The former Spelman Hotel stands at the intersection of Main Street and Wallingford Road (formerly called Quarry Hill Road) in Durham. It was built as a house around 1740 (a sign on the house says 1741) by Curtis Fairchild, and sold just a few years later to John Jones. It was inherited by John Jones, Jr., who by 1767 was in serious debt and fled his creditors. The house ended up in the hands of Phineas Spelman, who turned it into an inn at the urging of the town. Spelman was reluctant to do so, because it was during the Revolutionary War and inflation had made currency almost worthless. He died in 1783 and his widow continued to operate the Spelnman Hotel, but it was finally closed by the town in 1793. The town was unwilling to license Elizabeth Spelman because there were now several taverns in Durham and town officials feared the effect on citizens’ morals. The house was owned in the nineteenth century by Daniel Bates and then by Parsons Coe, who altered it in the Greek Revival style, replacing the original gambrel roof with a gable roof. A front porch with six square columns was also added and the house was attached to an adjacent house. The Coe family owned the house until 1898 and the Harvey family from 1902 to 1954, when it became the property of Durham’s First Congregational Church. The house has recently been brought back to its eighteenth century appearance, again freestanding and with the removal of the porch and the addition of a restored gambrel roof.