City preview · DURHAM

Durham’s tobacco bags were sewn by machine and finished by hand

Women and children finished Golden Belt’s machine-sewn bags at home, threading drawstrings and attaching labels. Duke Chapel paired local wall stone with limestone from Indiana. The ballpark bull follows a film prop’s design. The internet-famous 11foot8 bridge gained eight inches of clearance in 2019.

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Golden Belt Building Two bag factory · Editorial illustration, not a historical photo

A bag factory, a chapel and two places seen on screen

Drawstrings, chapel stone, a film bull and a raised railway bridge

Four complete stories and their public sources are shown here; the rest of the collection is in the app.

01 · Golden Belt Building Two bag factory

The machines sewed; hands threaded the bags

Families finished the drawstrings at home.

More tobacco sales meant more small cloth bags. Golden Belt machines cut and sewed them, but early drawstrings and labels still required hands. Durham women and children took that work home. In the 1901 complex, Building One held weaving and Building Two made bags. An eastward extension later enclosed the tower that had stood at Building Two's end.

Source: opendurham.org

02 · Duke University Chapel

Local stone for a Gothic chapel

Two kinds of stone meet at the entrance.

Duke Chapel's principal designer was Black architect Julian Abele. The design drew on English Gothic architecture, but most wall stone came from Duke's quarry near Hillsborough, west of Durham. Details around the entrance used Indiana limestone. Rough walls and finely carved openings show the two different materials.

Source: chapel.duke.edu

03 · Durham Bulls Athletic Park

A movie prop became a ballpark sign

Today's bull follows the movie prop's design.

Bull Durham supplied the old ballpark with a snorting bull sign. After filming, the team kept the image. A sign modeled on the movie bull now stands on the new park's left-field "Blue Monster," beside a manual scoreboard. It is a later remake, retaining the look of the movie prop.

Source: milb.com Source: milb.com

04 · 11foot8 Bridge / Gregson Street railroad bridge

The can-opener bridge grew taller

The old name stayed; the clearance sign changed.

Videos of overheight trucks striking the protective beam made the Gregson Street railroad bridge famous online. The 11foot8 website kept recording. On October 29, 2019, workers raised the bridge eight inches with jacks. Clearance rose from eleven feet eight inches to twelve feet four inches. The website began calling it "11foot8+8."

Source: 11foot8.com Source: 11foot8.com

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