{"nrhp_refnum":"05001476","name":"Forest Hills Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Kent St., Bivins St., Wells St., American Tobacco Trail, Forestwood Dr. and Beverly Dr.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Durham","county":"Durham County","state":"NC","lat":35.981650136500065,"lon":-78.91438204802563,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2005-12-28","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Architecture","Landscape Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A residential historic district of about 245 acres in southern Durham, North Carolina, laid out as Durham's first automobile suburb around a golf course, with houses built mainly from 1923 into the 1950s.","why_significant":"The district is argued to be significant for community planning and development as Durham's first exclusive automobile suburb and the first suburb created around a golf course, with streets following natural terrain. It is also significant architecturally for its concentration of Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival and other period revival houses, many designed by George Watts Carr, and for its landscape architecture, including the subdivision plan and Forest Hills Park.","narrative":"Forest Hills is a residential district of about 245 acres in southern Durham, North Carolina, laid out from 1923 by the New Hope Realty Company around a nine-hole golf course along the creek bottoms beside University Drive. Its curving streets follow the natural hills, and the lots are large in the north and smaller in the south. Developers James O. Cobb and J. Fuller Glass oversaw the project, and the plan is credited to landscape planner Earle Sumner Draper, though his 1917 plan was never built. George Watts Carr, working for the Winston-Salem firm Northrup & O'Brien, designed many of the early speculative and custom houses. The district is valued as Durham's first automobile suburb and an early example of a subdivision built around a golf course. Its houses, mostly built from 1923 to about 1955, show Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival and Period Cottage styles, and the district is regarded as well preserved.","period_of_significance":"1923-ca. 1955","architect_builder":"Carr, George Watts; Davis, Archie; Weeks, Raymond; Rivers, Joseph; Knott, Charles; Milburn, Yancey; Nelson & Cooper (architects); Kane, George W. (contractor)","architectural_style":"Bungalow/Craftsman; Colonial Revival; Tudor Revival; Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival; Modern Movement; Period Cottage, Minimal Traditional, Ranch house, split-level","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The document states that historic buildings have been carefully maintained and architectural integrity is high; infill houses have been built since ca. 1955.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:41.990378-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/79/7177/47717779/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/05001476.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05001476/5aee91cf3e-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05001476/5aee91cf3e-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Nyttend","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hermitage_Court_houses.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Nyttend</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hermitage_Court_houses.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47717779","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Hills_Historic_District_(Durham,_North_Carolina)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19461788"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/durham-county/forest-hills-historic-district-05001476/"}