The bus station had previously been located further west on East Chapel Hill St. near the intersection of Corcoran and E. Chapel Hill. It appears to have moved to this location in the late 1920s or early 1930s. The bus station in 1940, looking east from Rigsbee Ave. Rochelle’s shop is to the left, and the steeple of Trinity Methodist is visible in the distance. (Courtesy Library of Congress)
Life” is an amazing composition. Looking west-northwest along the north side of the bus station – the post office is visible in the background. (Courtesy Library of Congress)
Above, seen from the Bus garage on the north side of the street, looking southwest. (Courtesy Durham County Library)
The streetcar garage was converted to a bus facility as the streetcar service was terminated in 1930. Above, looking northeast, 1930s. (Courtesy Durham County Library)
Buses were stored and serviced at this facility. Up on the ‘lift’. (Courtesy Durham County Library) This facility continued operation into the 1960s.
By the 1950s, the flat front of the building was a place for advertisements and a clock. (Notice the Washington Duke Hotel in the background – large brick building to the left, as well as the exterior cladding that has been placed over the three mid-block buildings that were Belk Department Store – the way to ‘modernize’ in the 1950s. I’ll come back to these buildings later.) Courtesy Durham County Library
When the library moved to its building on East Main Street in 1921 (still standing!), the wood frame structure was torn down and replaced with a flatiron building, called the Piedmont building. This building had a flat face, unlike the rounded front on the opposite point. (Which you can see the shadow of in this, evidently, late afternoon picture.) Courtesy Durham County Library, circa 1925
School’s Out! Ford “TT” and “AA” Buses Posted on May 28, 2013 by Gene Herman Well maybe not quite yet, but it soon will be. This annual occurrence got us thinking about the yellow buses that are so familiar today and their origins. Our featured photo (above) dates from September 15, 1925, and shows a Ford Model “TT” transporting 25 mostly smiling students and their driver. That load would easily come close to 1500 pounds in our estimation, a burden that would probably test the little Ford’s engine and drive train. The first school bus with an all steel body was built on a “TT” chassis in 1927 by Albert Luce, Sr., a Georgia Ford dealer. As you can see in the link, it may have been constructed of modern materials, but all of it’s windows were still equipped with side curtains. The thumbnails (above) from 1931 show just how far school bus body design had come in the space of just six short years. The Ford “AA”s seen here are equipped with dual rear tires, glass side windows and a curved roof for improved interior headroom. They served the Fordson School District, a village of within the city Dearborn at the time the photos were taken in the fall of 1931. “Fordson” was named for Henry and Edsel Ford and represents just a small portion of that family’s enduring legacy in southeastern Michigan. Photos courtesy of The Henry Ford Museum. Many other interesting photos from The Henry Ford, (scroll down) can also be seen here on The Old Motor.
