history.  Below is a list of operators offering a closer look at the wide array of Durham's diverse cultural offerings.

Heritage Tours - These tours highlight the city's downtown architecture and explore the historical significance of Durham, NC as a tobacco town and a civil rights center.

Black Durham Experience Tour

Civil Rights Legacy Tour

Tobacco Heritage Tour

Durham Features Tour - Durham County has 58 locations on the National Register of Historic Places, from the Durham Athletic Park to Duke Chapel and three Civil War-era sites, the following tours go beyond downtown.

Tobacco Road Tours

Bull City Tours

Weekly Walking

Walking Food Tours - Bon Appetit named Durham one of "America's Foodiest Small Towns," these tours capture the flavor of the culinary scene by highlighting Durham's celebrated restaurants and local favorites.

Triangle Food Tour

Taste Carolina Tour

Nature Tour - Durham's outdoor offerings are easily explored on a scenic guided tour.

Frog Hollow Outdoors

Brewery Tour - With the addition of two new breweries in the past year, Durham is fast emerging as a destination on the brewpub map.

Beltline Brew Tours

Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau and Downtown Durham, Inc also co-produce the Downtown Durham Guide & Walking Tour. The 2011 version is hot off the presses....

Preservation Durham Hires Former Herald-Sun Editor

Bob Ashley has joined Preservation Durham as its executive director.  Ashley joins Assistant Director Sean Stucker and Preservation Services Coordinator April Johnson, as well as a host of dedicated volunteers.

Ashley, a Durham resident, retired in January after six years as editor of The Herald-Sun. Prior to joining The Herald-Sun, he edited newspapers in Owensboro, Ky., and in State College, Pa. He previously held management positions at The Charlotte Observer and at The Raleigh Times.  He is a 1970 graduate of Duke University, where he was a history major and worked on The Chronicle. 

Board of Directors President Paul N. Yale, Jr. announced the appointment and expressed his excitement with the role that Ashley will play in the organization. “Bob is deeply committed to preservation and to Durham and will bring great energy and innovation to Preservation Durham.”

 “I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to help lead an organization that has worked with great success since 1974 to ensure the preservation of many of Durham’s rich inventory of historically significant properties,” Ashley said. “This is a community that has recognized the social, as well as economic, advantages of adapting a unique historic built environment to be a vital part of a modern city.”

“But it’s important that we not be lulled into thinking that such high-impact successes as West Village, Golden Belt and the American Tobacco Historic District mean that the work of preservation here is done,”  he added. As a reminder, Preservation Durham recently released its second annual “Places in Peril” list, which identifies historic properties deemed at risk of being lost to neglect.

Ashley noted that he had worked closely with preservation groups in each city where he was editor, and he and his wife, Patricia Ashley, received an “Excellence in Historic Preservation, Private Residence” award from the Centre County Historical Society in 1988 for their work restoring an early-20th-century home in State College.

Preservation Durham was founded in 1974 as The Historic Preservation Society of Durham, Inc. and has since achieved a regional reputation as one of North Carolina's outstanding historic preservation non-profits. The mission of Preservation Durham is to protect Durham’s historic assets through action, advocacy and education.

Durham is home to many historic structures that help maintain the community's unique sense of place and character, many of which are chronicled on the local blog, Endgangered Durham.

Neighborhood Recognized for Historic Significance

Durham’s storied past has once again been honored with the recent announcement from Preservation Durham and the Historic Preservation Office of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources that the Stokesdale Historic District has been entered in the National Register of Historic Places as of December 28, 2010.

The Stokesdale Historic District centers on Hayti, Durham’s largest historic African-American community, and it stands as the only intact historic neighborhood that remains of Hayti. The residential historic district is located south of Downtown Durham and is roughly bound by Umstead, Lincoln, Lawson, and Concord Streets.

Listing in the National Register gives recognition that the properties have historic, architectural, or archaeological significance within the context of the community, state, or nation. Benefits include state and federal tax benefits for historic building rehabilitations as well as some protection against adverse action by state and federal agencies.

Holding a significant place in African-American history, Durham is a diverse and entrepreneurial place with a community culture that paved the way for Durham to be home to Black Wall Street with two African-American owned and operated banks and the largest African-American owned insurance company in the country. This designation again solidifies Durham’s position of importance in African-American history.

Interested in finding out more about Durham’s African-American history? Download Durham’s African-American Heritage Guide here or pick up a copy at the official Durham Visitor Information Center in Downtown.