The move ended years of local discussion over the fate of the aged, decrepit home on the corner of Lawson and Fayetteville streets. NCCU has long owned the property and wanted to destroy the house in order to build anew there.

But local preservationists found value in the house because noted civil rights era photojournalist Alexander Rivera once lived there.

It was the subject of a town/gown squabble that culminated in February when the state Attorney General's office concluded the house is not a historic property and the university could demolish it.

NCCU tore it down March 8. It had previously offered the house to any person or local group willing to pay to have it restored and moved. Though some local groups, like Preservation Durham, had fought the demolition, none volunteered to move it.

The cost would have been prohibitive. A July 2007 put the cost of renovating and restoring the ramshackle house at $445,000.

Built in 1920, the 2,100-square-foot home had a tax value of $83,342 when it was demolished, according to county property records.

Those looking to preserve the home pointed to the historic nature of Rivera's work. Rivera covered the civil rights movement and later created the public relations office at NCCU. He died in October 2008 at age 95.

A staffer with The National Trust for Historic Preservation once pleaded with NCCU administrators to save the house, declaring it significant "of its association with the incredible and inspiring life of the journalist Alexander Rivera."

But before he died, Rivera told the News & Observer the house had no particular significance and should be demolished.

He didn't even own the house, he said in that 2008 interview. Rather, it was owned by his in-laws and he just lived there for a long while. And he did his photography in a downtown studio.

"I didn't do anything important there but sleep," Rivera said in that interview. "Tear it down immediately! It's an eyesore."

In ruling that NCCU didn't need to preserve the house, Special Deputy Attorney General Donald R. Teeter, Sr., wrote last month that demolition was a fair result because the house is "in a condition requiring very expensive renovation and had no historical significance."

The house sat on a prime piece of real estate. That parcel, coupled with others, will be the eventual site of a new NCCU convocation center, a centerpiece of a planned campus expansion that has some neighbors concerned, others excited.

It isn't yet clear when that project will begin.