place

Smith Warehouse

1906 establishments in North CarolinaBuildings and structures in Durham, North CarolinaDurham County, North Carolina Registered Historic Place stubsIndustrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in North CarolinaIndustrial buildings completed in 1906
National Register of Historic Places in Durham County, North CarolinaRomanesque Revival architecture in North CarolinaTobacco buildings in the United States
Part of the south wall of Smith Warehouse, Durham, NC
Part of the south wall of Smith Warehouse, Durham, NC

Smith Warehouse is a historic tobacco storage warehouse located at Durham, Durham County, North Carolina. It was built in 1906, and is a two-story Romanesque style brick structure divided into 12 70-foot-wide units by projecting corbeled firewalls. The building measures 850 feet long and 100 feet wide and features ornamental brickwork. It is an example of "slow burn" masonry and wood factory construction. It was the last of the 12 brick tobacco storage warehouses erected by The American Tobacco Company trust beginning in 1897. The building has been converted for academic and administrative uses. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Smith Warehouse (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Smith Warehouse
Durham Freeway, Durham

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Smith WarehouseContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 36.001388888889 ° E -78.915833333333 °
placeShow on map

Address

Smith Warehouse Parking Lot South

Durham Freeway
27708 Durham
North Carolina, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Part of the south wall of Smith Warehouse, Durham, NC
Part of the south wall of Smith Warehouse, Durham, NC
Share experience

Nearby Places

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.