{"nrhp_refnum":"84002259","name":"Watts and Yuille Warehouses","other_names":["Brightleaf Square"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"905 W. Main St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Durham","county":"Durham County","state":"NC","lat":36.00043802300007,"lon":-78.91010226599997,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1984-04-05","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national","state","local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Two identical two-story brick tobacco storage warehouses built in 1904 by the American Tobacco Company on the west side of S. Gregson Street between W. Main and W. Peabody Streets in Durham, North Carolina, now reused as the Brightleaf Square shops and offices.","why_significant":"The warehouses are argued to be outstanding examples of turn-of-the-century industrial architecture, combining heavy-timber \"slow burn\" construction with an elaborate medieval-inspired brick decorative scheme. They are also symbols of the American Tobacco Company trust and its link to James B. Duke, George W. Watts and Thomas B. Yuille, who shaped Durham's growth and the nation's tobacco industry.","narrative":"Watts and Yuille Warehouses are a pair of identical two-story brick buildings erected in 1904 in Durham by the American Tobacco Company to age tobacco. Each is seven bays wide and twenty bays long, divided by thick firewalls into four units, with pilasters, stringcourses, corbelled cornices, stepped parapets and 72 decorative chimneys. The style recalls medieval architecture and has been called Romanesque or Norman Revival. Heavy timber framing and brick walls provided slow-burning, fire-resistant storage for hogsheads of tobacco. The buildings are tied to James B. Duke's consolidation of the cigarette industry into the American Tobacco Company, and to businessmen George W. Watts and Thomas B. Yuille. After sitting idle, they were sold in 1980 and converted into a shopping and office complex called Brightleaf Square. The renovation kept structural changes minimal, exposed the original columns and beams, and added a redesigned courtyard between the two buildings.","period_of_significance":"1900-","architect_builder":"W. J. Hicks, Albert F. Hunt initial plan and refinements; Samuel Linton Leary (?) - design of brickwork","architectural_style":"Romanesque Revival or Norman Revival","criteria":["A","B","C"],"status_note":"Sold in 1980 after standing idle for a few years and renovated as Brightleaf Square, a complex of shops and offices; described as occupied, in excellent condition and altered.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:57:49.075004-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/68/7200/47720068/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/84002259.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/84002259/8ac8d9d551-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/84002259/8ac8d9d551-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Mx. Granger","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yuille_Warehouse_decorated_for_Christmas.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Mx. Granger</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yuille_Warehouse_decorated_for_Christmas.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47720068","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Yuille_Warehouses","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18739502"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/durham-county/watts-and-yuille-warehouses-84002259/"}