Design with a Story

You can probably already tell that we at The Cookery are passionate about creativity and the stories behind our community. Our historic architectural features have a multitude of stories to tell, recounting Durham's rich history and nodding to Bull City's manufacturing and tobacco industrial roots.

The Front Room bar features a deconstructed tobacco warehouse shutter bar top, a facade made from an old Durham water tower, and a foot rail made of a track from Durham’s former trolley line.  This electric streetcar ran from downtown’s Five Points to Lakewood Park, passing by where The Cookery stands today! Patrons can even see the original pencil lines in the bar top used to align the nails that hold the shutters together.  The water tower, which once stood where Measurement Inc. now resides, that was cut into thirds and hammered out to create a flat surface. 

The beautiful mezzanine railing is comprised of metal crescents from the Heart of Durham Motel, and the center piece is a catwalk from the old Liggett Meyers building.

The Cookery Front Room and culinary incubator building, which was built in the early 1900s, features original brickwork that recounts its many lives. Beginning as a jazz club then a grocery store and finally transforming into a culinary incubator and event venue, the walls show varying stages of brickwork that once bore doors, a drop ceiling, and housed various businesses.  In fact, a year after The Cookery launched its commercial kitchen, an original Pepsi Cola mural was uncovered on the eastern side of the building, which was painted when the building served as a neighborhood grocery!

Years later, The Cookery’s event space expanded into our neighboring building, whose most recent life was an auto body shop. After leveling the floor, stripping paint from its beautiful brick walls, and installing cobblestone and plant life in a once gravel driveway, the space transformed into the ballroom, dressing suite and garden.

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