Holloway Street District

Holloway Street District is a tree-shaded residential area east of downtown Durham, made up of twenty-six buildings along Holloway Street and nearby Dillard Street. Nearly all are one- to two-and-one-half-story frame houses from the 1880s to the 1920s, along with one brick commercial building from the late 1910s. Vernacular Queen Anne houses with irregular rooflines, sawn bargeboard and three-sided bays predominate, mixed with Neoclassical and Colonial Revival designs such as the Thomas House with its curved Ionic portico. The district is one of the few surviving parts of Durham's earliest prestigious neighborhood, which grew in the 1860s and 1870s as the tobacco industry brought wealth to the city. Members of pioneering families sold lots to industrialists, bankers, merchants and professionals who built their homes here. Much of the original neighborhood was lost to commercial growth, urban renewal and road projects. Today the remaining houses are largely intact but deteriorated, and many have been converted to apartments.