Downtown Durham Historic District is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

located at

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county *Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in No ...

Durham County, North Carolina Durham County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 324,833, making it the sixth-most populous county in North Carolina. Its county seat is Durham, which is the only incorporated mu ...

. The district encompasses 97 contributing buildings and 1 contributing structure in the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

of Durham. The buildings primarily date from the first four decades of the 20th century and include notable examples of

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archi ...

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

, and

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

architecture. Notable buildings include the St. Philip's Episcopal Church (1907), Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church (1880-1881), First Baptist Church (1926-1927), Durham County Courthouse (1916), Durham Auditorium (Carolina Theatre, 1920s), Tempest Building (1894, 1905), National Guard Armory (1934-1937), United States Post Office (1934), Trust Building (1904), First National Bank Building (1913-1915), Mechanics and Farmers Bank (1921), Johnson Motor Company showroom (1927), Hill Building (1935), Snow Building (1933), and S. H. Kress store. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1977. On August 14, 2017 a 15-foot-high statue of an armed Confederate patriot was torn down in front of the 1916 Durham County Courthouse by demonstrators. The destruction of the statue followed the

2017 Unite the Right rally The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klan ...

in Charlottesville, Virginia where one counter-demonstrator was killed.

References

Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Colonial Revival architecture in North Carolina Italianate architecture in North Carolina Art Deco architecture in North Carolina Historic districts in Durham, North Carolina National Register of Historic Places in Durham County, North Carolina {{DurhamCountyNC-NRHP-stub