900 S Duke St
Durham, NC, USA

National Register of Historic Places - John Sprunt Hill House

Statement of Significance:

The John Sprunt Hill House is both an architectural and historical landmark. The Spanish Colonial Revival dwelling designed by Kendall and Taylor of Boston in 1910 is one of the three mansions remaining in the city from Durham's second boom period. The stuccoed exterior is formal and traditional yet rich with variety of massing and detail and exotic Iberian ornament. The interiors are lavishly appointed and notable for their elegant and elaborately carved woodwork by Irving and Casson of Boston. Built for John Sprunt Hill (1869-1961), a prominent lawyer, banker, bibliophile, businessman, politician, social leader, and philanthropist of statewide importance and influence, the house reflects the character of the man, his family, and the cultural development of the booming city of Durham in the first half of the twentieth century.

John Sprunt Hill was born on his father's plantation near Faison, Duplin County, North Carolina, on March 17, 1869. He was a member of a planter family long prominent in southeastern North Carolina which,, like many of this class, had been considerably reduced financially by the Civil War. Hill graduated from high school at age twelve, and worked for four years in a country store, earning money to enter the University of North Carolina in 1885. He gained many academic honors and was graduated in 1889. In 1894 he received his law degree from Columbia University and the following year established a practice under the name of Hill, Sturcke and Andrews. After service in the Spanish- American War, Hill returned to New York and unsuccessfully sought a seat in Congress as a Tammany Hall-backed Democrat.

On November 29, 1899, John Sprunt Hill married Laura Valinda Watts, only child of George W. Watts and Laura Valinda Beall Watts of Durham, North Carolina--a step which was to bring Hill back to North Carolina as a member of one of the wealthiest families in the newly industrial city of Durham. George Washington Watts was a partner in the tobacco firm of W. Duke Sons and Company, a major contributor to Durham's tobacco-based post- Civil War boom. The Watts were eager to have their daughter live in Durham, and in 1903 the Hills returned to Durham.

Within a few years, the Hills prepared to build a major house. On April 11, 1910, Hill and his wife purchased several parcels of land in the southwest section of Durham, located on Duke (formerly Lea), Proctor, and Cobb Streets, creating a single large tract." In addition, the Hills had been previously deeded property in this section by the Watts family.

Construction on the Hills' house took place in 1911. The Boston firm of Kendall and Taylor and Company served as architects." As early as 1895 Bertrand E. Taylor, then with the firm of Rand and Taylor, had designed the first Watts Hospital complex in Durham George W. Watts' handsomely endowed gift to the city.
Taylor was architect as well for the present Watts Hospital, and was thus not a surprising choice for the, Hills' home. Norman Underwood of Durham served as general contractor for the project, and the well- known woodcarving firm of Irving and Casson of Boston executed the splendid woodwork and many of the furnishings."
Settled and well-connected in Durham, John Sprunt Hill soon established a solid fortune and gained a respected reputation in, the state. He founded the Home Savings Bank and the Durham Bank and Trust Company, and he served in the state senate 1933- 1938. Like many of North Carolina's men who’s early twentieth century fortunes were based on industrial growth, he was a generous philanthropist; Hill took a particularly strong interest in education--particularly his alma mater the University of North Carolina--and in libraries. Hill was chairman of the university building committee during the institution's two great surges of growth--following each of the world wars. Under his leadership the size of the university's physical plant was doubled in the 1921-1931 decade, and in 1924 the Hills gave the Carolina Inn to the university. He endowed the respected North Carolina Collection at the Library of the University of North Carolina. During a sixty-year period Hill gave the university more than a million dollars, and always declared that the university was "the 21 institution of learning that gave me a thousand times more than I can ever repay. In Durham, too, the Hills were generous, funding in 1930 the renovation of the old Carnegie Library into Hill Music Hall, donating real estate to the city for recreational uses including parks and a public golf course, and other purposes. Mrs. Hill was active in a number of civic efforts in Durham, including the Watts Hospital Auxiliary, the YMCA, and the First Presbyterian Church.
She died in 1940.
John Sprunt Hill lived until 1961, participating actively in a wide range of activities throughout his life. In 1933, when he was conferred an honorary degree by the University of North Carolina, the variety of his contributions was cited:
"John Sprunt Hill . . . lawyer, farmer, forester, manufacturer, banker, legislator, father of rural credits in North Carolina /an innovative cooperative system of providing loans to farmers7, co-builder of Durham, roads, and the University of North Carolina. Buildings, libraries, farms, factories, banks, roads, trees and music are the playthings of his valiant imagination and creative spirit. A builder without vainglory, a fighter with abandon but without guile, a dreamer whose youthful dreams go daily into the making of a better University and a more beautiful state.

This innovative spirit continued through Hill's life; not long before his death, he furnished the original funds for programming the Research Triangle Institute which brought a vast new research and industrial complex to the Durham-Raleigh-Chapel Hill area.