Yesterday, I finished working on the historic landmark application for 413 E. Chapel Hill Street. Now all that is left is to go before the HIstoric Preservation Committee and see what kind of recommendation we'll get. This is the first real piece of historic consulting I've done and I really enjoyed it. It actually made me think about doing this for a career instead of continuing to chase the professor life.

I think we have a good case. The building was constructed between 1924 and 1950 (see the 1950 Sanborn map paste-up below), but I think I can point to 1939 as almost certainly the year it was completed. That was the year The Seeman's Printery moved in, which was one of several well-known tenants. Seeman's was a large operation, and the presence of oil and ink from the machines explains the black stains that Evan found all over the wood floors.

There are several points that may justify a historic designation, but to me, the most compelling find was that Seeman's had been the printer of choice for African American factory workers who wrote ballads to sell on the streets for a penny apiece. I think I found some of the originals in the Broadside Verse Collection of Duke University's Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Archives Library. They had been stored at the printery for years, but at some point Dr. William Boyd (history prof. and director of Duke's libraries) convinced Seeman's to give him the last originals because he found them worthy of preservation.

They disappeared and were forgotten until I stumbled on a mention of them in an oral history recording and got some help from the very friendly library staff at Duke. That's the kind of find that you dream about when you are a budding historian.