Live in Old East Durham

Old East Durham, on this page, is the area the City of Durham's own Neighborhoods layer draws a mile and a half east of downtown: 287 acres from Plum Street to Briggs Avenue, between the railroad and Holloway Street. The City keeps that layer for its own work orders and publishes no date, author or definition for it, so the line is not an association's territory, and this guide claims nothing about where residents think the neighborhood ends. It held 2,267 residents in 964 housing units at the 2020 census. It is not the much larger East Durham area this site groups it under.

The mill came first, and the houses were never the mill's. Julian S. Carr built the Durham Cotton Manufacturing Company, the city's first textile mill, on the railroad in 1884, with company houses south of the tracks for an all-white workforce. North of the tracks a land company bought farmland, laid out Driver Avenue and its cross streets from 1887 and sold lots to private builders and landlords until 1933. A trolley came up Driver Street in 1902. East Durham stayed outside the city limits until about 1925. The mill closed in 1938, and the 2004 National Register nomination describes the decades since as disinvestment, with white owners leaving and residents now mostly African American and Hispanic.

A National Register district, and nothing local. The nomination calls East Durham the largest and most densely populated historic neighborhood in Durham: 563 contributing buildings from about 1890 to 1955, cottages, bungalows and duplexes on narrow lots behind granite curbs. 1,709 of the guide's residents live inside the district. But no local historic district covers any of the guide, so the Historic Preservation Commission, which rules on exterior changes in local districts and at designated landmarks, has no say over these houses; the People's Bank on South Driver Street, a local landmark, is the exception. The Register listing restricts nothing a private owner does with private money: no certificate of appropriateness is needed to replace windows, add on or demolish, and nothing stops a neighbor doing the same.

The tax bill is the plain City rate, on 2025 values. County and City together charge 101.63 cents per $100 for fiscal 2027, on the values of the 1 January 2025 revaluation, which stand until 2029 unless a house is rebuilt or rezoned. A buyer does not reset the value by buying, so the seller's bill is the guide to the first one. Stormwater comes on the City utility bill, $5.70 to $23.64 a month. North Carolina has no homestead exemption for an ordinary buyer. No sale price is published for the neighborhood: Zillow's $379,924 for August 2026 is the whole 27703 ZIP, and the nomination found owner occupancy under twenty percent in parts of the district, mostly south of Main Street, so many houses for sale will have been rentals.

Day to day, it is close in and on the bus. GoDurham's route 13 stops at Taylor and Driver streets hourly, Sundays included; route 3 runs every 20 minutes at midday on Holloway Street and route 2 every 30 on East Main Street, fare-free through June 2027. No supermarket is mapped inside the line; the nearest is the Food Lion on Holloway Street. FEMA puts the reference point in zone X on a panel dated 2006, and no resident of 2020 lived on a block in a mapped flood hazard area.

Worth knowing before you commit

The listing protects the history, not the house next door

1,709 residents live in a National Register district with no local review

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• Look the parcel up on the County's planning layers: inside or outside the 2004 district, no certificate is needed
• Ask the State Historic Preservation Office whether rehabilitation tax credits fit the work you plan
• Read the seller's bill: the 2025 value stays until 2029 at 101.63 cents per $100
• Run the exact address through the Durham School Locator: 798 residents are zoned for Eastway, not Y. E. Smith
• Check the address on FEMA's flood map; the point sits on a 2006 panel

How Old East Durham got here

• 1884Julian S. Carr builds the Durham Cotton Manufacturing Company, Durham's first textile mill, at 2000 East Pettigrew Street on the North Carolina Railroad, a mile and a quarter east of town, with about 200 mill houses for white workers south of the tracks. The mill hires only white hands, and Black workers are barred from its housing.
• 1886Banker Eugene Morehead, attorney W. W. Fuller, stone dealer Robert I. Rogers and tobacco dealer John L. Watkins form the Durham Land and Security Company and buy farmland north of the mill, including the 125-acre Driver Land. Mill workers organize the church that becomes Carr United Methodist the same year.
• 1887The company lays out Driver Avenue, Heartt Street, Angier Street and Guthrie Avenue and starts selling lots of half an acre to eight acres; it goes on subdividing until 1903 and selling until 1933.
• 1898The East Durham Public School opens at 107 South Driver Street, a two-story frame school of eight grades. The oldest documented house in the district, the John Cheek House at 201 South Driver Street, follows in 1899.
• 1902A trolley branch runs out Angier Avenue, up Driver Street and back by Holloway Street, and the traction company builds a ballfield on the 400 block of North Driver Street.
• 1903A master plat divides the last 70 acres of the Driver Land, the nine blocks from North Maple Street to Briggs Avenue and Hart Street to Southgate Street, into lots 50 to 60 feet wide. In 1909 L. D. and L. J. Kirkland subdivide the blocks from Liberty Street to Holloway Street.
• 1910A brick school by New York architect Fred Githens replaces the frame one at 107 South Driver Street in 1909-10; it later becomes the Y. E. Smith School.
• 1921The People's Bank opens its Neoclassical branch at 318 South Driver Street, the commercial center's showpiece; the Fidelity Bank takes it over about 1935.
• 1925About now East Durham, a suburb outside the city limits until then, is annexed into Durham. Streets are renamed to match the city's: Heartt Street becomes Hart, Lottie becomes Liberty and First Avenue becomes North Driver Street.
• 1938The Durham Cotton Manufacturing Company closes, after the trolleys stopped in 1932 and the Durham Land and Security Company stopped selling lots in 1933; it sells all its real estate in 1939.
• 1987The Y. E. Smith School closes; the Holloway Street School follows in the early 1990s. By the nomination's account most white owners have left, rentals have grown, and the residents are now mostly African American and Hispanic.
• 2004The East Durham Historic District is listed on the National Register: 563 contributing principal buildings from about 1890 to 1955, described as the largest and most densely populated of Durham's historic neighborhoods.
• 2025Durham County revalues every parcel to market value as of 1 January, the first reappraisal since 2019, and the combined City and County rate falls from 139.49 to 99.13 cents per $100.
• 2026The County raises its rate 2.5 cents to 57.92 and the City holds 43.71, a combined 101.63 cents per $100 for fiscal 2027.

What the map does not show: the Holton field is the block the trolley company ran as a ballfield until 1932. Park hours were not read; the photograph is West Point on the Eno, about 10 km northwest.

Elsewhere in Durham, not Old East Durham

The free option is the grid itself: sidewalks edged with granite curbs, and Driver Street's tree-lined run from Angier Avenue to Holloway Street.