Lakewood Park Historic District

Lakewood Park is a neighborhood of about fourteen blocks in southwest Durham, North Carolina, developed beginning in 1902 around an amusement park built by the Durham Traction Company at the end of its trolley line. The park featured a swimming lake, a roller coaster, a dance pavilion, a skating rink, a bowling alley and a casino theater, and drew crowds from Durham and surrounding counties for more than twenty-five years. Lots were laid out from 1906 to 1908 on former farmsteads, and houses built between about 1902 and 1952 form the core of the district. The earliest are one-story frame cottages with Queen Anne details, followed by pyramidal cottages, Craftsman and bungalow houses of the 1920s, and Period Cottage and Minimal Traditional houses of the late 1930s and 1940s. Small brick commercial buildings along Chapel Hill Road, including grocery stores and a florist shop, served residents and park visitors. The district is significant for its planning and development as a streetcar suburb and for its range of early twentieth-century houses.