From OpenDurham.org, courtesy Durham County Library

The first store in Durham was built on what is now Chickenbone Park. The spot was then known as Angier Corner, named for M.A. Angier, who operated a general store here before the Civil War. According to Open Durham, the city’s first post office was inside Angier’s General Store. And in 1878, Eugene Morehead, the son of the governor, opened Durham’s first bank next door. 

Over time, Angier’s became the Haywood King drug store, and then in the 1930s a Walgreen’s. 

Under the federal urban renewal program — the same one responsible for the destruction of the Hayti neighborhood and construction of Durham Freeway — the buildings were demolished in the 1970s. The land lay vacant, becoming green space, and in 2013 dedicated as Black Wall Street Plaza.

A black-owned business, Dell’z Barber & Spa, has operated off the park for 14 years. A sandwich board reading “Barber Shop” points to short set of wooden stairs that face a grassy alley, which runs from the pergola past the shop to Luna’s back door. Inside, two African-American women read magazines, their heads encased in hair dryers.

“We’ve had yard sales out here and the church feeds the homeless,” said Dell Pettiford. “I’ve never had a problem here.”

While it’s true that Chicken Bone Park is poorly lit at night, the solution is not to divvy up the space, a quite welcoming spot during the day. Although Stokes said he’s seen needles and human feces in the park, General Services grooms the space and has planted petunias. Public bathrooms either onsite or a block away at City Hall, could help alleviate the waste problem.

A few more benches would give people more places to sit; removing the wooden bollards and chains would eliminate an uninviting barrier. (In that spirit, former Raleigh Planning Director Mitchell Silver, now the head of parks in New York City, recently deployed a “parks without borders” program.”)

The difference between a park and open space is largely semantic. Being designated as park, said city planner Aaron Cain, confers no special protections to city property. Open spaces are maintained by General Services, parks by Parks and Recreation. However, the latter brings an expectation that there will be additional maintenance and public events to “activate” the area. But at the public meeting, the consensus was that the park should be “unprogrammed open space,” what one woman called “the beauty of happenstance.”

“It’s a little shabby around the edges, but that’s OK,” another woman said. “That’s who we are.”

The Downtown Open Space Plan calls for Chickenbone Park to remain open; the forthcoming Downtown Master Plan is expected to do the same. “Open space is purposely flexible and vague,” said Sara Young of the planning department, “because there are so many types of uses and users.”

Last fall, Kofi Boone, associate professor of landscape architecture at N.C. State University, deployed several of his students to Chickenbone Park to study how people used and felt about the space. (Earlier last year, Boone, who lives in Durham, also studied the racial and equity aspects of the American Tobacco Trail.)

Boone’s report lists responses that underscore the love of the space, but the need for more amenities. Respondents — tourists, professionals, residents, building owners, restaurant patrons and homeless people — agreed that more benches, tables, trash cans, and water fountains are needed. Many also requested public art, a community garden, and activities in the space.

The report lays out two scenarios that include Luna: one in which the restaurant would rent a art of the park, with the revenue being used for improvements. The second proposal is to allow Luna to have outdoor patio seating in the park, but that it could be used when the restaurant was closed.

Troubling, though were comments from a unnamed building owner, professionals, and restaurant patrons that there are “too many homeless people” and that there “are too many people on Wednesdays” — code for the weekly homeless church service and luncheon.

Photo by Lisa Sorg, December 2014

Yet great cities are built around egalitarian open spaces that nurture both body and soul. Here, people, regardless of race and class, cross paths. And by doing so, in the land of buildings and artifice, we have an opportunity to become more compassionate, more human.

“It’s one of the only places that’s democratic,” said Randy Hester, who lives across the street in the Kress Building. “What’s important about a place like this is that everyone in Durham can feel comfortable people interact who would not otherwise not speak. In many ways, it defines the best of Durham.”