West Durham Historic District

West Durham is a mill village of about ninety acres, divided by Hillsborough Road. Its core is the Erwin Cotton Mills complex on West Main Street, where Mill No. 1 opened in 1892 and was lengthened in 1896, and Mill No. 4 followed in 1909-10. Of the eighty-four houses, seventy-seven were built by the company for its workers in three one-story types: small gabled houses, T-shaped houses and pyramidal-roofed houses. Beside the mills, a commercial strip along Ninth Street includes the former Fidelity Bank, a Neoclassical Revival building designed by Rose and Rose. Institutional buildings include the 1928 E. K. Powe School and two churches. Many houses received replacement siding and porch parts over the years, but most changes are reversible and the streetscapes remain intact. The district was listed because it shows how a company-built textile community was laid out and lived in, with its social history outweighing the architectural detail of individual buildings.