History of the Freedman House

Located at 1006 W. Trinity Ave. in Durham's Trinity Park, this house was built by Jacob and May Freedman in 1938.  They had purchased the lot from JC and Bessie Markham on January 20, 1938.  According to Durham city directories, the lot had previously been vacant.  The house was designed by George Hackney with the help of May (information from her daughter) who was a former student of the Cooper Union Art School in New York.  The blueprints are dated March 1938 according to Mr Harold Lane who owned this house until July 2006 and is still in possession of the blueprints.  May was not totally satisfied with how the finished house turned out.

The house is featured in The Durham Architectural and Historic Inventory, published 1982, on page 205.  The house is described as being one of the few Tudor Revival style houses built in Trinity Park.  The exterior is faced with clinker bricks.  Its salient features include a clipped gable roofline, large exterior chimney with multiple shoulders on the main façade, and decorative stonework around the pointed arched front door.  The same pointed arches are used in the interior of the house.  On a brick wall in the basement it is possible to read “Joey 1938” written by a finger dipped in mortar.

Freedman’s Clothing Store occupying 341 and 343 West Main Street, where Jacob Freedman worked as one of the two directors, is featured on page 41 of The Durham Architectural and Historic Inventory.

Jacob, born in Russia, December 18, 1900 and May (née Leibson), born in New York, January 7, 1904, married on August 1, 1925 in New York which was her home city. 

They had three children, William born May 1, 1926, Doris Jeanette born May 3, 1929 and Robert Alfred born May 6, 1938.  Both Doris and Robert are still alive and I am grateful particularly to Doris for helping me with my research of her parents.

On June 17, 1970, Jacob and May Freedman sold the house to Theodore Matthew Benditt and his wife Anne Shaw Benditt.  The sale included the electric refrigerator and the gas stove. 

Jacob and May Freedman moved to 1501 Southwood Drive, Durham which May had bought on June 22, 1970.  Jacob died on May 9, 1971 in Duke Hospital – his death certificate describes him as Retired President, D. Freedman Clothing Company.  The family had run the store at 341-343 Main Street, Durham until it was sold to Robert R Tucker who also leased the building on January 15, 1971. 

May Freedman continued to live at 1501 Southwood Drive, and on September 8, 1972, she remarried. Her new husband, Gedale Man, was born in Poland in 1898 and had been living in Guatemala where his mother lived at the same address. May died May 19, 1984, and is buried alongside Jacob in the Durham Hebrew Cemetery on Morehead Avenue.

Ted Benditt was an assistant professor at Duke University.  Before moving to the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1978, he taught at the University of Southern California.  He served as dean of UAB's School of Arts and Humanities from 1984 until 1998.  He and the late Max Rogers were instrumental in saving Trinity Avenue, Durham from becoming a major highway – they were alerted to this possibility when they woke one morning to discover pink ribbons tied round all the trees that line the street.

On May 20, 1975, Ted and Anne sold the house to Richard F Kay and his wife Cheryl. It was their first home.  At that time Rich was an Assistant Professor at Duke.  He is now professor and chairman of the department of biological anthropology and anatomy at Duke University Medical Center.  While Rich and Cheryl lived in the Freedman house, they closed in the sun porch which is on the east side of the house with glass windows, and also lifted the linoleum from the heartpine kitchen floor, as well as the old rug from the rest of the first (ground) oak floor.  The floors were then sanded and sealed.  They are beautiful.  Rich and Cheryl divorced in 1991, Cheryl died in 2004 and Rich has remarried and has two younger children.

Rich and Cheryl left 1006 West Trinity in 1980 as the house was too small for their growing family.  They sold the house on February 19, 1980, to Harold H. Lane, Jr. and his wife Carolee.  Harold and Carolee had married in Duke Chapel on June 4, 1968, shortly after graduating from Duke.  They have two sons, Kenneth and Brian, but Harold and Carolee divorced in 1981. Harold worked for the RTI as an electrical engineer and computer scientist.  He has a permanent medical disability caused by accidental exposure to excessively high noise levels.

Harold Lane, who had previously moved to Overby Drive, Durham, sold the house to David and Sarah Nevill on July 18, 2006, who were moving from Basel, Switzerland as David works for Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. in the Research Triangle Park.  

David and Sarah are not yet in possession of the blue prints for this building.  Sadly, Harold Lane has not so far understood that blueprints belong to a house, not to a person.

As well as help from Doris Ritter (née Freedman), I have also spoken (or emailed) with Ted Benditt, Phyllis Dworsky, Gayanne Freedman, Will Grossman, Hannelore Rogers, Rich Kay, Harold Lane, Malvina Markman, Lynn Richardson, Ruth Richter, Leonard Rogoff, and Rabi Steven Sager.  I thank them all for their support.

Other resources were:

1. Durham City Directories, North Carolina Room, Durham Public Library

2. Deeds Office and Marriage Registry Office, Durham former Court House

3. Birth and Death Registers, Durham Health Department

4. www.cemeterycensus.com/nc/durh 

Written by Sarah Nevill, February 23, 2007

P.S. April 28, 2010 -- In 2007, David & Sarah Nevill worked with Trinity Design Build to renovate the basement. The original garage now forms the major part of the “in-law suite” (better known by the family as The Granny Dungeon). There is a wine cellar underneath the sun porch, and plenty of fitted storage space, as well as a laundry area.