INC NEWS - Urban Hike is Saturday, April 12 (Club & 9th)

[John Schelp]

Urban hike: Watts Hospital, West Durham, East Campus,
Ninth Street & beyond 

Saturday, April 12 at 9:00 AM 
Meet at West Club & 9th Street

What's happening in Watts Hospital's old operating
room today? What Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist
went to EK Powe school? Was Duke Chapel really going
to be built in Walltown? Why is Ninth Street called
Ninth Street? Where did Madonna take early dance
lessons? What song writer for Nora Jones (and Lou
Rawls) was "born on a kitchen table" near Magnolia
Grill?

Come along and find out...

4-mile loop starts in Watts Hospital-Hillandale at
corner of West Club & 9th Street, in front of the NC
School of Science & Math. 

We'll start by walking down a hidden route, over to
Walltown, along Markham Ave by Trinity Heights, past
the Bassett Affair house on Buchanan. We'll then go
down Watts Street, past Trinity Park park, and cross
East Campus. 

We'll stroll up Ninth Street, past EK Powe, and see
the South Ellerbe Creek Nature Area. We'll walk
through an old mill village and check out a historic
house ordered from a Sears & Roebuck catalogue. 

We'll continue into Watts Hospital-Hillandale up
Oakland Ave to the West Ellerbe Trail in 17-acre Urban
Nature Reserve, head over to Westover Park, and end
where we started at Club & 9th. 

You'll see some nature and learn a little Durham
history along the way. We might also get into current
events in the Bull City. 

Local history lover John Schelp will narrate along the
way. You don't have to register. 

The NC School of Science & Math is located on West
Club Blvd, near Broad Street. Ample parking (for your
bike or car) is available on nearby streets.
Well-behaved dogs on leashes are welcome.

After, lunch & drinks are available at several nearby
restaurants on Broad St, near Club.

Sponsored by the Sierra Club. Please email Janet Hitti
(janet.hitti at verizon.net) with any questions.

More info & old streetmap...
www.owdna.org/selfguidedtourOWD.htm 

****

Hike unveils local lore
(Duke Chronicle, 2 April 2007)

Rumor has it, Coach K gets his hair cut at an old
Wesleyan church just off East Campus. "He goes there
after hours," said John Schelp, who pointed out
historical markers and facts Saturday morning on the
third annual four-mile Urban Hike he leads around
Durham. "I don't know if that's true or not, but it's
the local lore."

Schelp, president of the Old West Durham Neighborhood
Association, showed Durham residents, Duke employees
and members of other neighborhood associations little
known locales around the city, including former
President Richard Nixon's old house on Clarendon
Street and the house where Elvis Presley is said to
have undergone drug rehabilitation. 

"Each time he adds a little new twist to something,"
said Janet Hitti, a member of the Sierra Club in
Durham. "He's Durham's national treasure." 

When the tour reached East Campus, Schelp led the
group past the Ark, Duke's dance studio and the site
of the first Trinity College basketball game. The Ark
is made out of wood salvaged from the grandstand of a
horse race track that once encircled East Campus,
Schelp said. 

"Only two can walk in at a time going up the gangplank
into the Ark, like Noah's Ark," he said, adding that
Madonna-an American Dance Festival student in the
'70s-lived in Gilbert-Addoms Residence Hall for a
summer and took early dance lessons at the Ark. 

Schelp said Duke and Durham were very different in the
past, when the neighborhood smelled like a laundromat
because of [soapy water from the dye ponds and] smoke
puffing from the cotton mills and when [the main drive
into East Campus] once led to the Ann Roney Fountain
behind what is now the East Duke Building.

Among other things, Schelp added that Whole Foods on
Broad Street used to be part of the field where mill
workers played baseball and that the gap in the East
Campus wall-now planted with cypress trees-was once a
ticket counter that kept people from watching football
games without paying.

"They built Duke Hospital on top of [Durham's]
boneyard," he said, adding that this change is an
example of how different the University used to be.

On Ninth Street, Schelp spoke about former local
businesses like Durham's first Kentucky Fried Chicken,
now an art studio.

"Colonel Sanders liked to go stand next to [his
life-size fiberglass statue] and take the same pose,"
he said. "Customers would come into the shop and he
would move, and the customers would jump." 

Schelp also took the hikers past a house from the days
of Prohibition -- which he said still smells like
liquor when it rains -- and the house on Knox Street
where an assistant professor at Duke once kept 65
exotic snakes. [The house that burned down, releasing
some snakes into the neighborhood.]

Other historical places discussed on the tour included
a cemetery where poor black and white Durham residents
were buried side by side, the [stone] wall that
surrounds East Campus and a corner close to campus
where Schelp said drug deals were being made daily
seven years ago.

Schelp added that the rich history of west Durham was
a result of the open relationship between the city and
the University. 

"Everything has connections," he said. "The more Duke
students learn about these connections, the more they
appreciate Durham."

Even though some of the hikers have spent their whole
lives in Durham, many said they have still not gotten
to learn about all of the area's history. 

"I learned more today than I have in the last
[sixty-four] years," said Freddie Cable, who grew up
in Durham and currently lives in the city. 

Susan Wilkins, whose grandparents opened Bullocks
Bar-B-Que in Durham, and Peggy Schaeffer, who has
lived in Durham 27 years, said they enjoyed the
informative nature of the hike. 

"These little details make everyday life more
interesting," Schaeffer said. "It opens your eyes." 


[The article above include minor corrections in
brackets.]