INC NEWS - Hike unveils Duke, Durham lore (Herald-Sun & Chronicle)

[John Schelp]

Urban hike heat
By Carolyn Norton, Herald-Sun, 1 April 2007

The area from Oval Park south to the Durham Freeway is
what local history lover John Schelp refers to as a
"microcosm of Durham history." 

Streets close to Oval Park, on West Club Boulevard,
are part of a historically white neighborhood -- once
filled with Ninth Street shop owners and doctors from
Watts Hospital. 

Just to the west, there once was a neighborhood of
[blue collar and middle class] black families. And
just south of the freeway lived "dirt poor" white and
black people, Schelp said. [And the Fitzgerald's, a
wealthy black family, lived nearby, where the old Duke
laundry facility is today.]

"White, black, rich, poor," Schelp said standing in
Oval Park Saturday morning. "All right here, between
us and the freeway." 

Schelp spoke from the edge of that microcosm before
leading dozens of people on a tour of Old West Durham,
Duke University's East Campus and the Ninth Street
area. Part of a series of urban hikes sponsored by the
Sierra Club, the tour led people through
neighborhoods, parks and watersheds while Schelp
shared facts and trivia about houses and landmarks. 

He said the first wealthy Durham neighborhoods sprung
up close to railroads, then, as trolleys came to be,
houses were built by those tracks. 

"This became one of Durham's first trolley suburbs,"
Schelp said, standing at the corner of Ninth Street
and Club Boulevard. Club used to be called E Street,
and had a trolley running down it west of Broad
Street. Later, as automobiles caught on, the wealthy
moved much farther afield, to areas such as Hope
Valley and Forest Hills, Schelp said. "The
neighborhoods follow the pattern of transportation." 

The lettered and numbered streets in West Durham
changed to names, such as Markham, when the city
annexed the area. At the same time, Schelp said, the
city annexed East Durham, which also had lettered and
numbered streets, so most of the West Durham streets
had to change. Ninth Street businessmen were among
those who agitated to keep their addresses intact, he
said. 

The 4-mile hike took walkers by West Ellerbee Creek,
to the N.C. School of Science and Math (formerly Watts
Hospital), through Walltown, Trinity Heights and East
Campus. The group also hiked down Watts Street past
Trinity Park, by E.K. Powe Elementary and through an
old mill village. 

"We love Durham, and we are committed to inner
Durham," said Trinity Park resident John Bloedorn,
explaining why he joined the hike. "I wanted to find
out more about history." 

Schelp showed the group a blue house with white
columns in Trinity Heights where Richard Nixon lived
when he was a law student at Duke. The group also
walked past Whitestar Laundry, which Schelp explained
was once an icehouse, then a place for fur coat
storage, before becoming a laundry. At Duke, Schelp
pointed out a building known as The Ark, where Madonna
once took lessons as a student at the American Dance
Festival. 

In Trinity Park, the group stopped across from a
playground, a site where a developer planned to build
an apartment building in the 1970s. Community members
objected, and formed the Trinity Park Neighborhood
Association. 

Years before, Schelp said, Trinity Park looked much
different than it does today. 

"There was smoke from all the cotton mills and tobacco
factories," he said. "There were whistles going off
from all the shift changes." 

A hike through Hayti is scheduled for April 28,
leaving at 9 a.m. from the Stanford Warren Library. 

****

Hike unveils Duke, Durham lore
By Cosette Wong, 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 two articles above include minor corrections in
brackets.]