The intersection of Chatham and Academy Streets has long served as the center of downtown Cary. Each corner of the intersection tells part of the story of Cary’s development from a small agricultural village to a suburban community to an urban destination. The history of the southeast corner is covered in a bit of mystery, as there is little photographic documentation of its early history, unlike the other three corners. This is what we know about some of the businesses at Cary’s original “crossroads.”

Let's Start With a "Frank" Talk

As with many stories about Cary, we will start with Frank Page who purchased 300 acres of largely undeveloped land in 1854 in what officially became Cary in 1871. He laid out the main street along Cedar (formerly Railroad) Street so that his lumber and sawmill business would have easy access to the North Carolina Railroad. 

Travelers going west would follow the railroad along Cedar Street until they reached Academy Street, which ran north and south. In its earliest days, travelers could follow the now defunct Jones Street (also called Railroad AND Hillsboro) which joined today’s West Chatham Street a block west of today’s Chatham and Academy (dotted red line below.) Travelers also had the option to turn left on Academy, go one block south, then turn right on Chatham to continue through Cary toward Apex (solid red line below.) That latter “zig and zag” through downtown created the intersection that would come to define downtown Cary today, shown below by the “gold star.”

Businesses sprang up around this intersection. Frank Page’s three-story factory building faced Cedar Street and occupied the north east corner, the Gray family had a mercantile business and their home on the northwest corner with the business facing Chatham Street, “Uncle Bob” (Robert J) Harrison’s store and home above the store occupied the southwest corner and also faced Chatham Street. But what about the southeast corner? The shoe shop noted on the above map didn’t come along for many years. We’ll explore this corner’s earlier history as we explore all four corners. 

The Beginning

Frank Page’s 300 acres included this southeast corner parcel, which he sold in 1882 to L H Jones, Lily Houghton Jones, wife of William Merritt Jones who was the son of Rufus Henry Jones, a business associate of Frank Page. William M Jones started his working life with a grocery and general merchandise store, location unknown. Was it on this corner? So far, there is no evidence to prove where he conducted this business. Jones later transitioned into the window sash and lumber business, moving to Asheville, NC by 1900, where he was a successful businessman. 

Cottage on the Move

William and Lily Jones sold this southeast corner parcel in 1889 to Edward Dorsey (E. D.) Yates, the son of Atlas B Yates who ran a sawmill on Railroad Street on land he purchased from Frank Page adjacent to Page’s factory lot. Atlas Yates later expanded his operation by purchasing Page’s three-story brick factory building at the corner of Cedar/Railroad and Academy Streets. The factory lot extended back from Railroad Street to what is now Chatham Street, which didn’t exist at that time. Sadly, Atlas Yates died in 1890. Yates’ widow, Elizabeth Council Yates sold the property as the administratrix of her late husband’s estate to B N Duke of Durham, the majority stockholder of Cary Lumber Company. At the time of the sale of the factory lot, Atlas’s son E D Yates was leasing the factory property, and according to estate papers, E D Yates was living in a three-room house at the back of the factory. Part of the estate sales agreement was that E D Yates was allowed to move the house to another property no later than the end of 1895. It appears that since he had previously bought the property to the south of the factory lot in 1889 (now the southeast corner of Chatham & Academy), he only had to move the house a short distance! 

We have not located a photo of this “cottage on the move.” We have just a couple of glimpses of it, one in the photo shown above of “Uncle Bob’s Corner.” The E D Yates House/Cottage is barely visible on the left of the photo. The other glimpse is in the photo below where the cottage peeks through the trees to the left of the Methodist Church which still stands on Academy Street in its original location, albeit expanded and clad in brick.

The sale of the factory lot on the northeast corner and the move of the house coincided with the sale of the southeast corner lot by E D Yates to Cary Lumber Company. The house is noted as Yates on the circa 1906 map of Cary, even though technically the land belonged to Cary Lumber Company at that time. For a discussion of Cary Lumber Company, see “Around and About Cary” by Tom Byrd, pages 48-50. 

Road Trip!

Let’s take a short little road trip further down West Chatham Street to celebrate a preservation success story. By 1900, E D Yates was well established in a much larger family home at 215 W Chatham Street.

When more recent downtown development started in earnest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this house was moved to Williams Street, just a little further west and stands today.

With the purchase of the southeast corner parcel by Cary Lumber Company, the Factory Lot started at Cedar/Railroad Street and now ran south to the boundary with the Methodist Church.

Local Controversy

A town-changing event in the years around 1907 caused a bit of controversy in Cary. At this time, what we know today as West Chatham Street ended at Academy Street. There was no East Chatham Street. Note on the Templeton map circa early 1900s, what would become East Chatham was nothing more than a country lane.

To head east out of town toward Raleigh from Chatham Street, travelers had to make the “zig and zag” to continue to Raleigh using Cedar/Railroad Street. Town officials decided that extending Chatham Street, in essence creating West AND East Chatham, would be a good solution to traffic flow, such as it was at the time. Alice Waldo, widow of town doctor, Dr. S P Waldo, completely disagreed and filed a civil action to prevent the proposed extension from crossing her property which lay to the east of the Cary Lumber property, Frank Page’s old factory site. Her case was dismissed, the judgment stating that running the new extension through her property would cause more good than harm to the value and usefulness of her parcel of land, thus East Chatham Street was created.

As this case was working its way through civil action, Cary Lumber Company sold the entire property (factory lot and southeast corner – formerly Yates lot) to F R (Fernando/Frank R) Gray, who had been leasing the tobacco factory for some time and who owned adjacent property on the northwest corner of Chatham and Academy. Frank and his brother Patrick ran a mercantile business that fronted today’s West Chatham Street and their residence was behind the store facing the railroad. 

Family Affair

This made F R Gray the owner of three of the four corners of the centrally located intersection of Chatham and Academy. The only corner NOT in Gray hands was “Uncle Bob” Robert J Harrison’s Corner which later became Adams Drug Store and Ashworth’s Drugs. Although the Gray family didn’t own this fourth corner, there was a connection! Patrick Gray, Frank’s brother, was married to nee Maude Harrison, who was the niece of “Uncle Bob” Robert J Harrison. He owned the southwest corner, directly across Chatham Street from Gray’s Store. Cary’s crossroad was a family affair! To learn more about Robert J Harrison and his corner, please read the blogpost, “Hot Dogs and History: From Uncle Bob's Corner to Ashworth's Drug Store.”

https://www.friendsofpagewalker.org/Cary-Me-Back/10089296

F R Gray was a life-long bachelor, and at his death left his property to his deceased brother Frank’s family, who in turn hung on to the properties, leasing the land to various tenants.

On the northwest corner, the Gray Store was eventually razed and the Cary Branch Bank of Fuquay was built as a rather mundane one-story brick building. The decorative wavy awning was added later. This corner has gone through a number of facelifts and rebuilding over the years but remains a bank property.

Fire!

The northeast corner of this intersection has had a more eventful history. Shortly after Gray purchased this corner from Cary Lumber, a fire destroyed Frank Page’s original brick factory building. 

The property remained underused or not used at all for a number of years. Currently and ironically, the Cary Fire Department administrative offices are located on the old factory lot that burned to the ground! 

Cary Enters the Suburban Era

With the rising popularity and availability of the automobile, a gasoline service station was created on the corner of Chatham and Academy, leased to series of proprietors through the years. The former Gurkan’s Automotive Shop (recently closed) was the latest occupant of the corner. Plans are to rehabilitate the gas station building into a restaurant while recreating the look of the service station from 1951, shown below.

Back to the Elusive Southeast Corner

Early information about this corner is scant, with the exception of the E D Yates cottage moving to this site in 1895. Additional facts begin to surface starting in the 1920s. Cottage Grocery, also the former Yates house, was first mentioned in a 1923 CHSite (Cary High School yearbook) advertisement as Templeton’s Delicatessen “Cottage Store,” which was an apt named for the humble 3 room house that E D Yates had once lived in and later moved to this location. 

According to the ad, ice cream, fancy fruits, candies and cakes were all on offer. The next year, it was simply known as Cottage Grocery run by C C (Cleon Clive) Eatman, a local graduate of Cary High School. Based on the offerings, it appears he ran it as a small grocery store. 

The building also appears on a 1923 map of Cary as “Cottage Grocery” and shows the footprint of the house. For a three-room cottage, it appears to be somewhat larger than expected, if the map is drawn to scale.

Later in its life on the corner, the cottage housed Cotronis Shoe Shop for a number of years. It is unclear when Athens, Greece native John Cotronis started his business, but his shoe sales and repair business leased the property from the Gray family and operated for a number of years. Descendants of Mr Cotronis still reside in the area. 

A New Beginning

As previously stated, after the death of Frank Gray, the properties at this intersection passed to family members. One of Mr Gray’s nieces inherited the southeast corner property and sold it in 1949 to J Glenn Hobby. At the time, Mr Hobby was in the grocery business in downtown Cary on West Chatham Street.

His growing enterprise needed more space, so he purchased the roomy southeast corner parcel of land and the cottage. He sold the Yates cottage to Russell Heater, “Mr Cary,” known for his promotion of the Town of Cary far and wide. Mr Heater moved the house to West Park Street, reconfigured and added to it and made it a comfortable family home. Mr Heater’s son, Robert “Bob” Heater recounted that the cottage was sawn in two and an addition was inserted to join the two parts. In the photo below, it appears that was the case. West Park Street has recently been developed with “in-fills” and thus the little cottage that sat on the northeast then southeast corner of Chatham and Academy is no more after a long life and various uses. The little cottage provides an illustration of Cary’s development from a small village with modest local businesses into a larger business district and more suburban community.

Mr Hobby built a one-story brick building to house his appliance company. He ran his appliance company in the west half of the building, and initially, a “Piggly Wiggly” grocery store operated out of the east side. 

Over time, Piggly Wiggly merged with Winn-Dixie which built a large stand-alone store across the street from the E D Yates House at 215 West Chatham Street. What might have Mr Yates thought about the 11,000 square foot grocery store, which was leaps and bounds bigger than the modest “Cottage Grocery” that had once served as his house at the crossroads of Cary?

The vacated Piggly Wiggly space was taken over by an up-and-coming businessman named James “Pete” Murdock. His business was known as “Pete’s Hardware.” Pete’s Hardware operated at this locale for a number of years before it outgrew its space and located down the street in the 200 block of East Chatham, along one stretch of Chatham that had once been so contentious. Pete’s Hardware eventually closed and his store is incorporated within Mid-town Shopping Center. Hobby’s is now Kitchen & Bath Galleries, which more recently gained some local notoriety when the building owners unwittingly violated a local ordinance which banned painting brick and concrete exterior surfaces of buildings. Kitchen & Bath Galleries remains there today, with a lovely, completely painted tan exterior!

My, oh my. What changes this intersection has seen in its 150 years! Starting as part of a zig-zag path to negotiate through the dirt roads of a fledgling country village, it became the center of a small business district of a suburban town on the way up. Today it still serves as the crossroads of downtown Cary which is quickly turning into an urban destination. Stay tuned for more articles on the transformation of downtown Cary!