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William Thomas O'Brien House

Durham County, North Carolina Registered Historic Place stubsGothic Revival architecture in North CarolinaHouses completed in 1890Houses in Durham, North CarolinaHouses on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina
National Register of Historic Places in Durham County, North CarolinaRoman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh
William Thomas O'Brien House
William Thomas O'Brien House

William Thomas O'Brien House is a historic home in Durham, Durham County, North Carolina. It was built about 1890, and is a two-story, Gothic Revival style frame dwelling. It has a center hall plan and features a one-story wraparound porch, an original embossed tin shingle roof, and projecting bays. It was the home of William Thomas O'Brien, who perfected the Bonsack machine for the W. Duke Sons & Company. The house originally sat on a large tract of land that extended to Rome Street. The property included a servants' house, a smokehouse, and a chicken coop.The house, located down the street from Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and Immaculata Catholic School, played a significant role in Durham's Catholic community. O'Brien, who was Catholic, invited a priest to perform masses in the home until Immaculate Conception was constructed in 1906 on West Chapel Hill Street, on land that O'Brien deeded to the Church. After O'Brien's death in 1907, his wife moved to South Duke Street. In 1919, a carpenter and interior decorator named Edward J. Long lived in the house.Located in the Burch Avenue Historic District, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article William Thomas O'Brien House (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

William Thomas O'Brien House
Durham Freeway, Durham

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Latitude Longitude
N 36.001666666667 ° E -78.915277777778 °
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Address

Smith Warehouse Parking Lot South

Durham Freeway
27708 Durham
North Carolina, United States
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William Thomas O'Brien House
William Thomas O'Brien House
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Norfolk Southern–Gregson Street Overpass
Norfolk Southern–Gregson Street Overpass

The Norfolk Southern–Gregson Street Overpass, also known as the 11-foot-8 Bridge, is a railroad bridge in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Built in 1940, the bridge allows passenger and freight trains to cross over South Gregson Street in downtown Durham, and also functions as the northbound access to the nearby Durham Amtrak station. The bridge was designed in the 1920s, with a clearance for vehicles of 11 feet 8 inches (3.56 m), the standard height at the time it opened. Since 1973, the standard clearance for bridges was increased to a minimum height of 14 feet (4.27 m), which is 2 feet 4 inches (0.71 m) higher than the bridge as built, although bridges constructed before this date were not required to be rebuilt to meet the increased clearance requirement. Despite numerous warning signs about the low clearance, a large number of trucks, buses, and RVs have collided with the overpass at high speed, tearing off roof fixtures, and at times shearing off the trucks' roofs, earning the bridge the nicknames the "Can Opener" and the "Gregson Street Guillotine".The bridge gained fame as a nearby office worker, Jürgen Henn, set up cameras in 2008 to track the collisions with the bridge. Henn has recorded 178 collisions with the bridge, including those after the bridge raising, and as of 2023 the YouTube channel he set up to showcase his recordings has 264,000 subscribers and more than 80 million views. Despite the number of crashes, a March 2014 report stated that only three injuries had been recorded, making rebuilding of the bridge a low-priority concern. Later, in October 2019, the North Carolina Railroad Company, which owns the bridge and tracks, raised the bridge by 8 inches (20 cm) to 12 feet 4 inches (3.76 m) to reduce collisions and to eliminate the grade difference between the level crossing nearby and the bridge itself, although that is still well below the standard height.