{"nrhp_refnum":"66000590","name":"Duke Homestead and Tobacco Factory","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"0.5 mi. N of Durham on Guess Rd., E of SR 1025","address_restricted":false,"city":"Durham","county":"Durham County","state":"NC","lat":36.03401852250005,"lon":-78.92114253585166,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1966-11-13","is_nhl":true,"nhl_designated_date":"1966-11-13","areas_of_significance":["Industry","Commerce"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A complex of small wooden buildings on Duke Homestead Road, about half a mile north of Durham, North Carolina. The house was built c. 1852 by Washington Duke, and the grounds hold three tobacco 'factories', a pack house and a spring house.","why_significant":"The complex is tied to the Duke family, which played a major role in the post-Civil War growth of the tobacco industry. Washington Duke and his son James B. Duke founded here the family business that became the American Tobacco Company, the nation's leading tobacco firm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.","narrative":"Washington Duke built this farmhouse near Durham, North Carolina, around 1852 for his second wife. It is a two-story frame and clapboard building with a gabled roof and a center chimney, with a kitchen ell added about 1859. Around it stand small wooden buildings tied to the Dukes' tobacco work: a reconstructed first log-barn 'factory', a surviving third 'factory' with two stories, a pack house and a spring house. After the Civil War, Duke processed leftover leaf tobacco in a small log barn and sold it across the state. The business grew, and in 1874 the family moved operations into Durham. James B. Duke later led the firm into cigarettes and built it into the American Tobacco Company. Duke University acquired the farm in 1931, reconstructing some buildings in the 1930s, and transferred it to the State of North Carolina in 1973. The 43.83-acre site is now a museum open year-round.","period_of_significance":"1852-1874","architect_builder":"not known","architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"Owned by the State of North Carolina and open to the public as a museum; the form notes the house needs repair and that the state hopes to restore it as funds allow.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:58:57.537133-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/84/7187/47718784/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/66000590_NHL.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47718784","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Homestead_and_Tobacco_Factory","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5312792"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/durham-county/duke-homestead-and-tobacco-factory-66000590/"}