101 Main Street

The Leach House is on a narrow, wooded lot on the West side of Main Street, just north of the L.W. Leach and Son Store (now the Morse & Otte Self-Service Market).

• Record ID: 75
• Address: 101 Main Street
• Current Owner: Atwell (c/o Atwell, George), Frederick L.
• Name of Building:
• Historic Name: Leverett W. Leach House
• Download PDF of Original Record

Notable Features

The entry on the 5-bay south side is an unusual feature of this house. The central doorway has plain capped pilasters which rise to a full plain entablature. A partially
enclosed porch has square, chamfered posts on pedastals, with sawn and cutout brackets and quatrefoils. These lead to a single-story projecting pavilion. The gable has a full
pediment and a Federal fanlight window. The full 12/12 sash windows are shuttered. A flat-roofed addition and a shed-roofed screen porch, both two stories high, have been
attached to the south side, with another screen porch on the north side.

Historical or Architectural Importance

The Leverett W. Leach House, built c. 1840, is a 3-bay, 2 1/2 story, gable-to-street, Federal style building with an asphalt-shingled roof, asbestos shingle siding, and a
mortared, sandstone block foundation.

Dennis Camp conveyed this lot to Leverett W. Leach, a Durham merchant, in 1839. A store was on the tract at that time, but was soon torn down or otherwise removed. The 1859 Durham Business Directory shows both the new Leach House and his new store, erected between the house and the Congregational Church. In 1893, the house passed into the Atwell family, whose property it remains to this day.
This house was the home of one of Durham’s most important nineteenth-century merchant families. It was appropriately built next to the family store.