rduwtf.com

Endangered Durham is one of my favorite websites and not because Durham is the topic - in a way, that’s just a bonus. GK, the lone author and researcher of the site, documents Durham’s history and changes by comparing archival photos and illustrations of Durham street scenes through the ages; comparing the view of a current location with photographs taken from similar viewpoints over decades. That method reminded me of the book American Ruins by photographer Camilo Jose Vergara. Vergara repeatedly photographed the same decaying buildings over the span of decades. American Ruins captures the crumbling decay of cities like Detroit, Camden & Newark, New Jersey and Gary, Indiana. Vergara ultimately proposes that a large section of Detroit should become official American Ruins, much like the ruins of ancient Rome. Endangered Durham explores the history of Durham and the way Durham’s downtown was almost destroyed, not by neglect but by the good intentions of Post-War urban planning and development. Often these were the same problems that gutted downtown Raleigh: converting streets to one way (Downtown Loop), bulldozing buildings for vast parking lots and creating lifeless pedestrian zones. The archival photography is always interesting and sometimes stunning. The 1960’s color photographs often remind me of Stephen Shore’s photographic road trip projects: Uncommon Places and American Surfaces. Endangered Durham’s archival photos from early in the last century show a bustling downtown filled with people but the human population of the photos seemingly vanish over time.
I emailed GK with a set of questions about Endangered Durham and his answers were as interesting and thoughtful as I would expect. Although I forgot to ask what GK stands for, we’re just as happy to keep it a mystery.

WTF: Can we ask you some questions? Such as: How old are you?

GK: Old enough to remember disco, and young enough to be able to make fun the word ‘meme’.

WTF: Are you a Durham native?

GK: No – grew up in New Orleans, but I have 15 years of accumulated Durham-time.

WTF: Where do you find most of your images and information? And where do you find the time to do the research?

GK: Most of the images come either from Duke or from the Durham County Library in one form or another. Both have online collections which are quite impressive – but not particularly organized in any way. As the intent of the site has become more ambitious, I’ve worked on finding non-digitized material that I can scan – such as urban renewal records, old dusty dissertations, and other more obscure collections. Time is difficult, to be sure. I may spend 3-5 hours on a more detailed post – researching, lightening-sharpening-cropping in Photoshop, etc. It’s mostly at night when I get home, or on the weekends. When I have a day off from work, and the light is good, I try to go out and take ~150-200 pictures so that I have a bit of a cushion there.

WTF: What, do you feel, is “endangered” in Durham?

GK: I think what I find most endangered about Durham can be summed up as scale. That’s the piece that links the push downtown with the teardowns in East Durham. To me, hundreds of small-medium houses or small-medium businesses create the kind of fine-grained landscape that has real vibrancy – because the scale is something that a crazy entrepreneur or urban pioneer can handle. Downtown, a lot of that scale was destroyed by urban renewal – which I firmly believe delayed the ‘comeback’ of downtown Durham by 20-30 years. Because you couldn’t really create momentum by the renovation of one small building at a time – the energy would just diffuse into a big surface parking lot next door. In order to create ‘place’, you had to do something on a massive scale – like American Tobacco. The same is true if we destroy hundreds of small houses in East Durham.

WTD: Do you have a sense of nostalgia for the past, or for Durham’s past?

GK: Well, I’m cautious about romanticizing the past – particularly a past I didn’t live through. I find the history fascinating on many levels, but I would say that I really believe in pedestrian-scale, livably-dense communities with a variety of architecture/landscape – I think the evidence from urban planning and public health supports it. I think it’s the kind of landscape that we should be creating – it just happens that we used to know how to do it, when we had to. And I think it still resonates for people, particularly when they can see it.

WTF: Are you happy to see new development in downtown Durham?

GK: I’m absolutely happy to have development in downtown Durham. Ironically, the private sector seems to understand the benefits of preservation better than the public sector. I’m a fan of actual development, though – not speculators. It will be interesting to see what happens when people start building new things, rather than just renovation. The public sector continues to show a fascination with the kind of overly impressive architecture that isn’t urban. It think the designs for the Human Services Complex and the Transportation Station are beautiful sculpture – but they are terrible streetscape.

WTF: What are your 3 favorite buildings or businesses in Durham?

GK: Wow. That’s tough. I’m going to do businesses and buildings separately, and on buildings, I’ll just name 3 of my favorite that people may not have seen: Durham Hosiery Mill #1, the old city stables on Alston, and St. Joseph’s AME on ‘old’ Fayetteville. Businesses: Oh, I don’t know – let’s say Bullock’s, Locopops, and the Regulator