Durham Cotton Mills Village Historic District

Twenty dwellings on Middle and Reservoir streets in Durham make up what remains of the city's first textile mill village. Fifteen are one-and-one-half-story mill houses built in 1884-1885 for workers of the Durham Cotton Manufacturing Company, founded by Julian S. Carr with members of the Odell family, experienced textile manufacturers. The mill gave Durham a manufacturing base beyond tobacco, supplying cloth for tobacco pouches and later ginghams. The houses are one room deep with a central chimney and a low "story and a jump" form, and their main facades are covered in board and molded batten siding. Inventories elsewhere in the North Carolina piedmont have found no matching examples. Porches have been enclosed and rear additions made, but the basic form and distinctive siding survive. The six-lane expressway isolates the district from the mill and the surrounding neighborhood. The houses are rented, in deteriorated condition, and five brick duplexes built since 1980 have intruded among them.