Direction Connection

Not long after we bought our house back in July 2007, our Green Street neighbors (and former landlords), John and Clare, mentioned that an older neighbor had told them that both of our houses had been moved back in the 1960s. Apparently, they used to be located on the property of the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church, which is about a block and a half away from our house, and about a half a block away from John and Clare’s house. The story John and Clare heard is that the houses were moved to make room for a parking lot for the church. Since there is a large parking lot along Oakland between Green Street and Hillsborough, I figured that’s where our two houses used to be.

Here’s a map of the corner where the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church is (the red star), where our house is now (the red triangle), and where John and Clare’s house is now (the red square):

I figured the story about our houses having been moved was probably true, because (as John pointed out), our houses are the only ones in the neighborhood that have cinderblock foundations, while all the other houses have brick foundations. I figured I’d look into it someday.

Then, we had our front porch redone. This is a separate story altogether, but basically we had it tiled and screened in, and now it looks really nice. When we were having that work done, our contractor noted that we had nice wooden German siding underneath the cheesy aluminum siding that’s on our house. He suggested that we could remove the aluminum siding for the full width of the porch, and then we could paint it and that would look really nice as part of our new screened-in porch. So we decided to do that. When the contractor removed the aluminum siding and the trim around the front door and front windows, we could clearly see impressions in the paint above the front door where the old house number—903—used to be.

Here’s a picture:

So, that was cool, and I naturally assumed that our house used to be located at 903 Oakland. But I was wrong! How do I know this? Well, because that block of Oakland between Green Street and Hillsborough Road is (unlike what it says on the map I’ve included above) actually called Trent Drive. And that is actually the 800 block of Trent (Oakland), not the 900 block of anything. So I wondered if maybe our house used to be located at 903 Alabama Avenue. The address of the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church is listed as 901 Alabama Avenue (in some places, and 903 Alabama Avenue in other places). The next house on the street is 905 Alabama Avenue. So it’s safe to say that the church property includes the lots for both 901 and 903 Alabama Avenue.

I should mention at this point that Preservation Durham has a historic plaque program, which allows people who own houses more than 75 years old to obtain a plaque that authenticates the house’s history, if the homeowners research it. Important elements of Preservation Durham’s requirements for such research are chain of occupancy and chain of title.

So I went to the Durham County Public Library to research the chain of occupancy by looking at old city directories. As you might imagine, this was a little bit challenging because I was not 100% certain that the previous address was indeed 903 Alabama Avenue, nor did I know exactly when the move to 2407 Green Street occurred. But eventually, I found out that:

1. From 1930 through 1964, a house was located at 903 Alabama Avenue. The 1955 directory notes that this address is the parsonage of the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church. From 1940 through 1960, the occupation of each adult male resident of 903 Alabama Avenue is listed as “Reverend.”

2. From 1965 through 1968, neither 903 Alabama Avenue nor 2407 Green Street appears in the city directories.

3. From 1969 through the present, 2407 Green Street appears in the city directories. A child care provider was the homeowner from 1969 through 1979, and presumably ran her business out of the addition on the back of our house, which had a separate exterior entrance.

After learning all of this, I was very interested in trying to obtain other information in support of our houses being moved sometime between 1965 and 1968. One way to do this is to stop by the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church, or talk with a church elder. I have not yet coordinated this, although I did contact someone at Durham County Public Libraries to see what she could tell me. She was impressed with what I’d discovered thus far, and she gave me some links to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) historic aerial photos from 1940, 1955, and 1972. The 1940 aerial photo is fairly unexciting, mostly because the resolution isn’t that great. But the 1955 and 1972 aerial photos are much more informative. It’s easy to see in the aerial photo from 1955 that there is a house on Alabama between the church and the house at 905 Alabama Avenue, and there’s also a house on Trent/Oakland right next to the church (I presume this is John and Clare’s house).

1955 USDA aerial photo (the red arrow at left is where our house was at the time; the red arrow to the right is the empty lot where our house was later moved [same pattern for John and Clare's house with the blue arrows]):

1972 USDA aerial photo (the red arrow at left is where our house used to be; the red arrow to the right is where our house is now [same pattern for John and Clare's house with the blue arrows]):

I also need to research the chain of title. I was able to do this for 2407 Green Street (also known as “Lot 3 Block J Oakland Heights PB 5/12”) from 1983 through 2007 using the Durham County Register of Deeds online records. Then I got stuck (which a realtor friend says is not surprising, given what she knows about these records). So now I have to go the Durham County Register of Deeds in person to look at the deed books. I’ll have to take some time off from work to be able to do this. I’ll update this post once I have done that.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Day-to-Day Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.