Preservation Priorities

In 2025, Preservation Durham introduced a new advocacy initiative: Preservation Priorities. This list replaces our previous “Places in Peril” list and is designed to better communicate the historic places and issues currently at risk in Durham. By highlighting key sites and sharing updates on progress and ongoing advocacy, our preservation priorities aim to engage our community more constructively and transparently in our preservation efforts.


Through this new program, we hope to better reflect the scope and impact of our advocacy work and to celebrate preservation successes alongside our partners and supporters.


This page is a work in progress - so check back often for updates!

Home Security Life Building

UPDATE 5/30/2025:

A staff recommendation to end negotiations with Peebles (the selected preferred developer) is on the agenda for the June 5th City Council Work Session. Read the full staff report here and Preservation Durham's statement in response.

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Preservation Durham strongly supports the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of the historic Home Security Life Building at 505 W. Chapel Hill Street, a significant mid-century modern landmark designed by renowned architect Milton Small. Constructed as a headquarters for the Hill family’s insurance company, the building symbolized the optimism of mid-20th-century Durham and remains a key part of the city’s architectural and cultural identity. Alongside Duke Memorial Methodist Church and the NC Mutual Tower, it helps define a principal gateway to downtown.


Despite its significance, the Home Security Life Building faces the threat of inaction. The City of Durham has entered negotiations with Peebles Corporation, the third development team to take on the project, but past efforts have stalled, leaving its future uncertain. Although structurally sound, years of vacancy and deferred maintenance put the building at risk. Without a clear and feasible preservation plan, Durham could lose an architectural gem, contributing tons of material to landfills and erasing an important piece of its history.


Preservation Durham’s ideal outcome is a sensitive rehabilitation that integrates the building into a larger redevelopment, ensuring its long-term sustainability. We will continue to advocate for historic tax credits and preservation incentives to make the project financially viable, working with the City, developers, and community stakeholders to ensure a successful outcome. Our organization offers technical expertise, support in securing National Register designation, and community advocacy, including applying for preservation awards and assisting with marketing efforts. Additionally, we are prepared to accept an easement on the property to provide tax benefits and long-term protection.


Through ongoing engagement with city staff, the development team, and elected officials, Preservation Durham is committed to ensuring that the Home Security Life Building remains a proud and functional part of Durham’s built environment, rather than becoming another lost landmark.





Historic Durham Athletic Park (DAP)

UPDATED 11/5/2025

An update on the community engagement and feasibility study will be presented at the City Council Work Session November 6, 2025. Materials are posted on the city's website here. Preservation Durham's response to the initial plans is below.

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Preservation Durham advocates for the preservation and continued public use of the historic Durham Athletic Park (DAP), a landmark deeply tied to Durham’s baseball and sociocultural history. As the City explores options for the site’s future to provide “the greatest benefit to the community,” it is essential that preservation remain the guiding principle, not a secondary consideration.


The DAP is one of Durham’s most iconic and culturally significant landmarks. Community feedback makes it clear that residents want to enhance and invest in what already exists, not replace it with something new.


Community Priorities

Results from the City’s own survey demonstrate overwhelming support for preservation:

  • 2,611 residents responded.
  • 44% (1,148) specifically emphasized the need to preserve the DAP’s unique historic features, more than any other theme.
  • 29% (757) called for greater public access, achievable without a complete redesign.
  • 28% (731) prioritized open space, which is the clear priority illustrated in the schematic designs.


These findings show that preservation is not a niche concern; it is the community’s clearest call and it is not reflected at all in the "Transformation" and "New Development" schemes.


Concerns with the Feasibility Study

The recent feasibility study treats preservation as a competing goal rather than an essential one. Preservation should not be framed as a tradeoff with public use or open space. It is the foundation that gives the site and surrounding Foster and Geer Street Historic District their meaning and identity. That district has already lost much of its working-class character over the past decade, making it even more important to protect what remains.


Yet the study fails to address the most fundamental questions:

  • What problem(s) are we trying to solve?
  • Does it truly require a costly redesign?


The DAP is already a unique, historic venue that can host a variety of community uses. Issues of underutilization or accessibility can be addressed through improved management agreements, better programming, and modest infrastructure updates, not through a $40–85 million rebuild.


Most concerning, the study does not clearly define the site’s future use. The concepts presented suggest that a heavily programmed public park was assumed from the outset, without transparent communication to the public or a genuine exploration of community priorities. An authentic feasibility analysis should have begun by identifying desired uses based on community input, followed by a conditions and needs assessment to determine what improvements would best support that vision.


Preservation Durham’s Recommendations

Preservation Durham urges the City to:

  1. Acknowledge that historic preservation was the top community priority identified in the survey and make it the guiding focus moving forward.
  2. Ensure that any future redevelopment or redesign retains the DAP’s defining historic features, including the 1939 grandstands, ticket booth, concession stand, and field.
  3. Engage a qualified preservation consultant to prepare a Historic Structures Report assessing current conditions and identifying character-defining features that must be protected.
  4. Pursue Local Landmark designation or commit to submitting all future design plans for a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) review by the Historic Preservation Commission, ensuring compliance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards.
  5. Prioritize activation and access through creative management and partnership agreements rather than a costly rebuild that risks eroding the park’s historic integrity.


Our Commitment

Preservation Durham will continue to make efforts to engage directly with City staff and the feasibility team, advocate for public support, and share the DAP’s rich history to strengthen community connection. Our organization offers historical expertise, preservation guidance, and opportunities for the public to help shape the park’s future.


Durham deserves a plan that honors the DAP’s past while inviting new generations to experience it. Preservation is not a constraint. It is the community’s clearest call and the City’s greatest opportunity.

Durham Cemeteries

Preservation Durham advocates for the identification, protection, and ongoing stewardship of Durham’s historic cemeteries, which reflect the city’s complex social and cultural history. These burial sites, including private, unmarked African American and mill cemeteries, tell the story of Durham’s diverse communities and the economic and social realities they faced. However, many of these cemeteries are threatened by development pressure, lack of maintenance, encroachment, and ambiguous ownership, leaving them vulnerable to neglect and destruction.


Preservation Durham’s ideal outcome is a comprehensive strategy to document and protect all known burial sites, incorporating them into local and state planning data. This includes recording cemeteries on property deeds and establishing clear protections within Durham County’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) to ensure ongoing access, maintenance, and protection. We seek to work with Durham County Open Spaces to initiate a cultural heritage survey to identify undocumented sites and integrate them into official planning databases.


To achieve this, Preservation Durham will continue to build a coalition of stakeholders, advocate for stronger protections within the UDO, and document existing and newly discovered cemeteries in a GIS system connected to the City and County Planning database. We aim to develop a public engagement strategy to educate and train volunteers, fostering a community-based approach to cemetery preservation. Preservation Durham brings deep knowledge and experience working with historic cemeteries and strong connections with government agencies. We are prepared to offer technical guidance, assist with public education, and coordinate efforts to document and protect these irreplaceable cultural resources.


Through strategic advocacy and community engagement, Preservation Durham is committed to ensuring that Durham’s historic cemeteries are preserved as places of memory, history, and community pride for generations to come.


Historic Durham School of the Arts (DSA) Campus

Preservation Durham strongly advocates for the thoughtful preservation and adaptive reuse of the historic Durham School of the Arts (DSA) campus, which faces an uncertain future after Durham Public Schools (DPS) relocates the school to a new site in 2027. The 15-acre site includes historically significant buildings designed by Milburn & Heister, exemplifying the Neoclassical Revival style and contributing to the Trinity Park Historic District. Completed in 1923 on Brodie Duke’s property, the original high school and junior high buildings remain structurally sound but require significant investment to address deferred maintenance.


Preservation Durham’s ideal outcome is a successful project that preserves the historic high school and middle school buildings and integrates them into a sustainable future use. The site offers exceptional potential to serve community needs through adaptive reuse, possibly as an arts district with subsidized nonprofit rents, similar to the SALT Block in Hickory. A public-private partnership leveraging historic tax credits (HTCs) and removing management from the school board could provide a sustainable path forward, helping reconnect this key block along Main Street.


To achieve this vision, Preservation Durham will engage directly with the DPS Board and County Commissioners to advocate for early involvement of a third party to guide community engagement and identify feasible reuse options. We will organize site visits for decision-makers to showcase successful adaptive reuse projects across North Carolina and provide historical expertise and preservation guidance. Preservation Durham is prepared to facilitate preservation through accepting an easement, assisting with a preservation-minded sale, or even acquiring the property to protect it from unsympathetic development. Through strategic advocacy and community engagement, we aim to ensure that the DSA campus remains a vital part of Durham’s architectural and cultural legacy.