The ghosts of Durham’s industrial age are alive and well in Golden Belt. The land where houses stand today was once where mill workers spent their precious leisure hours, just blocks from the busy textile mill that employed them. Golden Belt, which lies about a mile east of City Hall and is the last intact mill village in the city, isn’t like the city’s other historic neighborhoods. There are no sprawling front porches or pronounced entryways; it’s decidedly working class, and it’s been this way for over a century, since the mill was built in 1901.
The residents within Golden Belt’s nearly forty acres live and breathe this history. And for DeDreana Freeman, who moved to Golden Belt in 2007, that history serves as a connection to the whole of Durham. Her four-bedroom home is similar to almost every other house in Golden Belt, single-family structures built in the early twentieth century to accommodate workers at Golden Belt Manufacturing Company.
On a recent Friday evening, Freeman’s three kids were out front in the small yard riding bicycles, while her husband, Antoine, grilled burgers and hot dogs on the front porch. Inside, she was hosting a community potluck, something residents have done frequently since 2008. Neighbors came and went, but for the dozen or so who stuck around well into the night, this wasn’t just another neighborhood gathering. It was a strategy session.
Since 2010, the residents of Golden Belt have been lobbying the city to designate their neighborhood a local historic district, a tool often used to prevent unwanted new development or stabilize neighborhoods in transition. That’s what Golden Belt isin transitiona place once riven with drugs and prostitution that today displays markers of progress: owner-occupants instead of renters, houses and yards kept up, crime declining, the sort of up-and-coming neighborhood developers eye like hawks.
Other former mill villages in Durham have fallen prey to real estate pressures. In the eighties, the now-burgeoning Old West Durham saw 450 mill houses razed to make way for the Durham Freeway and part of Duke University’s campus. So far, Golden Belt has been spared. But given its proximity to downtown, that’s likely to change.
A historic designation, the neighbors say, will ensure that new construction respects the neighborhood’s history and architectural style. All they need is for the city to sign off when the proposed district comes before the city council on September 6.
But one Bull City institution is not on board: the Durham Rescue Mission, which for the last several months has been aggressively lobbying the city to exempt twenty properties it owns from the historic district. The Rescue Mission argues that the designation would preempt its plans to build a community center on those lots.
Since April, when the Historic Preservation Commission first approved the proposed boundaries, emails from Rescue Mission supporters have poured into council members’ inboxes: “I am writing to ask you to support the Durham Rescue Mission in its efforts to build a civic center in North East Central Durham. You can do so by excluding the Durham Rescue Mission’s property on the East Side of Highway 55 from the proposed Local Historic District for the Golden Belt Neighborhood,” reads one.
But doing so, preservationists contend, would undermine the entire purpose of the district. “Our historic districts are something that help us retain the patterns or our history, and that context is really important,” says Lisa Miller, the point person for historic preservation in the Durham City-County Planning Department. “So when you start carving out portions of a district, at first it doesn’t have a significant impact, [but] whittling it down makes it more difficult to hold on to that sort of context.”
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In 1985, Golden Belt was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. (Today, it’s one of about twenty Durham locations with that distinction.) Property owners who live within a National Register district are eligible for federal tax credits and rehabilitation grants.
A local historic district is a different animal. It’s a zoning designation through the planning department that denotes the area’s significance in history, architecture, or culture.
Being on the National Register is a prerequisite for North Carolina communities to become historic districts. The tax credits from that designation often lead to renovations, which in turn boost property values. Property owners then want to protect the investment they’ve made. That’s where the local historic district comes in. The local designation guards against mass teardowns and stops developers from building big houses that don’t mesh with the neighborhood aesthetic.
“A lot of times, people start seeking out historic district overlays [when] there is a lot of change happening; either with renovations to properties that aren’t respectful of their historic character, or a lot of teardowns, and taking down much smaller structures and building larger structures,” Miller says. “That kind of instability is something that often instigates the desire for a neighborhood to have a historic district.”
The Rescue Mission, which is headquartered a few blocks from Golden Belt, isn’t opposed to the district in principle; it just wants its lots exempted. The mission’s rationale is twofold: the underway widening of Alston Avenue will essentially cut off the mission’s properties from the rest of the neighborhood, it argues; and, besides, the lots there are either vacant or have nonhistoric structures.
The neighbors counter that this district is important not just for Golden Belt but for the entire citymill history, after all, is Durham history. They point out that the proposed boundaries, which mimic those of the National Register, are based on historical maps from the thirties, when the neighborhood was at its apex. The Rescue Mission’s ambitions, they say, shouldn’t get in the way.
As resident Mel Norton puts it: “We wanted some small assurances that, as they continue to expand, that they take their neighborhood context into account. Because, whether they like it or not, they’re here.”
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The Rescue Mission was established in 1974, a decade before Golden Belt garnered its National Register designation. While advertised as a homeless shelter, the mission primarily serves clients who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. It receives no government funds, instead relying on donations from philanthropists. Its counselors are volunteers, and shelter residents have to pitch in with chores for forty hours a week.
Over the last forty-two years, its charitable work has helped thousands of down-on-their-luck men and women by providing a roof over their heads and access to vital services.
But for all the good the mission has done, it hasn’t always gotten along with its neighbors.
Freeman began informally meeting with other Golden Belt residents in 2008. Their efforts focused on two long-simmering issues that still resonate in the neighborhood today: opposition to the widening of Alston Avenue (work began this month on the project to create a four-lane divided highway that will, the city hopes, reduce congestion and improve safety); and the Rescue Mission’s plan to build a new campus.
“[The] first two things our neighborhood got around, besides getting to know each other, were these two sort of David-and-Goliath battles,” says Norton.
Golden Oldie
The Golden Belt Manufacturing Company began in 1887 as part of the Bull Durham Tobacco Factory, producing cloth bags for tobacco. After several moves in the late 1800s, industrialist Julian Carr secured land on East Main Street in 1901 for the Golden Belt plant, across from the Durham Hosiery Mill No. 1, which Carr also owned. In 1901, the first mill houses were built. Over the next several decades, the company shifted its production to paper, packaging, and labeling for cigarettes, while still producing textiles.
In 1954, the mill village became a neighborhood of privately owned homes, after Golden Belt Manufacturing offered up the houses to the occupants at 10 percent under the appraised value.
By the 1960s, Golden Belt was in the plastics business. The factory produced cigarette packing into the 1990s. In 1996, however, it shuttered, and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation donated the facility to the Durham Housing Authority. When Golden Belt Manufacturing shut down, the area lost its economic anchor.
But even before thensince the 1940s, in factthe neighborhood had an unsavory reputation. By the eighties, the neighborhood had a high percentage of renters. Drugs and prostitution took hold, and by the 2000s, Golden Belt was a shell of its former self. But people saw potential. In 2006, Scientific Properties bought the southern portion of the neighborhood for $2.6 million and redeveloped it. (The northern part is owned by Julio Cordoba, who operates the Cordoba Center for the Arts.) In the last decade, Habitat for Humanity has built about a dozen homes for low-income individuals in the neighborhood. Today, residents say, Golden Belt is showing signs of rebirth.
“It’s a close-knit community,” says Juanita Smith, one of four women who qualified for Habitat for Humanity houses on Franklin Street. “I just like it because it gives it that historic feel, that you’re connected to the city, the history of the city of Durham.” Lauren Horsch
Residents started the legwork for the historic district back in 2010, in response to the mission’s plan to build the community center and a large dormitory facility for its clients. This isn’t a NIMBY issue, they say. They’re not opposed to the mission’s presence or even its expansion. They just don’t want it to disrupt their neighborhood.
“I respect these [Rescue Mission clients] and their journey,” Norton told city council members in a recent email. “I have helped find them jobs and watched their kids. However, despite my support and respect for DRM residents, I do not give the DRM, as an institution, a pass to ignore the fact that they are embedded in a neighborhood, one that happens to be a rare embodiment of Durham’s rich historic industrial era.”
In the summer of 2011, concerns about the mission’s plans brought the residents and the nonprofit together for a charrette. But that meeting quickly turned into what Norton calls a “nightmare.” Freeman says she left in tears after being told by a woman with the Rescue Mission that she was a “bad mother” for moving her children into a high-crime neighborhood.
John Martin, a longtime Durham resident who helped renovate a home in Golden Belt before moving to Old North Durham, was also there.
“The Rescue Mission brought a lot of their people who didn’t know anything about it, they just had talking points. It was awful. There was nothing that came out of it,” Martin says. “I was sitting at table with a guy who kept calling it ‘Green Belt.’”
Ever since, the relationship between the neighborhood and the Rescue Mission has continued to erode.
“It’s become abundantly clear to me over the years that [the Rescue Mission has] zero interest in doing anything other than what they want to do,” Norton says. “And I don’t think that’s OK. I now feel very determined that we need to protect our neighborhood, and the Rescue Mission is not an ally.”
Rescue Mission cofounders Ernie and Gail Mills declined multiple interview requests for this story.
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For now, the mission’s plans seem to be on hold. The site plans for the dormitory were last revised in 2015 and haven’t seen any recent movement among local governing boards. But the mission nonetheless seems intent on preserving its options.
It summarized its case in an August 16 email to supporters: “Folks, empty lots are not historic! The Durham Rescue Mission has long-range plans to build a community center, but this will be impossible if our properties are included in the local historic district.”
To neighbors, that’s too simplistic. Those lots are primed for development, they say. They just want to ensure that whatever goes there fits, and the historic district will give them that leverage.
If the local district is approved, it would become the eighth in the city and the third east of Roxboro Street. The majority are on the west side of the city, often in more affluent neighborhoods like Watts-Hillandale and Trinity Heights.
Golden Belt differs from those because of its modest housing stock, which could eventually be used for much-needed affordable housing. Establishing a local district in Golden Belt would protect those houses from turning into more high-priced condominiums.
And, according to Miller, a historic designation wouldn’t necessarily prohibit the mission from expanding or even foreclose on bigger buildings.
“There’s definitely been statements from folks saying that historic districts would make something impossible to build,” she says. “And I’m not going to argue that a historic district is going to impact what you can build and how you can build it. But so far I haven’t heard of anything that’s not possible to build. There are lots of historic districts across North Carolina, across the United States, where large developments have been built that are appropriate and compatible with their surroundings. There are certainly ways to make that work.”
It’s happened before in Durham. In September 2015, the Historic Preservation Commission voted 7–2 to sign off on the Greystone Apartments in the Morehead Hills historic district.
If the Rescue Mission is included in the Golden Belt district, it would have to go through the same process of applying for a certificate of appropriateness and making its case before the commission. That might be difficult, but it wouldn’t be unattainable. And the process would give Golden Belt residents a chance to make their voices heard.
After six yearsafter gathering signatures and lobbying lawmakers and navigating the minefields of city bureaucracythe residents say they’re ready for this to finally be over. On Tuesday, they hope, it will be.
“It’s taken a while,” Norton says. “I wasn’t sure it was ever going to happen. You know, I think it’s actually more valuable now than it was five years ago. We’re starting to see this trend of teardown flips in a lot of the central city.”
This article appeared in print with the headline “The Last Little Village”
