In 1966 North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company erected a structure that would become the city’s most distinctive and architecturally distinguished building of the late twentieth century. It won recognition as one of Forbes magazine’s ten outstanding buildings of 1966 and one of Fortune’s top ten of the decade.

In 1974, after the razing of yet another Durham architectural landmark, citizens formed a historic preservation society. Adaptive reuse of structures including the Kress Building (a five-and-dime store that became an office building in 1980) and the Watts and Yuille warehouses (tobacco storage warehouses that in 1981 became Brightleaf Square, a shopping and office complex) were just the beginning of repurposing Durham’s acclaimed architecture.