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Durant

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Within the small railroad town of Durant is Saint Paul's Episcopal Church (c. 1875), located on Sixth Street, south of Third Street. Its low-pitched roof, bracketed eaves, and general proportions are late Italianate, but the windows with pointed arches are obviously meant to read as Gothic. It is the belfry of the entrance tower that really establishes the personality of this wood clapboard building. Eight tall, elaborately decorated Italianate wood columns together with a rich cornice support the low spire roof. Between each of the pair of columns is a balustrade composed of X's, devoid of the usual coping; thus this reads simply as a horizontal row of X's.

In downtown Durant one will come across two commercial monuments. One is a former bank building (c. 1917) on the north side of Fifth Street, between Seventh and Eighth; the other is a former service station (c. 1925) at the northwest corner of Fifth and Tenth streets. The former bank building (now occupied by the American Legion) is a small brick Georgian structure, almost domestic in scale. Between four pilasters are two side windows, with the entrance in the center. All three openings have lunette windows within their arches. The double-piered canopied former service station lightly suggests that the world of the auto in the twenties must somehow be related to the land of play—California or Florida. The Durant service station is sheathed in white stucco, and it has just the needed touches of red tile roofs here and there.

Writing Credits

Author: 
David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim

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