Search and filters
Search and filters
6,577 dated events and 63 storylines match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,577 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 4,601–4,800 of 6,640, 200 to a page.Back to highlights
Entries
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1950s
-
Community Church starts an integrated preschool
The congregation’s preschool admitted children across racial lines.
-
Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard move the former Strowd dealership to 1710 East Franklin Street
The partners left the downtown building at 100 West Franklin Street in 1955 for a new site on East Franklin Street toward Durham. The old building was later remodeled for several businesses.
-
Daniel Okun chairs UNC's Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Okun, who joined the UNC public health faculty in 1952, headed the department from 1955 to 1973, and it grew from three to 25 faculty members.
-
Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar edit the Daily Tar Heel
UNC students Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar were listed together as editors of the Daily Tar Heel in the spring and fall of 1955.
-
Edward O. Diggs becomes UNC's first Black medical graduate
Edward O. Diggs graduated from the UNC School of Medicine in 1955, the first African American to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree from the university. James Slade, the school's second Black student, had enrolled in 1953.
-
Fumiko Seki lives in Chapel Hill and records the town's color line
Fumiko Seki came to Chapel Hill when her husband received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study at UNC. As a mother, wife and student she watched how residents kept the color line and met Black students, and she later described the town in her memoir Chaperu hiru monogatari.
-
George Esser launches the Institute's course in municipal management
Assistant director George Esser started a ten-week course in municipal management, taught over a series of three-day weekends, that came to be expected of anyone hoping to run a North Carolina city. It was part of a shift at the Institute from teaching the letter of the law toward public administration and policy.
-
J. Carlyle Sitterson becomes dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at UNC
Sitterson, who had begun teaching history at UNC in 1935 while completing his doctorate, became dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in 1955. He was appointed vice-chancellor in 1965.
-
James A. Taylor builds a shingled Colonial Ranch on Fern Lane from magazine blueprints
The plans were American Home magazine's House No. 33, published in 1954, and the original blueprints still stay with the house. It has a small-paned bay window and an attached garage entered from the side.
-
Joe and Peggy Galloway build a Contemporary brick Ranch on Pine Lane
The house sits on a daylight basement with bands of casement windows. Joe Galloway ran placement for the UNC School of Business; Peggy Galloway taught in the public schools.
-
Pacific Mills closes its Carrboro woolen mills
Pacific Mills, which had reopened Mill No. 4 as Carrboro Woolen Mills in 1945 and later bought the idle Mill No. 7, shut the woolen operation in the mid-1950s. By then the university and nearby businesses had taken industry's place as Carrboro's employers.
-
The Bellevue company's stock is worth $219,600, well under half its 1926 value
Still listed under the Bellevue name in 1955, the company had stock valued at $219,600, with 14,712 spindles and 499 looms.
-
The county board ends the supervisor post for its Black schools under a new state staffing rule
In 1955 the state began allotting a county one supervisor per hundred teachers. The schools Norma Snipes supervised had fewer teachers than that, so the board ended her post and made her a primary teacher at Efland-Cheeks School.
-
WUNC-TV begins broadcasting
WUNC-TV began broadcasting from Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.
-
First Salk polio vaccinations given to Orange County first and second graders
Local physicians working under the county health department gave the first round of Salk polio vaccine to more than 1,150 Orange County first and second graders. The work began on Monday, April 18, 1955 with about 500 Chapel Hill area children and finished on April 21 with the Hillsboro, Efland and Aycock schools.
-
A. D. Yates's Yates Motor Company takes over the Caston Motor Company's Dodge-Plymouth business
The Caston Motor Company, Dodge and Plymouth dealer at 419 West Franklin Street since 1946, gave way to the Yates Motor Company at the same address and telephone number in late May 1955. By October A. D. Yates was named as owner of the firm.
-
Arthur Wells is named to the Cedar Grove school advisory committee
The Orange County Board of Education named Wayne Compton, Oscar Beasley, Carter White, Lonnie Thompson and Arthur Wells to two-year terms as the advisory committee of the Cedar Grove school.
-
Mrs. Marvin Ivey reopens Ivey's Cafe in Carrboro after her husband's death
Ivey's Cafe, run for 29 years by Marvin C. Ivey and his wife, closed for eight months after his death the spring before. Mrs. Ivey reopened it herself in May 1955.
-
Roosevelt Warner is named to the advisory committee of Hillsboro's Central school
The Orange County Board of Education named Roosevelt Warner, Luther DeLon, Charlie Rainey, Sam English and Shepherd Burnett to two-year terms as the advisory committee for Central, Hillsboro's school for Black students.
-
Hilliard Caldwell leads the Chapel Hill chapter of the New Farmers of America
The Lincoln High School paper reported a prosperous 1954 to 1955 year for the chapter under Caldwell, its president, and printed his own account of the chapter's work.
-
The county board keeps every pupil in last year's school for 1955-56
The Orange County board ruled that students would attend the same schools in 1955-56 as in 1954-55. Pupils new to the county were to apply to a principal, who would admit them under board policies that kept the races apart.
-
A quarter-mile track opens inside Orange Speedway
A new quarter-mile track built inside the Orange Speedway mile opened with a seven-event NASCAR sportsman and amateur racing program under the direction of Bill France and Enoch Staley.
-
Orange County first and second graders get their second Salk shots
The district health department gave second Salk vaccine doses to children who had their first shot in the spring: in Chapel Hill on July 21 and 22 for pupils of the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Glenwood, Northside, White Cross and Little Red Schoolhouse schools, and in Hillsboro on July 27, with school buses sent to county schools. Turnout at Hillsboro was low, with only 65 children by 11 a.m.
-
The Chapel Hill Memorial Fund has a bronze tablet made for the town's World War II dead
Trustees of the Chapel Hill Memorial Fund had a bronze tablet cast with the names of 26 men of the Chapel Hill community who died in the armed services in World War II, to stand on a stone base in front of Chapel Hill High School. The fund, raised by public gifts in 1946, also endowed a memorial book collection in the school library.
-
Chapel Hill school board pledges to comply with Brown "to the best of our ability"
Under chairman Carl Smith, the Chapel Hill school board unanimously resolved to comply with the Supreme Court's integration ruling to the best of its ability while operating its schools under the state's school laws, keeping existing assignment practices for 1955-56.
-
The county board names a committee to study school segregation after Brown
Answering a letter from the Governor's Advisory Commission on Education, chaired by Thomas Pearsall, the Orange County board appointed a local committee to study the problems the Supreme Court's segregation ruling raised for its schools. Ira Ward and Delmar Brown soon replaced two of the first members, Bonner D. Sawyer and W. T. (Buck) Murray.
-
Hilliard Caldwell writes the Negro Community news column for the Chapel Hill News Leader
Caldwell was named as correspondent at the head of the column, which carried news of Black Chapel Hill and asked Lincoln High School graduates to send in their college addresses for the next week's issue.
-
First Black undergraduates enter UNC
LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon, all of Durham, became UNC's first Black undergraduates when they began classes on September 19, 1955. A three-judge federal court in Greensboro had ordered the university on September 10 to process their applications, and they registered in the General College.
-
Moses C. Burt Jr. is one of the first three Black students admitted to UNC law as first-year students
Moses C. Burt Jr., son of Orange County farm agent Moses Burt and Ridge Road principal Alethea Burt, entered the UNC School of Law in fall 1955 as one of the first three African American students admitted straight into its first-year class. Three other Black students who enrolled that fall transferred from other programs.
-
The county board deeds the old Gravelly Hill School ground to Mrs. George McAdams
While disposing of closed schools in September 1955, the county board deeded the old Gravelly Hill School ground to Mrs. George McAdams. Gravelly Hill had taught Black children until the Efland-area schools were merged into Efland-Cheeks in 1952-53.
-
Health officer calls tuberculosis Orange County's number one health problem
Asked about tuberculosis, County Health Officer David Garvin said it was the county's number one public health problem. He said drugs, surgery and better treatment had cut the death rate sharply over ten years, but that as many cases were being found as when deaths were four times as great, and that finding unknown cases was the department's biggest problem.
-
Aldermen rezone part of the Porthole lot so the restaurant can expand
Over the objections of University officials, the Chapel Hill aldermen rezoned 6,400 square feet of the Porthole restaurant's lot from residential to business use so that owner M. M. Timmons could enlarge the restaurant. It had been a nonconforming use on land zoned residential near the campus.
-
Cameron Park School opens in Hillsborough with the lower grades from Hillsboro High
The new Cameron Park School took all of grades one through four from the Hillsboro High School building, leaving grades five through twelve there, with Fred Rogers, formerly of Efland, as principal. Transfer requests from other districts poured in and drew pupils away from West Hillsborough School.
-
Charles Blake and his wife buy the Coach House and rename it Chatwood
Charles Blake, a retired MIT professor who banded birds as a hobby, and his wife bought the Faucett House tract in 1956 and named it Chatwood for their interest in birds. In the 1950s they began the rose and perennial garden that became a noted heritage rose garden.
-
Curtis Turner wins both NASCAR convertible races at Orange Speedway
Curtis Turner of Roanoke won both NASCAR convertible circuit races held at Orange Speedway in 1956 and set the convertible qualifying record there.
-
Don Stewart becomes James Webb's partner in City Planning and Architecture Associates
Don Stewart, an Ohio native, worked for James Webb while studying planning at UNC. Once licensed in 1956 he became Webb's partner, and the practice was renamed City Planning and Architecture Associates; Stewart brought Frank Lloyd Wright's organic ideas to its Chapel Hill houses.
-
Don Stewart designs the Kai Jurgenson House on Whitehead Circle
Stewart's 1956 house for Kai Jurgenson at 410 Whitehead Circle, one of his early works, blends Bay area regional modernism with the restrained domestic style of Walter Gropius's Harvard circle. The book notes that it won an award.
-
Eno Mill houses are relocated
Most company houses moved into nearby neighborhoods.
-
Francis Vandeveer Kughler paints history murals for the Knapp Building auditorium
At Margaret Knapp's wish the Institute's new building received fourteen large murals by New York painter Francis Vandeveer Kughler, a commission put at $100,000, showing scenes from North Carolina history with living North Carolinians painted in period dress. Kughler began early in 1956, working part of the time in Person Hall on the campus, and all the panels were hung in the auditorium by the fall of 1960.
-
Jim Tatum returns to Chapel Hill as head football coach
Tatum came back to UNC in 1956 at a substantial cut in salary and reorganized and expanded the university's Educational Foundation, the source of its athletic grants-in-aid. He had the only losing season of his career that year, 2-7-1, and followed it with 6-4 records in 1957 and 1958.
-
John L. Sanders joins the Institute of Government
After a year as a federal appeals court clerk and a year at a Raleigh law firm, Sanders returned to UNC in 1956 as an instructor and assistant director of the Institute of Government. He was named assistant professor of public law and government in 1957 and full professor in 1965.
-
Max Steele becomes a lecturer at the university
Novelist Max Steele, a 1946 UNC graduate, began his teaching career as a lecturer at the university in 1956.
-
McGuire's undefeated Tar Heels play their home games at Woollen Gym
McGuire's 1956-57 team won 32 straight games and the national championship, beating Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in triple overtime as 12-point underdogs. Only eight of those wins came at home in Woollen Gym, where a hole was drilled in the wall for a television camera lens.
-
Milton Julian's Matsumoto-designed house on Ledge Lane is finished
The modernist house George Matsumoto designed for clothier Milton Julian and his family, which neighbors had gone to court to stop, stood finished by November 1956, when it was one of ten homes on the School Art Guild's tour of Chapel Hill homes.
-
Morehead gives the sundial in front of the planetarium
In 1956 Morehead funded the sundial set in front of the planetarium building in Chapel Hill.
-
Poe and Mangum move their DeSoto-Plymouth dealership out of a West Franklin Street filling station
After World War II A. H. Poe and Marvin Mangum sold DeSotos and Plymouths from a 1930s Pure Oil station at 110 West Franklin Street, built in the company's half-timbered cottage design. They added service bays and a showroom before vacating it in 1956.
-
The Institute of Government's East Franklin building becomes Consolidated University offices
After William Friday moved into the President's House in 1956, the University moved the Institute of Government out of its Franklin Street building and used it for the Consolidated University's offices. Those offices went back to campus between 1969 and 1973, and the building passed to other University programs.
-
The Joseph Palmer Knapp Building opens for the Institute of Government
The Institute of Government got a new building in Chapel Hill, paid for by the Knapp Foundation and a legislative appropriation and named for Joseph Palmer Knapp, who had died in 1951. His widow, Margaret Rutledge Knapp, saw that the family foundation funded it.
-
The Susan Graham memorial fountain is moved from Franklin Street to the edge of Coker Arboretum
The 1922 memorial fountain was taken from the Franklin Street curb near the Methodist church and set up at the edge of Coker Arboretum near Morehead Planetarium.
-
The Webb brothers design core-plan houses for the Highland Woods cooperative
Highland Woods, south of Memorial Hospital, was organized as a cooperative subdivision by a group of young faculty families, and in 1956 James and John Webb designed its houses around two cores, one for the living areas and kitchen and one for the bedrooms. The book likens it to Six Moon Hill, a Massachusetts cooperative laid out by Walter Gropius's Architects Collaborative in 1948.
-
Fire guts Dr. Marion B. Roberts's house at King and Hassell streets
An early-morning fire gutted the two-story house of Dr. and Mrs. Marion B. Roberts on the corner lot at West King and Hassell streets. The News of Orange County called it the worst fire in the Hillsboro Fire Department's history; firemen fought it for more than four hours in sub-freezing weather.
-
William Friday becomes acting president of the Consolidated University
Named acting president at 35 while the trustees searched for Gordon Gray's successor, Friday began his duties on March 1, 1956. The board approved him as president on October 26, 1956, and at his first news conference he named moving the administrative offices from South Building on the Chapel Hill campus to the old Institute of Government building on Franklin Street as a first goal.
-
Orange County passes a $2 million school bond issue
A two-million-dollar county bond issue for schools passed in 1956. The next month Cedar Grove's Black parents went to the board to ask for a share of the building money.
-
Patriots of North Carolina hold a mass meeting in Hillsborough and form an Orange County unit
An overflow crowd of about 300, observers said all white, filled the courtroom in Hillsborough for a Patriots of North Carolina meeting where I. Beverly Lake urged abandoning the public schools for a private system rather than integrate. W. C. George, the Patriots' state president, presided as members named an Orange County executive committee.
-
A Cedar Grove committee asks for classrooms, a lunchroom and playground land
Wayne Compton, Arthur Wells, Lonnie Thompson, Carter White and Oscar Beasley asked the county board for four more classrooms at Cedar Grove School, a lunchroom large enough to grow, and two more acres for a playground. The board did not act.
-
Hillsboro Presbyterian pastor preaches against local stock car racing
The Rev. C. H. Reckard, pastor of the Hillsboro Presbyterian Church, delivered a sermon criticizing local stock car racing and its effect on young people, one of the clergy protests against Sunday races at Orange Speedway.
-
Orange County pastors form a ministerial association
Pastors of 18 churches in northern and central Orange County met at the Hillsboro Presbyterian Church and formed an Orange County Ministerial Association, electing the Rev. C. H. Reckard president and the Rev. Lawton Pettit of St. Matthew's Episcopal secretary.
-
The Tempo Room, a basement beer and sandwich lounge, opens on East Franklin Street
The Tempo Room opened at noon in the basement space next to Town and Campus that had held the Baby Shop, selling beer and sandwiches in a room designed by Hank Gifford for about 75 people. J. D. Wright ran it.
-
Buck Baker wins the spring 100-lap race at Orange Speedway
Buck Baker, driving a 1956 Chrysler, won the 100-lap Grand National race at Orange Speedway on Mother's Day, ahead of Speedy Thompson, Lee Petty, Fireball Roberts and 27 other starters.
-
Dr. Sidney and Christine Chipman move into their new house on Dogwood Drive
Dr. Sidney S. Chipman, who headed UNC's Department of Maternal and Child Health, and his wife Christine moved into a new house at 515 Dogwood Drive in May 1956. Archie Davis of Durham drew the plan and Parker and Elliot of Chapel Hill built it.
-
The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association becomes Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association
On a vote of its stockholders, the association changed its name to Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association, announced alongside the largest dividend in its history.
-
Fireball Roberts wins the fall race at Orange Speedway
Fireball Roberts, driving a 1956 Ford, won the 110-lap fall race at Orange Speedway, setting the track record for that distance, with Buck Baker second.
-
The county board approves a cafeteria for Cedar Grove School
After voting in September to study the need, the board approved a cafeteria for 150 pupils at Cedar Grove at no more than $40,000, while again putting off new classrooms. Archie Royal Davis's plans for it were approved and sent to the state in October 1957.
-
Les Petites Musicales stages The Magic Flute in Hill Hall
An abridged English Magic Flute in Hill Hall used the University Glee Club under Joel Carter, who also sang Papageno, with the former Metropolitan Opera bass Norman Cordon as Sarastro.
-
Gooch's Café serves its last meal and becomes Green's Cafe
Gooch's Café, a Chapel Hill fixture for more than half a century and owned since the 1940s by Clarence Simmons, served its last meal under that name. The next morning Charles T. Green of Durham took it over as Green's Cafe.
-
A Webb-designed house is built for Bob and Josie Stipe in Highland Woods
The Stipe House at 1022 Highland Woods, built in 1957, sets a post-and-beam frame living floor over a masonry lower level on a lot that slopes sideways to the street, with the kitchen at the front open to the living room. The book uses it as its model modernist house and says it cost about $10 a square foot, against $12 to $15 for a traditional house.
-
Daniel H. Pollitt joins the UNC law faculty
Pollitt came to the UNC School of Law in 1957 as an associate professor of constitutional and labor law, after resigning from the University of Arkansas rather than sign an oath disavowing membership in the NAACP.
-
Dr. Ernest Wood, the first radiologist at UNC's hospital, builds a brick Ranch on Fern Lane
The five-bay Ranch has a recessed garage wing and a front cross-gable.
-
Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife build a Webb and Stewart house on Morgan Creek Road
A split-level modern house designed by James Webb and Don Stewart was built for Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife in Morgan Creek Hills. It was on the School Art Guild tour of homes in the fall of 1958.
-
Football coach Jim Tatum and his wife Edna build a house on Laurel Hill Road
The house pairs a two-story colonial block with a split-level stone living-room wing and a bowed window, probably from mail-order plans. Tatum had come back to coach UNC the year before.
-
James L. Godfrey serves as dean of the faculty
Godfrey held the post of dean of the faculty from 1957 to 1965, one of the titles that preceded the office of provost at Chapel Hill.
-
Jim Webb designs a Contemporary Ranch on Pine Lane as a retirement home for Fred and Josephine Weedon
Ellington & Sparrow built the open-plan house on a slope with an exposed basement at the back. The Weedons' daughter Josie and her husband, preservationist Bob Stipe, later lived there for many years.
-
Mortgage Insurance Company opens the first section of Lake Forest
On former Coker land north of Coker Hills, the area along the south side of Eastwood Lake was developed in 1957 by the Mortgage Insurance Company. This first section later came to be called Old Lake Forest.
-
Northern Heights is developed as a Black neighborhood north of US 70
The subdivision on Rainey, Harper, Homemont, Riddle and Dixie streets followed the usual post-war pattern of curving streets and even lots, but like neighboring Homemont it sat beside a dump and went without paved streets or town services until the 1970s.
-
O. B. Hardison Jr. teaches in the English department
Hardison, a Renaissance specialist with UNC bachelor's and master's degrees, joined the English department in 1957 and edited Studies in Philology. He left in 1969 to direct the Folger Shakespeare Library.
-
Pediatrician Judson Van Wyk builds a house in the Highland Woods cooperative
Dr. Judson J. Van Wyk, a pediatrician and a member of the faculty cooperative that bought the Highland Woods tract, planned in December 1956 to start building on his lot there. By September 1957 the town had issued permits for nine Highland Woods houses designed by architect James M. Webb.
-
Shepperd Strudwick carves the cross for the Hillsborough Methodist sanctuary
Shepperd Strudwick, a Presbyterian elder who took up wood carving late in life, made the cross for the Methodist sanctuary as well as one for his own church.
-
The trustees make the Institute's professional staff professors of public law and government
Chancellor William B. Aycock won trustee approval for the Institute's assistant directors to hold the rank of professor of public law and government. The rank carried academic tenure, which strengthened the Institute's place in the University and made recruiting easier.
-
Thomas Philip Lloyd sells the Carolina Pharmacy to Helen Duguid
Duguid kept the East Franklin drugstore going only a short time before Campus Laundry and Cleaners replaced it.
-
University Baptist Church acquires the McDade House lot next to its church
University Baptist Church voted to buy John Scott Trotter's properties beside its church at Franklin and Columbia streets for $250,000, among them the Cafe Mouza building, which was the old brick McDade House, and the Hill House. The church's later expansion plans on the lot led to the house's removal in 1997.
-
Waverly Branch and his wife build a Williamsburg-style house on Laurel Hill Road
The story-and-a-half house has beaded siding, a slate roof, end chimneys and a pedimented entrance porch in imitation of colonial Williamsburg. Branch was active in UNC affairs, and his wife was for many years the chancellor's secretary.
-
Howell's The Kenan Professorships is named one of the best Southern books of
The Kenan Professorships, written by UNC English professor A. C. Howell and published by the University Press with illustrations by William Meade Prince and Adrian Lamb, was chosen for design among 25 best Southern books of 1956.
-
Sophie Livas sells the Carolina Coffee Shop to Donald Belton
Sophie Livas, who had run the Carolina Coffee Shop since her husband George's death in 1956, sold it to Donald Belton, who took over on February 1, 1957.
-
UNC men’s basketball wins the 1957 NCAA national championship
UNC defeated Kansas, 54–53 in triple overtime, to win the national title.
-
Frances Hargraves teaches Chapel Hill's new special education classes at Northside School
The Chapel Hill schools had begun special education classes, one at Chapel Hill Elementary School and one taught by Frances Hargraves at Northside School. The Junior Service League paid a $200 scholarship for her training.
-
Workers at the Reverie Lingerie plant in Hillsborough go on strike for a union
Employees of Reverie Lingerie, a New York-owned undergarment plant opened in Hillsborough in 1955, walked out and set up a picket line to win recognition for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The company asked for a labor board election, which the union opposed, and the strike lasted about six months.
-
The General Assembly lets Hillsboro convey the library lot to the Hillsboro Library Association
A 1957 act authorized the Hillsboro town commissioners to convey the lot at Tryon and Churton streets holding the Hillsboro Library to the Hillsboro Library Association, and an adjoining lot to the Presbyterian church. Either lot would revert to the town if it stopped being used for the purpose named in the act.
-
Fire destroys the old West Hillsboro School, then a mill-owned apartment house
About 11:30 on a Monday night the three-story frame building that had been the West Hillsboro School, later made into 13 apartments, burned to the ground. A taxi driver saw the flames and woke the five people inside, who escaped.
-
Efland Home trustees sell the old reformatory farm to W. G. Fields Jr. and Nannette Fields
After nearly two decades of unknown use, the home's trustees sold the Efland property on April 29, 1957, to W. G. Fields Jr. and his wife Nannette, Chapel Hill investors, who cut the land west of the cottage into eight tracts between Redman Crossing and what is now I-40. The federation later gave about $12,000 from the sale toward a chapel at Dobbs School near Kinston.
-
Roland Giduz and Adelaide Walters are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
In a heavy turnout that also re-elected Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell and approved a $500,000 bond issue, voters re-elected aldermen Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager and chose two new members, Adelaide Walters and Roland Giduz. As low man among the winners, Giduz drew a two-year term.
-
The General Assembly bans Sunday racing in Orange County
After protests by the Rev. C. H. Reckard and other Orange County clergy, the legislature passed Senator Edwin S. Lanier's bill banning racing in the county on Sundays, with Rep. John W. Umstead's amendment barring races after 6 p.m. on other days. The bill passed on May 8, 1957, though Sunday races were being advertised again at Orange Speedway by 1961.
-
Hubert Robinson is named Man of the Year
After Robinson was re-elected alderman with the highest vote on the ticket, a group of Black citizens representing churches, fraternal organizations and civic clubs named him Man of the Year and gave a reception in his honor at the Lincoln High School gymtorium on June 11.
-
Jerrold Orne is appointed University Librarian
Chancellor Robert B. House announced Orne's appointment as university librarian, effective August 1, with the approval of President William C. Friday and the trustees. Orne came from the Air University library at Maxwell Air Force Base and succeeded Andrew H. Horn.
-
Work begins on a two-story gymnasium building for Hillsboro High School
T. W. Poe and Sons of Durham won the contract on June 10, 1957 and began a $180,000 physical education building with classrooms and locker rooms below and a gymnasium above, due for completion in December.
-
William B. Aycock serves as chancellor of UNC at Chapel Hill
Aycock, on the law faculty at Chapel Hill since 1948, was chief administrator of the university there from July 1, 1957 until August 1964. His records cover desegregation, the state's speaker ban law and the Dixie Classic betting scandal.
-
Roosevelt Warner coaches the Hillsboro Junior All-Stars
Warner coached the newly organized Hillsboro Junior All-Stars, boys aged 13 to 15 who played teams of Durham's Bull City Pony League and Chapel Hill under Little League rules. The paper called the team a civic project for summer recreation, and local firms gave money for uniforms and equipment.
-
The county takes bids for a gymtorium and twelve classrooms at Central High School
H. F. Mitchell Construction Company was low bidder for two buildings at Central High, a twelve-classroom addition and a gymtorium seating about 1,200, designed by Archie Royal Davis. The whole project came to $266,094, and the gymtorium was nearly finished in February 1958.
-
Lincoln High prepares to open with sixteen teachers and about four hundred pupils
In the Chapel Hill News Leader's back to school report, Principal C. A. McDougle said Lincoln High School would have sixteen teachers and that enrollment would probably reach 400, against 381 on the first day of the previous year. Two of the teachers were new that year.
-
Watts Restaurant holds its grand opening on the Pittsboro highway south of Chapel Hill
The new Watts Restaurant, a concrete-block building a mile south of town on the Pittsboro highway with counter, booths and private dining rooms, advertised its gala opening in mid-August 1957 after first advertising as Chapel Hill's newest restaurant in early July.
-
Wes and Nancy Thompson hold a grand opening of the South 501 Restaurant under their ownership
Under the new ownership and management of Wes and Nancy Thompson, the South 501 Restaurant on the Durham highway bypass, across from the Valley Drive-In, announced its grand opening, with steaks, curb service and a tap room.
-
J. K. Ellis reopens his East Franklin Street grill as the Village Cafeteria
After a summer of renovation, J. K. Ellis reopened his Village Grill as the Village Cafeteria, the last step in turning the old four-lane bowling alley he had bought in the mid-1940s into a full restaurant.
-
An explosion and fire destroy the strikebound Reverie Lingerie plant
On a Friday night an explosion and fire wrecked the Reverie Lingerie plant, ending the six-month strike and the jobs of about eighty workers. The paper counted a lost local payroll of about $173,000 a year.
-
Bozo and Lillian Taylor open a second dining room at the Hillsboro Lunch
R. T. (Bozo) Taylor Jr. and Lillian Taylor, then running the Hillsboro Lunch, opened a newly renovated dining room next to their old quarters, giving them two dining rooms for daily meals and catering. The Hillsboro Merchants Association soon began holding its luncheon meetings there.
-
La Pizza holds its grand opening on Carrboro's West Main Street
La Pizza opened on Friday, November 8, 1957, selling only pizza, in eight kinds and two sizes, under candlelight with checkered tablecloths. Chuck Gerke ran it as operator.
-
The Orange County Historical Museum opens
The Hillsborough Garden Club, led by Mrs. Clarence Jones, founded the Orange County Historical Museum, which opened in November 1957 on the second floor of the 1845 Orange County Courthouse after the county commissioners approved the space and gave $250. The museum moved to its Churton Street home in 1983.
-
The first televised ACC regular season game is played at Woollen Gym
Television producer C. D. Chesley brought his cameras into Woollen Gym for Carolina's fourteenth meeting with Clemson, the first regular season ACC game ever televised. McGuire's team won 79-55.
-
Chapel Hill Elementary pupils play carols with professional musicians at the school Christmas program
At the Chapel Hill Elementary School Christmas programs on December 17, 1957, directed musically by Adeline McCall, supervisor of music in the Chapel Hill schools, children playing psalteries, violins and bells accompanied the carols with two harpists, violinist Dorothy Alden and flutist Dorothy Hickok. The programs also staged the play Alias Santa Claus.
-
Charlie Mason's motor court on West Rosemary Street was lodging Black travelers
Charlie Mason's family ran Mason Grocery and the Mason Motel, which was advertising in Chapel Hill by December 1957. As Mason's Motor Court at 603 West Rosemary Street, with the Starlite Supper Club, it took Black guests, including well-known Black performers in town for concerts, when other Chapel Hill hotels would not.
-
A kitchen and cafeteria are added to Cedar Grove School
A one-story brick kitchen and cafeteria, 78 by 49 feet, was finished behind the gymnasium late in 1958 to Archie Royal Davis's plans. One open dining room filled two-thirds of it, with the kitchen, dishwashing and storage along the north side.
-
Anne Firor Scott moves to Chapel Hill and takes a temporary history post at UNC
Anne Firor Scott and her husband Andrew Scott moved to Chapel Hill in 1958, when he joined UNC's political science department and she took a temporary position in history. They lived in the Highland Woods neighborhood for 47 years.
-
Carr Store Road is paved through Cedar Grove
Carr Store Road, the east-west road through the Cedar Grove crossroads, was paved in 1958, about a decade after the north-south Efland-Cedar Grove Road. Until then farmers in the area could find farm-to-market roads impassable for months of the year.
-
Central High's new gymnasium is finished after the fire
After the main building of Central High School burned in 1958, Archie Royal Davis designed a new school building and a gymnasium for the site; the gymnasium was finished in late 1958.
-
Cornelia Spencer Love serves as a founding trustee of the Chapel Hill Public Library
Love was a trustee of the public library from its start in 1958 until 1970 and secretary of its board of directors. The library began in a small house in downtown Chapel Hill.
-
Engineer Bob Anderson joins City Planning and Architecture Associates
Engineer Bob Anderson joined the Webb and Stewart firm in 1958 and later became Stewart's partner.
-
Fire destroys the Presbyterian church on East Franklin Street
The University Presbyterian Church burned in 1958. The congregation built a larger church on the same site three years later.
-
George Brown Tindall joins the UNC history faculty
Tindall, who took his graduate degrees at UNC, returned in 1958 as an associate professor of history and taught until he retired as Kenan professor emeritus in 1990.
-
George Matsumoto draws plans for a Chapel Hill house for Cecile and Bryce DeWitt
Matsumoto's papers hold sketches, preliminary drawings and fourteen sheets of working drawings for a residence in Chapel Hill for Cecile and Bryce DeWitt.
-
Hillsborough Presbyterian Church builds and moves into a new manse
A new manse drawn by pastor C. H. Reckard was finished and occupied early in 1958.
-
Joe Page becomes sole owner of Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery
Page, a clerk in the East Franklin stationery store before the war, bought Herbert Ledbetter's share in 1947 and the rest of the business when Pickard died in 1958.
-
Kemp Nye opens Kemp's Phonograph Records on East Franklin Street
Nye, who had worked for Milton Abernethy, opened a record shop in the store the Smiths' bookshop had just left.
-
Mount Bright Baptist Church buys its first electronic organ and moves to full-time services
In Fred J. Boddie Jr.'s three-year pastorate the congregation bought its first electronic organ and moved to a full-time schedule of services.
-
The Bellevue mill village is platted and its houses sold to private owners
After the mill company had been sold by 1956, its village was surveyed into lots in 1958 so the houses could be sold. Unlike the Eno mill houses, which were carried off to new sites, the Bellevue houses stayed where they were, which is why the village keeps its original streets but has irregular lot lines.
-
The Donald Stewart House is built on Severin Street
A 1958 house at 408 Severin Street in Chapel Hill, known as the Donald Stewart House, is listed among Don Stewart's works. It was sold in 1970.
-
The Friends of the Library honor Elizabeth Henderson Cotten
At its 1958 meeting the Friends of the Library, which Cotten had helped organize and served as first secretary, gave her a citation for her work for the university library.
-
The Intimate Bookshop moves into the old Berman Department Store on East Franklin Street
After Sam Berman's death, Paul and Isabel Smith moved their bookshop into the store his department store had used, the 119 East Franklin building it kept for forty years.
-
William S. Powell becomes curator of the North Carolina Collection
Powell, who had joined the university library's North Carolina Collection in 1951, was named its curator after Mary Lindsay Thornton retired.
-
The University's telephone system plans to double its East Rosemary Street exchange
The University-owned Chapel Hill telephone system announced a $300,000 addition that would double the size of its exchange building on East Rosemary Street, along with better party-line service. Bids for the addition were opened in March.
-
Central High School burns
Early on the morning of February 14, 1958, fire destroyed the main building of Central High School, Hillsborough's high school for Black students, a one-story brick-veneer building of fifteen classrooms that also held offices and an auditorium. Its library of more than 4,000 books was lost. Classes moved into a new twelve-classroom building nearly finished on the campus for the elementary grades, with a few in the lunchroom, shops and nearby buildings. The county board had Durham architect Archie Royal Davis design a new building on the same site; contracts were let in May 1958, and the two-story classroom building was finished in 1959-60.
-
The school board orders a new main building for Central High on the day of the fire
The night the old Central High building burned, the county board set aside $214,892 for a new 18-classroom building designed by Archie Royal Davis's firm. Construction went on through 1958.
-
Portrait painter Clement Strudwick dies and is buried in Hillsborough
Clement Read Strudwick, who had painted in a workshop behind his parents' Hillsborough home, died on February 26, 1958. His funeral was held in the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and he was buried in the Hillsborough cemetery.
-
Doris and James Field begin plans for the Timbercrest subdivision
Doris Gates Field and James MacDonald Field started planning Timbercrest, a subdivision on a thirty-seven-acre tract northeast of Chapel Hill, in February 1958, and kept five and a half acres of it for their own Modernist house.
-
Hillsborough and New Sharon Methodists dedicate the parsonage they built together
The two churches put up a new parsonage on lot 94 in 1957-58 at a cost of about $22,000 and dedicated it on a Sunday afternoon in March 1958, with W. A. Seawell as pastor and Taylor Bivins chairing the building committee.
-
A Cedar Grove delegation asks for a classroom and playground to win accreditation
Seeking state accreditation, a delegation from the school asked the board for one more classroom so the library could be used as a library again, land for a playground, paint for the north wing and outdoor floodlights. The board took no action.
-
The Hillsboro post office moves into Fred Cates's new building on South Churton Street
The post office moved to a new air-conditioned building by the Eno at the south edge of town, which Fred Cates built for about $25,000 and leased to the government over the objections of the mayor and town board. It was dedicated on August 9 before about 200 people.
-
The state declines to accredit Cedar Grove School for lack of space
Ruth Lawrence Woodson, state supervisor of the Black elementary schools, refused accreditation because the school had too few classrooms and was using its library as a fourth-grade room. Her report counted the parents' involvement, a staff study program, the office, auditorium and clinic room in its favor.
-
Carrboro voters approve merging their school district with the Chapel Hill unit
On August 5, 1958 the Carrboro school district voted 713 to 303 to merge with the Chapel Hill city school unit and levy a 15-cent school tax, after a spring vote had failed. The county board sold the old Carrboro School to R. B. Todd for $30,000 in September 1959.
-
The Osbunn Theater reopens under a new operator after W. M. Chance's death
The Osbunn Theater, closed for several months after the death of its owner W. M. Chance, reopened under Sam R. Owens of Durham, who leased it from the Chance family. Owens had run drive-in theaters in Durham, Burlington and Fayetteville.
-
Bill France leases Orange Speedway to the Orange County Board of Education
Bill France signed a ten-year lease letting Hillsboro High School use the Orange Speedway grounds as its athletic field, for $100 a year, while races continued.
-
The Ackland Art Museum opens
UNC dedicated the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center on September 20, 1958, the morning after a preview for faculty. Ackland had left his bequest to Duke, which refused it, and nine years of litigation sent it to Chapel Hill; the Georgian building held galleries, an art library, classrooms, studios and offices.
-
Binkley Baptist Church organizes
Fifty-six charter members established the congregation, initially worshiping on campus.
-
Moses Burt retires after 23 years as Orange County's agent for Black farmers
Moses Cimuel Burt, a World War I veteran trained at NC A&T, Hampton and Cornell, retired as the county's African American extension agent in September 1958. Since 1935 he had backed farm programs in the county's Black schools and helped start 4-H clubs.
-
Ruth Faison Shaw brings her finger-painting case histories to the University
The Chapel Hill News Leader reported that Shaw, recently of Chapel Hill, was giving the University more than a thousand case histories on personality diagnosis through finger painting and was working as its consultant in therapy.
-
Chapel Hill Public Library opens
Chapel Hill's first public library held its formal opening on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House on West Franklin Street, with about 4,500 books, 2,000 of them lent by state and regional libraries. It moved to its own building at 523 East Franklin Street in 1967 and to Pritchard Park in 1994.
-
The Chapel Hill Choral Club sings Bach's Christmas Oratorio
The Chapel Hill Choral Club, directed by Joel Carter, performed the first three parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Hill Hall as part of the Tuesday Evening Series.
-
A new Carrboro Elementary School is built at the end of Ash Street
With the new school open, the 1921 graded school on West Main Street, where Josie Sturdivant had been principal until about 1947, was converted to Carrboro Town Hall.
-
Archie Royal Davis's new main building for Central High goes up
After the 1958 fire, Archie Royal Davis designed a two-story, flat-roofed brick main building and a barrel-roofed gymnasium for Central High School. The main building went up in 1959-60; the campus is now Hillsborough Elementary.
-
Cameron Park School in Hillsborough gets its first addition
Three years after it opened, the county enlarged Cameron Park School with a second section of building, raised under Superintendent G. Paul Carr to plans by the architect Archie Royal Davis.
-
Carrboro's schools join the Chapel Hill city unit
The merger Carrboro voters approved in August 1958 took effect with the 1959-60 school year, taking 462 pupils out of the Orange County system; in 1958-59 Carrboro Elementary had stayed under the county board while high school pupils and Black elementary pupils could attend Chapel Hill schools free.
-
Chapel Hill's city directory lists sixteen bricklayers, twelve in Black neighborhoods
The 1959 Hill's Chapel Hill directory named sixteen bricklayers, twelve of them living in Northside and other historically Black neighborhoods. By 1962 the list had grown to eighteen, including John, Handy and Leo Campbell.
-
Community Church dedicates its first building
The building housed worship, classes, and offices.
-
Duke Power dismantles its Eno steam plant
Duke Power sold most of the equipment of its standby steam plant in Eno Township to the Sid Rancer Company, a junk dealer, for $30,500 before January 1, 1960, and tore down six of the twelve company houses. The county lost several hundred thousand dollars in tax valuation.
-
Efland-Cheeks School gets its first addition
An addition went up in 1959 on the north side of the 1952 Efland-Cheeks School, which Archie Royal Davis had designed for Black children in western Orange County. A modern wing larger than the original school followed around 1980.
-
English professor Hugh Holman and his wife Verna build a Cape Cod house on Pine Lane
The story-and-a-half side-gabled house has two dormers and a small side wing.
-
Institute of Government staff draft a new state law on municipal annexation
Assistant directors Philip Green Jr., George Esser and Jake Wicker wrote a new North Carolina annexation law for a state study commission. The law, which stayed unchanged for more than forty years and became a model elsewhere, let the state's cities grow without being ringed by small incorporated suburbs.
-
J. H. and Pauline McAdams build a Ranch house on Revere Road
Their brick house at 418 Revere Road, with its shallow hipped roof, banks of awning windows and built-in carport, is the survey's model example of the Ranch house in Hillsborough.
-
Mary Claire Engstrom and her husband buy the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough
In 1959 Mary Claire Engstrom, who had earned a UNC doctorate in English literature in 1939, and her husband, UNC French professor Alfred G. Engstrom, bought the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough. From then on she turned her research to the history of Hillsborough and its surroundings.
-
Mount Herman Baptist Church leases the closed Murphey School
Once the school closed, the county board leased the empty building to Mt. Herman Baptist Church for one year at $25 a month.
-
Murphey School closes and its pupils go to Hillsborough
After years of falling attendance the county closed Murphey School in 1959 and moved its pupils to the elementary schools in Hillsborough.
-
Research Triangle Park and Orange County's growth
The Research Triangle Foundation, formed in 1959, ran the research park planned between Durham and Raleigh around UNC, N.C. State and Duke. That November Orange County commissioners said the park would bring the county mainly new residents and school costs rather than taxable industry, and began discussing county-wide zoning.
-
Robert Rosenbacher opens The Hub, a men's clothing store, on East Franklin Street
The Hub took the store Charles Shields had just closed after 36 years of running his Home Owned Grocery there. It stayed 37 years, closing in 1996.
-
Robert Seymour becomes the first pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church
Robert Seymour came to Chapel Hill in 1959 as the first minister of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, organized the year before. He led it until 1988.
-
Samuel Selden leaves the Playmakers and Harry E. Davis takes over the Department of Dramatic Art
Selden left Chapel Hill in 1959 to chair the Department of Theatre Arts at UCLA, and Harry E. Davis became chairman of the Department of Dramatic Art.
-
The Fairview Extension is platted and filled with look-alike Ranch houses
The south end of Fairview, west of North Nash Street and south of US 70, was platted in 1959. Its houses are three variations on one Ranch design that differ only in their outside materials, which suggests they were built on speculation.
-
The Institute's dormitory lodges sixteen thousand overnight guests in a year
Sixteen thousand people stayed overnight in the Knapp Building's dormitory during the 1959-60 academic year, and attendance at Institute events and instruction had grown about tenfold since the building opened in 1956.
-
The Masonic Hall on West Franklin Street is torn down for a department store parking lot
The Masonic Hall at Church Street was razed and its ground paved as a parking lot for the Belk-Leggett store next door.
-
The Oh Boy Drive-In opens at West Rosemary and Church streets
The Oh Boy Drive-In, run by the Boy family of Durham, was nearing completion at the corner of West Rosemary and Church streets in early July 1959. It was hiring in early August and serving cars by late August.
-
The law faculty and the Institute staff vote against merging the Institute into the law school
When Albert Coates pressed again to fold the Institute of Government into the UNC law school, both the law faculty and the Institute's own staff voted the idea down. Assistant director John Sanders warned that the Institute's service work would be subordinated to the law school and its identity lost.
-
University Methodist Church adds a Sunday school wing
The congregation built an education wing on the east side of its brick church at 150 East Franklin Street in 1959.
-
The Chapel Hill News Leader suspends publication
The semiweekly Chapel Hill News Leader announced in its January 29, 1959 issue that it was stopping publication. The paper had gone into receivership.
-
A Hollywood crew films a racing drama at Orange Speedway and the Colonial Inn
A film company shot scenes for a television drama starring James Whitmore at Orange Speedway and the Colonial Inn in Hillsborough. Speedway co-owner Enoch Staley brought in several well-known drivers, among them Buck Baker, for close-up scenes.
-
A state audit reports irregularities in the Institute of Government's accounts
State Auditor Henry Bridges reported a gap of $5,064.32 in the Institute's books, caused by careless record keeping and slow deposit of room fees and book sales, not by missing money. Coates took the blame and paid $5,100 at once; he was repaid once he documented the spending, but staff who had not been warned in advance were angry.
-
The University tears down the Abernethy house on South Columbia Street for Ackland grounds and parking
UNC bought the house from the widow of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, long the director of the University Infirmary, and tore it down to extend the Ackland Art Center grounds and make a gravel lot of about 60 faculty parking spaces. The house dated from 1905 and had housed many students.
-
Dwight Ray and Seaton Lloyd sell the Lloyd-Ray Hardware Store after 37 years
The partners sold the Carrboro hardware store they had opened in April 1922, long a gathering place for local politics.
-
Cedar Grove's advisory committee asks for two more classrooms
Lonnie Thompson, Arthur Wells, Carter White, Wayne Compton and Oscar Beasley of the school's advisory committee asked the board for a two-classroom addition. The board agreed to consider it and in August approved Archie Royal Davis's plans with a $20,000 limit.
-
Orange County's first ABC liquor store opens north of Hillsboro
Two months after voters approved county liquor stores on February 3, the first ABC store opened in a new building that also held the county ABC warehouse, near where Highways 70 and 86 meet. It was the county's first legal whiskey sale in the modern era.
-
Chapel Hill Public Library shows Bayard Wootten photographs after her death
Weeks after Bayard Wootten died in New Bern, the Chapel Hill Public Library displayed her 1930s photographs of western North Carolina, made to illustrate two UNC Press books, Backwoods America and Cabins in the Laurel.
-
Sandy McClamroch is elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
McClamroch, one of five candidates for three seats, was elected on May 5, 1959 with F. E. Strowd and Roland Giduz, and was sworn in with Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell the following Monday night. Campaigning, he had called for coordinating town and university planning and for bringing the university's payments for town services above the table.
-
Mayor Cornwell presses the state to widen the highways into Chapel Hill
Sworn in for a new term with aldermen F. E. Strowd and Sandy McClamroch, Mayor Cornwell wrote to the state's director of highways urging four-lane roads toward Durham and Raleigh and calling U.S. 15-501 and N.C. 54 major entrances to the university.
-
Chapel Hill's ABC liquor store opens in Eastgate Shopping Center
The county ABC system's Chapel Hill store opened in Eastgate Shopping Center and sold between $2,000 and $3,000 of liquor a day in its first two days, about half again the daily average at the Hillsboro store, which had opened April 10.
-
O. David Garvin resigns as health director of the five county district
Garvin, health director for Orange, Person, Chatham, Lee and Caswell counties since 1944, resigned effective June 15, 1959 to rejoin the U.S. Public Health Service in its Chronic Disease Branch. The paper described him as a native of Wagner, South Carolina.
-
Stanley Vickers's parents apply for his transfer from Northside Elementary to Carrboro Elementary
After ten-year-old Stanley Boya Vickers finished fifth grade at Northside Elementary School in June 1959, his parents, Thomas Lee and Lattice Vickers, filed a written application to have him reassigned to Carrboro Elementary School, which was much nearer their home. The school board denied it on August 3, 1959.
-
Duke Power opens its remodeled Hillsboro office on King Street
Duke Power Company held an open house at its newly remodeled Hillsboro office, then numbered 110 King Street, showing new facilities and electric appliances. Manager C. B. Parris had served the town's customers since 1936.
-
Health officer asks county commissioners for money to buy polio vaccine
District health director O. David Garvin asked the Board of County Commissioners for a special appropriation to buy Salk vaccine for schoolchildren and pregnant women who could not pay, after federal vaccine allotments were cut and shots became required for school entry. The board agreed to provide funds if needed but told him to seek March of Dimes money from the county polio chapter first.
-
Jim Tatum dies at Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill
Tatum apparently contracted an overwhelming viral infection while visiting Canada with the coaches Peahead Walker and Frank Howard, and died one week after entering Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He was buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
-
Arthur Wells is named to the county's new agricultural extension advisory board
A 16-member Orange County Agricultural Extension Advisory Board, proposed by the extension service to advise on the county's farm program, was approved with Arthur Wells of Cedar Grove among its farmer representatives.
-
Chapel Hill school board refuses Stanley Vickers a transfer to all-white Carrboro Elementary and adopts a first-grade proximity policy
The Chapel Hill City Board of Education denied ten-year-old Stanley Vickers a transfer from all-Black Northside Elementary to the nearer all-white Carrboro Elementary School, and at the same meeting adopted a policy of limited integration at the first-grade level starting with the 1960-61 year. UNC law dean Henry Brandis, who had twice moved to approve the transfer, resigned from the board in protest and called the action both morally and legally indefensible.
-
White Cross voters turn down a merger with the Chapel Hill schools a second time
White Cross voters defeated a merger of their school into the Chapel Hill city district, 116 to 110, a year after Carrboro had joined it; a first vote had failed in May 1958. A third vote failed in the spring of 1960, and the county closed the school in 1961. The county board sold the White Cross property to Edmiston Realty Company for $14,900 in 1967.
-
Brandis returns for the Vickers hearing, then leaves the Chapel Hill school board
Brandis withdrew his August 3 resignation so he could sit at the board's hearing on Stanley Vickers's transfer request on August 31. He resigned again after that meeting, and the board named a committee to find his successor.
-
Orange County builds its third ABC store near the Alamance line at Carr
The county ABC board put up a concrete-block liquor store on Mutt Byrd's land about 200 yards from the Alamance County line on the Roxboro-Burlington highway, with opening expected in mid-September. By early 1960 nearly all of its sales went to Alamance County customers.
-
The county school board sells the old Carrboro School to the Town of Carrboro
After the new Carrboro elementary school opened, the Orange County Board of Education accepted the town's $30,000 bid, the only one at an August auction, for the empty 14-classroom building and auditorium on West Main Street. The town planned to make it a municipal building, and voters approved a $95,000 bond issue for the purchase and renovation on March 19, 1960.
-
Chapel Hill opens its Glen Lennox fire station
The town's second fire station, on South Hamilton Road in Glen Lennox, opened without ceremony when two pumper trucks moved in from the main station on Columbia Street. The aldermen had let contracts in February for the building, designed by Archie Davis of Durham and paid for from 1957 bonds.
-
Orange County commissioners give a cool reception to a Research Triangle planning request
At a special meeting, Orange County commissioners gave only a lukewarm reception to a request to help fund a land development survey for the Research Triangle area and took no action pending firm figures. The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the county expected to gain mostly new residents and school costs from the park rather than industry, and commissioners discussed zoning the area northeast of Chapel Hill toward the Durham County line.
-
James and Myrtle Graham, a Black Efland couple, buy the old Efland Home cottage
In December 1959 James Nills Graham, called Nello, and Myrtle McAdoo Graham, both raised on Efland farms, bought the former reformatory cottage and 2.4 acres, and the Graham family kept it for more than fifty years. They belonged to White Cross A.M.E. Church and are buried there.
- 1960s
-
A mill house is moved from South Wake Street to West Orange Street
The small house at 330 West Orange Street, built around 1941, is a mill house moved in the 1960s from the 200 block of South Wake Street.
-
A nursing home is built at 401 North Churton Street
A one-story brick nursing home, built in the form of the Ranch houses of its day, goes up about 1960 at 401 North Churton Street.
-
A two-story lodge for Prince Hall Masons and the Eastern Star is built on West Orange Street
A concrete-block lodge was built in the 1960s at 210 West Orange Street for St. James Lodge No. 494 of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge and the St. Anita Maria chapter No. 622 of the Eastern Star. It stands on the site of a school for Black children shown on the 1924 Sanborn map and gained a rear wing in 1991.
-
A vocational building is added at Central High School
Between 1960 and 1962 the county added a one-story, flat-roofed, brick-veneered vocational building with metal awning windows to the Central High campus in Hillsborough.
-
Architect Arthur Cogswell designs his own house on Marilyn Lane
Cogswell's 1960 house at 5 Marilyn Lane sits on two levels in a slope, planned on George Matsumoto's four-foot grid and sided in vertical pine, with a short bridge from the drive to the door and a living room under a row of small glass-ended gables. It won an award from the North Carolina chapter of the AIA.
-
Architect Wade Williams builds a Wright-influenced house for himself on Whitfield Road
Durham architect R. Wade Williams designed a flat-roofed Modernist house with exposed-aggregate block walls and dark-red board siding for himself and his wife, kitchen designer Mary Louise Gunter Williams, on an eighteen-acre wooded tract northeast of Chapel Hill. Her parents helped pay for it.
-
Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro in
The 1960 census counted 42,970 people in Orange County, 12,573 in Chapel Hill and 1,997 in Carrboro. Chapel Hill township had 25,030, up from 18,222 in 1950.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
