WALTER profile
Building up The Bull City Architect Ellen Cassilly’s Durham
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by J. MICHAEL WELTON
Driving through Durham with architect Ellen Cassilly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a section of the city where she hasn’t made a difference. There’s Central Park and the pavilion next to it, home to Durham Farmers’ Market. There’s Leaf, a shade structure that was the first design-build project from N.C. State’s Summer Studio, in 2009. There’s Liberation Threads, the ethically sourced fashion shop on Chapel Hill Street, and the apartment above it. The list goes on, wherever your tour might take you: “On Mangum Street we did this yellow one and that red one there,” the 56-year-old designer points out. “On Parrish Street we did Chet Miller – it’s tiny.”
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FUEL UP Cassilly recently converted an aging PURE gas station-turned-storefrontchurch into a restaurant called GRUB. DL Anderson Pictures