Durham house goes up in flames

Investigation under way for ruined historic building

A historic house in Old North Durham went up in smoke early Thursday morning, less than a week after city inspectors moved to force its owner to bring the crumbling Victorian up to code.

The Durham fire marshal is investigating to determine the cause of the fire, which also consumed a smaller house next door. But the timing of the blaze raised eyebrows among some city officials.

Both 111 and 113 E. Seeman St., which neighbors say have been vacant for more than a year, are owned by James "Fireball" White Sr. Well-known to city housing inspectors, White served three years in prison for dealing drugs in the early 1980s before building a low-rent empire of properties scattered among some of the city's poorest neighborhoods.

No. 113 was designated as a historic structure known as the Mason-Andrews House. The two-story home was built about 1900 by J.B. Mason, a Durham board official and a banker. It is thought that Mason bought the corner lot from his boss, tobacco-scion Benjamin Duke.

On Thursday, little was left but charred timbers supporting parts of the house's distinctive front gable and a wraparound veranda featuring slender Doric columns. Fed by tons of century-old lumber, the fire burned so intensely that it blackened the bark of the two towering oaks in the small front yard.

Embers from the fire ignited the roof of 111 E. Seeman, a one-story home dating to the 1920s. The house at 109 E. Seeman, once the home of the first publisher of the Durham Herald newspaper, was spared. A neighbor described the pre-dawn inferno as reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Gray Dawson, a senior community improvement specialist for the city of Durham, said he had inspected the two destroyed houses for code violations just last week. As firefighters sprayed the last hot spots Thursday morning, he wandered around the outside of the larger house, examining the smoldering ruins.

Dawson said the electricity to the home had been cut off, ruling out that the fire was sparked by faulty wiring. There was evidence that vagrants had been sheltering inside, however, including discarded matchbooks and empty cigarette lighters.

"She burned hot," he said. "The house really wasn't in that bad of shape. It's a real loss for Durham to lose a historic property like this."

Dawson said the city had sent letters to White on Monday notifying him of multiple violations at the two homes and ordering him to repair them. In the past five years, records show that properties owned by White have been cited for more than 280 housing enforcement actions. Five of White's houses were so rundown that they were condemned and demolished by the city.

White did not return a call to his business, Haskell Properties Inc., on Thursday. City officials could not say whether the structures, with a combined tax value of just under $120,000, were insured.

William Erwin, who lives nearby on Glendale Avenue, shook his head as he looked at the damage. Once better known for its crack dens than its distinctive architecture, Old North Durham has rebounded with urban homesteaders seeking to restore bargain-priced mansions to their former glory. The gentrification has caused some conflict between the homeowners and low-rent landlords, such as White, and their tenants.

Erwin said his house had tripled in value since he moved there in 1993, and he decried the destruction of 113 Seeman as a lost opportunity for historic preservation.

"I'm really mad," he said. "They really ought to pin these slumlords to the wall for this. It's a horrible loss."