Places, circa 1910-1950s

Extent:

47 items

Scope and content:

These 47 images begin with one of the city of Durham's earliest sites, with the Bennitt farmstead - site of the largest Civil War surrender - photographed around 1904. Subsequent images chiefly document the 1910s and 1920s, as Durham grew into a busy manufacturing center based almost exclusively on the tobacco industry.

Because of Alvin Parnell's preference for outdoor work and his many commissions from city merchants, the photographs capture in great detail downtown development, doucmenting nearly every major commercial landmark and church in the town, as well as some of its most significant residences. Along the way, Parnell's lens also documented the passersby, traffic, storefronts, and advertising of those early decades.

All of the images are in black-and-white, and about half are modern copy prints made sometime in the 1980s from the original negatives or contact prints. The rest are vintage gelatin silver prints. When Parnell took over the Cole-Holladay studio around 1919 or 1920, following his World War I service, he inherited some pre-1919 prints that originated from the earlier studio (where he was also apprenticed before 1919).

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