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Durham, North Carolina
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===Early growth (1900β1970)=== [[File:SKYL024 Old Bull Building ATC DiscoverDurham.jpg|thumb|Overlooking the newly renovated [[American Tobacco|American Tobacco Campus]]|left]] The rapid growth and prosperity of the Bull Durham Tobacco Company, and [[Washington Duke]]'s W. Duke & Sons Tobacco Company, resulted in the rapid growth of the city of Durham. Throughout the [[Gilded Age]] and into the early twentieth century, Durham industrialists, including [[George Washington Watts]], [[John Sprunt Hill]], and [[Julian S. Carr]], built large mansions such as [[Somerset Villa]], [[Harwood Hall]], the [[John Sprunt Hill House]], and [[Greystone (Durham, North Carolina)|Greystone Manor]]. Washington Duke was a good businessman, but his sons were brilliant and established what amounted to a monopoly of the smoking and chewing tobacco business in the United States by 1900. In the early 1910s, the Federal Government forced a breakup of the Duke's business under the antitrust laws. The Dukes retained what became known as [[American Tobacco]], a major corporation in its own right, with manufacturing based in Durham. American Tobacco's ubiquitous advertisements on radio shows beginning in the 1930s and television shows up to 1970 was the nation's image of Durham until Duke University supplanted it in the late 20th century. [[File:Durham Main Street.JPG|thumb|Looking west along Parrish Street, home of what was then known as Black Wall Street]] Prevented from further investment in the tobacco industry, the Dukes turned to the then new industry of electric power generation, which they had been investing in since the early 1890s. [[Duke Power]] (now Duke Energy) brought in electricity from hydroelectric dams in the western mountains of North Carolina through the newly invented technology of high voltage power lines. At this time (1910β1920), the few towns and cities in North Carolina that had electricity depended on local "powerhouses". These were large, noisy, and smoky coal-fired plants located next to the railroad tracks. Duke Power quickly took over the electricity franchises in these towns and then electrified all the other towns of central and western North Carolina, making even more money than they ever made from tobacco.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Our Company: Our History |url=https://www.duke-energy.com/our-company/about-us/our-history |access-date=2022-11-06 |publisher=Duke Energy |language=en-US}}</ref> Duke Power also had a significant business in local franchises for public transit (buses and trolleys) before local government took over this responsibility in the mid- to late 20th century. Duke Power ran Durham's public bus system (now [[GoDurham]]) until 1991. The success of the tobacco industry in the late 19th and early 20th century encouraged the then-growing textile industry to locate just outside Durham. The early electrification of Durham was also a large incentive. Drawing a labor force from the economic demise of single-family farms in the region at the time, these textile mills doubled the population of Durham. These areas were known as East Durham and West Durham until they were eventually annexed by the City of Durham. Much of the early city [[architecture]], both commercial and residential, dates from the period of 1890β1930. Durham recorded its worst fire in history on March 23, 1914. The multimillion-dollar blaze destroyed a large portion of the downtown business district. The fire department's water source failed during the blaze, prompting voters to establish a city-owned water system in place of the private systems that had served the city since 1887.<ref>{{cite web |title=This day in 1914 |url=https://www.facebook.com/museumofdurhamhistory/photos/a.286366331389809.90199.144344455591998/835801223112981/?type=1&theater |url-access=limited |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/iarchive/facebook/144344455591998/835801223112981 |archive-date=2022-02-26 |access-date=March 23, 2014 |website=Facebook |publisher=Museum of Durham History}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Durham quickly developed a black community, the center of which was an area known as ''[[Hayti, Durham, North Carolina|Hayti]]'', (pronounced HAY-tie), just south of the center of town, where some of the most prominent and successful black-owned businesses in the country during the early 20th century were established. These businesses β the best known of which are [[North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company]] and [[Mechanics and Farmers Bank (Durham, North Carolina)|Mechanics & Farmers Bank]] β were centered on Parrish St., which would come to be known as "Black Wall Street".<ref>{{cite web |last=Cain |first=Brooke |last2=Quillin |first2=Martha |date=February 2021 |title=10 NC Black history lessons you likely weren't taught in school (but should have been) |url=https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article249151195.html |access-date=February 27, 2021 |website=Raleigh News & Observer |language=en}}</ref> In 1910, [[James E. Shepard|Dr. James E. Shepard]] founded [[North Carolina Central University]], the nation's first publicly supported liberal arts college for African-Americans. In 1924, [[James Buchanan Duke]] established a philanthropic foundation in honor of his father [[Washington Duke]] to support Trinity College in Durham. The college changed its name to [[Duke University]] and built a large campus and hospital a mile west of Trinity College (the original site of Trinity College is now known as the [[Duke University East Campus|Duke East Campus]]).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Williams |first=Shane |date=March 7, 2016 |title=Duke University |url=https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/duke-university/ |access-date=March 3, 2020 |website=North Carolina History Project |publisher=[[John Locke Foundation]]}}</ref> Durham's manufacturing fortunes declined during the mid-20th century. [[Textile]] mills began to close during the 1930s. Competition from other tobacco companies (as well as a decrease in smoking after the 1960s) reduced revenues from Durham's tobacco industry. [[File:Durham aerial view, Chanticleer 1952 page 376.jpg|thumb|right|Downtown Durham, 1942 or earlier]] In a far-sighted move in the late 1950s, Duke University, along with the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in Raleigh, persuaded the North Carolina Legislature to purchase a large tract of sparsely settled land in southern Durham County and create the nation's first "science park" for industry. Cheap land and a steady supply of trained workers from the local universities made the [[Research Triangle Park]] an enormous success which, along with the expansion resulting from the clinical and scientific advances of Duke Medical Center and Duke University, more than made up for the decline of Durham's tobacco and textile industries.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Emerson |first=Rob |title=Golden Belt: Our History |url=https://www.goldenbeltarts.com/community/our-history/ |access-date=2022-11-06 |publisher=Golden Belt Arts}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Williams |first=Wiley J. |date=2006 |title=Research Triangle Park |url=https://www.ncpedia.org/research-triangle-park |access-date=2022-11-06 |website=NCpedia}}</ref>
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