By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM -- Yellow tape seals the site. A bulldozer sits quietly in the middle, its work done. The Rivera House is gone.

After getting a supportive opinion from the state Attorney General's office, N.C. Central University has razed the house, the former home of longtime publicist and renowned civil rights photographer Alex Rivera.

The future of the house at the corner of Fayetteville and Lawson streets had been a source of contention between NCCU and local preservationists.

The preservationists, along with some campus neighbors, saw the 98-year-old structure as a linchpin for preserving what they say are historic properties in the Fayetteville Street Local Historic District.

The university, which hopes to expand along that adjacent stretch of Fayetteville Street, said the house wasn't historic, was in dangerously bad condition and was on a site N.C. Central needed for its expansion plans.

More than a year ago, the Durham Historic Preservation Commision denied the university permission to raze the house, noting that the structure had been termed "a property of statewide significance" by the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office.

But a letter from Donald Teeter, special deputy attorney general, sent to the commission last month, argued that the local preservation group is "manifestly without any jurisdiction to treat this matter."

The letter pointed out that "at the time the State acquired this property, it was not an historical property of any kind" and "the acquisition was made with the approval of the North Carolina Council of State ... which authorized the demolition of the building because it was then in a condition requiring very expensive renovation and had no known historical significance."

The appropriate jurisdiction, if any, over the matter, the letter said, is with the North Carolina Historical Commission.

"The overall burden of the statutes regarding historical properties and historic districts is most decidedly not to give local groups, no matter how well-intentioned, the ability to penalize any land owner, and especially a senior governmental land owner, who can not restore every property in which the group takes an interest," Teeter wrote.

Daniel Ellison, the chairman of the Durham Historic Preservation Commission, said he regretted the decision of the university to demolish the house.

"It's always sad when we lose a piece of Durham history," Ellison said. "We've lost too many historical structures over the years. This was a property of statewide significance, and now it's been demolished."

The letter said the university remained willing to transfer the building to any responsible group for relocation and restoration. But Zach Abegunrin, the university's associate vice chancellor for facilities management, said that NCCU couldn't wait any longer.

"It's a liability issue," Abegunrin said. The building was in such poor shape, he asserted, "that it was only a matter of time before it fell apart completely. We didn't want to wait until somebody got killed there. It was in such bad shape, we couldn't let it just stand there."

The house was the former home of Rivera, who sold it to the university. Before his death in October 2008, Rivera said he believed the structure had become "an eyesore to the community" and wasn't worth preserving.

"It has no value as a treasure to the community or me," he wrote in a letter to the local preservation group.