Motorco Music Hall

Motorco occupies 721–723 Rigsbee Avenue in Durham's Central Park neighbourhood, an industrial building of masonry and stucco built around 1938. [Open Durham] It was the Durham Baking Company, apparently a wholesale production facility and possibly the Merita Bread Company's. Open Durham calls its sources sketchy and notes a fire in the building may be why bread production left. [Open Durham] In the late 1950s Weeks Motor Company moved in from across the street. A Herald-Sun photograph of 13 February 1962 shows the dealership in the background of another shop's grand opening. [Open Durham] At some point in the late 1960s or early 1970s it appears to have become the Weeks-Allen Lincoln Mercury dealership; by 1975 the business had been sold to Bradley-Lincoln Mercury and moved to the former Uzzle Cadillac building at Foster and West Geer. [Open Durham] Triangle Limo Service used the building from the late 1980s into the early 1990s. By 2008 it sat empty and overgrown. [Open Durham] Renovation began in summer 2010. The venue was to be called The Geer, and its principals then decided to honour the building's history instead by naming it Motorco Music Hall. The new sign was photographed freshly hung on 25 August 2010, and the room opened that September. [Open Durham] By October 2013 the Garage Bar was under further renovation to add a kitchen, and the parking lot had been turned into outdoor seating. [Open Durham] By 2019 it comprised a large patio, the GarageBar, the Parts & Labor kitchen, and a 450-capacity showroom, which made it Durham's largest music venue. [Independent Venue Week] In its ninth year it was a nationally respected room programming both touring artists and the area's leading local headliners. It hosted River Whyless for Independent Venue Week in 2018 and took part again in 2019. [Independent Venue Week] Nothing in the documents held connects Motorco to LGBTQ or drag programming. The 2019 FINDER guide to the Triangle's queer nightlife does not list it. [Independent Venue Week]