87 Main Street

The house stands on a wooded lot on the southwest corner of the junction of Main Street and Wallingford Road.
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  • Record ID: 84
  • Address: 87 Main Street
  • Current Owner: Mathewson, Marjorie E.
  • Name of Building: Elizar Hall House
  • Historic Name: Hall-Parsons House
  • Download PDF of Original Record

Notable Features

The double-panel central facade door is flanked by two five-pane sidelights and is surmounted by a five-pane transom. Large doorway pilasters, with simple rectangular bases and moulded capitals, irse to a lpw-arched, elliptical, Federal pediment decorated with dentillated moulding. Above the doorway at the second story level is a central tripartite Palladian window with ornamental keystone, pilasters, and sidelights. Dentil courses run under the full pediments of the gable ends, which contain Federal style
fanlights. The 12/12 sash windows of the house have plain trim and louvred shutters. A wood-shingled ell has been added to the northwest corner, and a garage to the west
end of the ell.

Historical or Architectural Importance

The Hall-Parsons,House, built c. 1830, is a 2-story Georgian/Federal style building. The asphalt-shingled, ridge-to-street gable roof is marked by double interior chimneys, a feature of the Georgian style house plan. The post-and-beam frame is clapboarded and rests on a mortared sandstone foundation. An 1822 deed mentions a lease indenture for this lot between Joseph Camp, Chauncey Hall, and Elizur Hall on the one hand and the First Ecclesiastical Society Society of Durham on the other. But only a ‘shoemaker’s shop’ stood at that time. Elizur’s house was built a few years later, at least by 1833, as a mortgage deed from that year reveals. The house became the property of Nathan Parsons, a Durham farmer, and remained in his family until the second decade of the twentieth century. Little is known of Elizur Hall. He was apparently involved in the shoemaking industry, as the 1822 deed mentioned above reveals. The 1820 census lists at least one member of Hall’s household as being engaged in ‘manufacture’. The Hall-Parsons House is an excellent late; transitional example of the Georgian and Federal styles in Durham.