Chronology

State says Chapel Hill's new tuberculosis hospital will take Black and white patients

A State Medical Care Commission spokesman said the $1,100,000 tuberculosis hospital under construction at Chapel Hill would treat Black and white patients. He noted that federal rules barred discrimination in federally aided hospitals but still allowed patients to be segregated.

Lochiel, the Fagan family home outside Hillsborough, burns to the ground

Fire destroyed the Fagan home, the three-story frame house known as Lochiel, on a Saturday afternoon while no one was home. Only a few pieces of furniture were saved, and onlookers following the fire truck blocked it on the way back from refilling.

Subject: Lochiel

Bill Chance opens the Hillsboro Lunch on West King Street

Bill Chance opened the Hillsboro Lunch, a sandwich bar and short-order eatery next to Wynne's Beauty Salon, serving Cotton Nichols' barbecue, Brunswick stew and milkshakes from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Margaret Riley, formerly of the Hickory House, ran the service.

Subject: Hillsboro Lunch

Cedar Grove parents ask for a say in hiring teachers and get a Black building committee

Seven Cedar Grove PTA members asked for a local committee with power to hire and dismiss the new school's teachers, and for paint and tile floors. The board named a building committee of Dallas Sheppherd Burnett, Wayne Compton, D. W. Torain, Elijah Poole and Oscar Carver Beasley but gave it no say over staff; it did approve the paint and the floor tile.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The register of deeds begins photographing and microfilming deeds

New deeds were photographed, with the film kept by Hall and McChesney of Syracuse and a print returned for the county's books, and the older deed books were filmed as well. Deeds had been typed rather than handwritten since January 1, 1930.

William Meade Prince dies at his home in Greenwood

William Meade Prince, illustrator, former head of the university's art department and author of The Southern Part of Heaven, died by suicide in the studio of his Greenwood home. The Weekly wrote that the village felt the loss deeply.

Morris Telephone Company opens an exchange at Efland with lines to Cedar Grove

The Morris Telephone Company put a new 30-line switchboard into service in its new building next to the Baptist church in Efland, along with about 14 miles of rural lines running to the Cedar Grove community.

Albert and Gladys Coates move into their own house on Hooper Lane

In 1947 the couple bought a lot on Hooper Lane in what had been the back garden of Edward Kidder Graham's house. Coates rejected a contemporary design by architects Jim and John Webb, the house went up as a two-story Georgian, and they moved in about the time the Gardner Award money arrived.

People: Gladys Hall Coates · John B. Webb · James M. Webb

Architect George Matsumoto draws plans for Dr. Isaac Taylor's house on Morgan Creek Road

George Matsumoto of the State College School of Design drew the plans for the house of Dr. Isaac M. Taylor, new to the medical school faculty, in Morgan Creek Hills. The Taylors raised their children there, among them the singer James Taylor.

People: Isaac Montrose Taylor · George Matsumoto

Architect John B. Webb joins his brother James in Chapel Hill

John B. Webb, also Berkeley-trained and shaped by William Wurster, practiced alongside his brother in Chapel Hill from 1952 to 1957. The two are credited with bringing the regional modernism of the San Francisco Bay area to the town.

People: John B. Webb · James M. Webb

Bob Cox and Monk Jennings open Town & Campus in place of Wilbur Kutz's Varsity Shop

Cox and Jennings's clothing store, Town & Campus, took over the East Franklin store where Kutz had run the Varsity Shop. It was replaced by another clothier between 1989 and 1993.

Carl Snavely leaves UNC after three losing seasons

Disputes over the size of the recruiting budget and Snavely's difficulty moving from the single wing to the split T weakened the program. After losing seasons in 1950, 1951 and 1952 he left UNC with a record there of 59 wins, 35 losses and 5 ties.

Chapel Hill builds a new elementary school in the Glen Lennox area

In the fall of 1952 an elementary school was being built in the Glen Lennox area, the first of several planned so young children would not have to travel into downtown traffic.

Cole's Store opens beside its owner's house on West Hill Avenue

The small concrete-block store and gas station on North West Hill Avenue, built on the same lot as the owner's home, follows the pattern of rural crossroads stores of the 1940s and 1950s.

Dr. Robert T. Cadmus, first director of Memorial Hospital, builds a colonial Ranch on Iris Lane

The five-bay brick Ranch has a large picture window and a sunporch at one end. Cadmus came to run the new North Carolina Memorial Hospital, part of the postwar wave of medical staff who needed houses near campus.

Eno Mill becomes part of Cone Mills

The subsidiary joined the Greensboro textile corporation.

Subject: Eno Mill

Frank McGuire arrives at UNC to coach basketball

McGuire came to Chapel Hill in 1952 to take over a basketball program that ranked far behind football in the university's priorities. His first office at Carolina was the ticket booth at Woollen Gym.

Isaac M. Taylor joins the new Department of Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine

Taylor, a 1942 Carolina graduate with a Harvard medical degree, returned to Chapel Hill in 1952 at the invitation of medical dean Reece Berryhill as one of the first members of the medical school's department of medicine.

People: W. Reece Berryhill

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

J. Spencer Love gives the Institute of Government $50,000 to spend as Coates sees fit

Textile executive J. Spencer Love, whose $15,000 in 1942 had carried the Institute until the state budget took over its costs, sent Albert Coates another $50,000 with no conditions on its use.

People: J. Spencer Love

Subject: Institute of Government

James and Maxine Freeland open the Ja-Max Motor Lodge on US 70

Named for its owners, the long one-story motel northwest of town on the main Greensboro-Durham road let guests park at their own doors, and its hipped roof, stone veneer and horizontal-pane windows borrow from the Ranch house. It was probably the first of Freeland's motels, a string that later ran to Durham, Mebane and Roxboro and included Chapel Hill's Tar Heel Motel.

People: James J. Freeland

Subject: Ja-Max Motor Lodge

Jim Webb designs a Contemporary house on Laurel Hill Road for psychologists Louis and Thelma Thurstone

The low L-shaped house has vertical wood siding, a hipped roof with wide eaves and a carport joined by a screen porch; Ellington & Sparrow built it. Webb counted it among his firm's best work.

People: James M. Webb

Joffre Coe publishes an archaeological survey of the Occoneechee Hills area

Coe's study The Cultural Sequence of the Carolina Piedmont, in a volume edited by James B. Griffin, reported a survey and excavation near the Occoneechee Hills outside Hillsborough carried out under the Archaeological Society of North Carolina.

Morgan Creek Hills subdivision begins beside the new 15-501 Bypass

Work on Morgan Creek Hills, on the south side of the 15-501 Bypass, started while the bypass itself was being built between 1952 and 1954. The land had several owners, among them William Chambers Coker and Bill Hunt, and the neighborhood filled in over many years with large houses on rough, hilly lots.

People: William Chambers Coker

Neurosurgeon Warner Wells buys the Pratt house on East Franklin Street

Ten years after Joseph Hyde Pratt's death, Dr. Warner Wells, a neurosurgeon on the UNC medical school faculty, buys the Pratt house on East Franklin Street, which became known as the Pratt-Wells House.

People: Joseph Hyde Pratt

Oliver K. Cornwell becomes chair of UNC's Department of Physical Education and Athletics

After Robert Fetzer retired in 1952, Cornwell became chair of the combined department, while Charles P. Erickson became director of athletics. By 1955 the two parts had been separated again.

People: Robert A. Fetzer

Orange County sells $250,000 in bonds for a new courthouse

The courthouse bonds brought the county's net bonded debt to $1,378,000 at the end of 1952. The new courthouse was then rising beside the old one on the same axis, sharing a courtyard.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Philip Green's guidebook for zoning and planning boards is published

Green, who had learned the field on the Charlotte study, wrote a 430-page guidebook that the Institute published in 1952, the first such work for local zoning and planning boards in North Carolina. He went on to a national reputation in zoning and planning law.

Subject: Institute of Government

Service station operator Roseman builds a brick Ranch house on West Tryon Street

Mr. Roseman, who ran a gas station downtown, built a brick Ranch house with an attached carport at 311 West Tryon Street in 1952, replacing an earlier frame house.

The 15-501 Bypass is built along the south side of Chapel Hill

The book places construction of the 15-501 Bypass in 1952 to 1954. Morgan Creek Hills, one of the town's large postwar subdivisions, was laid out along its south side during those same years.

The Tar Heel Hosiery Mill starts at Efland

The newest of the Efland family hosiery plants, the Tar Heel Hosiery Mill, began in 1952 making full-fashioned hose.

The Webb brothers design a house on Whitehead Circle for Alex and Betty McMahon

James M. Webb and John B. Webb Associates designed the J. Alex and Betty W. McMahon House at 419 Whitehead Circle, a long house with flat roofs at different heights, a privacy wall and small windows toward the street, and large windows opening to the woods behind.

People: John B. Webb

The county builds the classroom building and cafeteria later used by A. L. Stanback School

A classroom building and a cafeteria on the Hillsborough campus that became A. L. Stanback School, the grades 6-7 school by 1983, date from 1952 under Superintendent G. Paul Carr.

People: G. Paul Carr

The district health department starts bedside nursing in southern Orange County

When the book was written, the health department's latest service was a small bedside nursing program for southern Orange County, carried on jointly with the University Hospital and its outpatient department. For 1952-53 the county appropriated $14,000 to the department.

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

The last three schools for Black children near Efland are consolidated at Efland-Cheeks

In the 1952-53 school year the three remaining small schools for Black children in the Efland area were merged into Efland-Cheeks School, completing the consolidation of the county's Black schools begun the year before.

Subject: Efland schools

UNC names Cobb Dormitory for Collier Cobb

The university named its new Cobb Dormitory in honor of the geologist Collier Cobb, who had taught at UNC for forty years.

UNC trustees set aside Mason Farm land for a botanical garden

The university's Board of Trustees allocated about 72 acres of its Mason Farm property for the North Carolina Botanical Garden, officially establishing it. Botanist H. R. Totten's efforts helped procure the site.

Subject: North Carolina Botanical Garden

UNC's new dental school building opens with separate facilities for Black and white patients

The School of Dentistry's new building opened with what a university memo called separate, complete facilities for white and Black patients. Publicity photographs showed separate waiting rooms for each race.

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church consecrates its Chapel Hill church

Holy Trinity Lutheran's new church in Chapel Hill, built in 1951 with 300 seats, was consecrated on January 6, 1952.

Subject: Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

Episcopalians organize the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill

A second Episcopal congregation in Chapel Hill was organized with Maurice Arthur Kidder as its first pastor. Ground was broken for its building in June 1953.

People: W. Robert (William Robert) Mann

University trustees give Albert Coates the O. Max Gardner Award

By unanimous vote the trustees named Coates the faculty member of the Consolidated University who had done most that year for the welfare of humanity, under the award created by the late governor's will. Coates accepted it for the Institute, and it carried $10,000.

People: O. Max Gardner · W. Kerr Scott · J. Spencer Love

The county board sells off its remaining small schoolhouses

In March 1952 the board sold the last small school buildings, among them the Fairfield school for Black children, Sartin, Poplar Grove, Morris Grove and Hickory Grove, for prices from $300 to $2,010. Around the same time Carr School went to Jim Wade for $800.

Howard Mumford Jones gives the address at the dedication of the university library addition

Howard Mumford Jones, a former member of the university's English faculty then at Harvard, gave the principal address, on the library in higher education, at the dedication of the $1.6 million addition to the university library, held in Memorial Hall.

People: Robert B (Robert Bingham) Downs · Charles E. Rush

Subject: UNC Libraries · Memorial Hall

Hillsborough Baptist Church ordains J. G. Goodwin Jr.

J. G. Goodwin Jr. was ordained in the Hillsborough church and later went as a missionary to Korea.

Eben Merritt stops highway crews with an injunction over land taken for the new bypass

Filling station owner Eben G. Merritt got an injunction that briefly halted State Highway Commission work near Morgan Creek, arguing that the new bypass and the rerouted Pittsboro road would cut through his pasture, isolate his new house and pull his station off the main highway for far less than they were worth. A court-appointed commission set his damages at $6,000 in March 1953, and he appealed.

Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill

Fetzer retires as director of athletics and becomes executive director of the Morehead Foundation

The trustees' executive committee approved Robert A. Fetzer's retirement as the University's director of athletics, and he took up the post of executive director of the Morehead Foundation, which he held until his death.

People: Oliver K. Cornwell

Tim Flock wins the 100-mile Grand National at Occoneechee

Tim Flock, driving a 1951 Hudson Hornet, took the lead on the 45th lap and won the 100-mile NASCAR Grand National race at Occoneechee Speedway before 5,000 spectators, with his brother Fonty second.

People: Fonty Flock

Subject: Occoneechee Speedway

County welfare spending reaches $190,973 a year

In the year ending June 30, 1952 the welfare department spent $190,973.26, about three-quarters of it state and federal money. Old age assistance for about 290 people and aid to about 125 families with dependent children were the largest items.

Assistant track coach Joe Hilton designs and builds his own house on Oakwood Drive

Joe Hilton, UNC's assistant track coach, cleared the lot by axe, drew the plans with his wife, and with their son and Victory Village neighbors built a $22,000 ranch house, starting in June 1952. Carrboro contractor Herman Lloyd advised him; the family hoped to move in by September 1953.

Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee graduate from UNC's law school

A year after they entered as the first Black students at UNC's law school, Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee received their law degrees. UNC also lists James Robert Walker among the 1952 graduates.

People: J. Kenneth Lee

Subject: UNC School of Law

UNC Press publishes Mangum's study of tenant farmer law

The University of North Carolina Press published The Legal Status of the Tenant Farmer in the Southeast by Charles S. Mangum Jr. of Chapel Hill, a 22-chapter treatise on farm tenancy law that closed with proposed reforms.

Orange Speedway, Inc. takes over the Hillsborough track

Bill France Sr. became president of the new Orange Speedway, Inc., with Ann France as secretary-treasurer and Enoch Staley as vice-president; the other three original partners were no longer with the track. It was known as Orange Speedway from 1954.

Part of Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough · 34 events

People: Enoch Staley

Subject: Occoneechee Speedway

Farmers Home Administration pushes livestock to raise tenant incomes near Cedar Grove

The News of Orange County reported a Farmers Home Administration effort to raise tenant income by adding livestock to tobacco farming. Tenants on the Banks Wilson farm near Cedar Grove added hogs and other animals, and 42 county farm families had FHA operating loans.

Orange County commissioners turn to professional appraisers for a property revaluation

In August 1952 the commissioners heard a representative of the Southern Mapping and Engineering Company and told county accountant and tax supervisor Ira Ward to draft a contract. By January 1953 they had decided with Ward that values would be set at current market value as of January 1, 1953, with a board of assessors overseeing the appraisers.

Dr. L. L. Vine buys the Nathan Veterinary Hospital and renames it

Dr. S. A. Nathan and Dr. L. L. Vine dissolved their partnership, and Vine, who had worked with Nathan for some years, took over the animal hospital on the Durham road as the Vine Veterinary Hospital.

People: S. A. Nathan

The county board votes to borrow for a six-classroom wing at Cedar Grove School

On a motion by board member Kemp S. Cate, the board voted to borrow $30,000 from the state literary fund and add $25,000 from its capital budget to build the north classroom wing cut from the 1951 plans. The county commissioners approved the loan.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Ben Schreiber turns the Harry's Grill building into the Youth Center, a children's clothing store

Ben Schreiber and his wife closed their restaurant, Harry's Grill, and opened the Youth Center, a clothing store for infants and children, in the same building next to the Carolina Theatre.

The county board buys the Cameron Park property in Hillsborough for a new elementary school

The board paid Rebecca Wall $18,000 for the Cameron Park property and named the school to be built there Cameron Park.

Subject: Cameron Park School

Millard Lee Bess joins the Cedar Grove School staff

The county board hired Millard Lee Bess, a Gaston County native, Winston-Salem State graduate and World War II veteran, for Cedar Grove School in September 1952.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The Hong Kong, an American-Chinese restaurant, opens in the former Curve Inn

The Hong Kong, advertised as an American-Chinese restaurant, held its grand opening on the site of the former Curve Inn on the Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard.

About forty groups report on the Rural Progress Program at a county meeting in Hillsborough

In 1952 farm, civic and church groups competed to raise family farm income by $1,000, improve every home and finish a community project. Results and awards were given at a county-wide meeting in Hillsborough on October 30, and the program was repeated in 1953.

Fairview Baptist Church is organized in Hillsborough

Fairview Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough in October 1952 under pastor James Clegg and put up a 250-seat building that year.

People: James J. Freeland

Fonty Flock wins at Occoneechee weeks after his Darlington victory

Fonty Flock, winner of the Southern 500 at Darlington, won the October Grand National race at Occoneechee Speedway weeks after his 500-mile Darlington victory.

Part of Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough · 34 events

Subject: Occoneechee Speedway

UNC School of Medicine admits its first third-year class

A month after the hospital opened, the School of Medicine admitted its first third-year class, beginning clinical training in Chapel Hill. The school had offered only the first two years of medical study since its Raleigh clinical branch closed in 1910.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

UNC cancels two football games after a player and three students get polio

The University of North Carolina called off its football games with Georgia on October 4 and N.C. State on October 11, 1952, because a player and three other students had been stricken with polio.

The Knapp Foundation pledges $500,000 toward a new building for the Institute of Government

University President Gordon Gray secured a commitment from the foundation of the late Joseph Palmer Knapp for a $500,000 grant, to be matched by the same sum from the state, to build the Institute a new home. Coates had wanted the money as an endowment beside a state-built building, but Gray followed the matching plan that Margaret Knapp favored.

People: Gordon Gray · Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

The county school board advertises the White Oak Grove school lot for sale

The Orange County Board of Education gave notice that it would sell at the courthouse on January 10, 1953, a lot on the Cedar Grove-Carr road beside White Oak Grove Church, with its frame, tin-roofed building. The sale followed the opening of the new Cedar Grove school for Black children, which replaced the small rural schools.

Subject: White Oak Grove School

Collier Cobb Jr. leaves the Orange County Board of Commissioners after fourteen years

Elected in 1938 and chairman since December 1942, Cobb left the county board after seven terms, having missed only three meetings. The new board passed a resolution thanking him, and he pointed to the school improvement program and the start of the new courthouse.

Stephen J. Edwards's Midway Barber Shop is open on West Rosemary Street

Edwards's Midway Barber Shop was advertising on West Rosemary Street, at the Chapel Hill and Carrboro line, by late 1952. His son Stepney Edwards later ran the Black-owned shop.

Part of Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro · 55 events

Architect Edward Waugh designs a house for Dr. C. G. Thomas on Morgan Creek Road

Edward (Terry) Waugh of the State College School of Design drew several of the first Morgan Creek Hills houses for doctors who came to teach at the enlarged medical school. His 1953 house at 408 Morgan Creek Road, for surgery professor C. G. (Tim) Thomas and his wife, is a small side-gabled house of long red Norman brick and redwood that steps down its slope.

Bruce Strowd sells his car business to Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard

After thirty years at 100 West Franklin Street, Strowd sold the dealership in 1953. The new owners kept it in the same building for two more years.

People: Bruce Strowd

Carroll Hall is built and named for Dudley D. Carroll

The university completed the main building of its business school in 1953 and named it Carroll Hall for the School of Commerce's first dean. It became home to the journalism school in 1999.

Cedar Grove School's six-classroom north wing is finished

The north wing Archie Royal Davis had drawn in 1951 was finished late in 1953 and closely matches the original classroom wing. With the new rooms the multipurpose room became the gymnasium and auditorium. Davis and board members Harry Breeze and C. W. Stanford inspected the wing in January 1954.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Community Church of Chapel Hill forms

An interracial congregation organized with Charles M. Jones as minister.

People: Charles M. Jones · Joe Straley

Subject: Community Church of Chapel Hill

Fletcher M. Green chairs the UNC history department

Green, a Kenan Professor since 1946, chaired the University of North Carolina's Department of History from 1953 to 1960. He retired in 1968.

Hillsborough Heights is laid out, with a street named for James J. Freeland

The African American neighborhood on Terrell, Central, Forrest, Coley and Freeland streets, below US 70 on the west side of North Nash Street, was laid out in the 1950s. Its Freeland Street was named for the builder, who probably put up houses there.

People: James J. Freeland

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church adds Strudwick Hall, a fellowship hall named for Shepperd Strudwick

In C. H. Reckard's pastorate the church built a fellowship hall to his drawings and named it for Shepperd Strudwick, elder, Sunday school superintendent and clerk of session.

People: C. H. Reckard

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Hugh Lefler and Paul Wager edit a bicentennial history of Orange County

For the county's 200th anniversary, Lefler and Wager edited Orange County, 1752-1952, with chapters by about fifteen contributors on early history, agriculture, industry, schools and more, plus a dictionary of county biography and lists of county officials.

Kay Kyser helps raise the money to put WUNC-TV on the air

Kay Kyser toured the state with William C. Friday and Billy Carmichael Jr. to raise money for UNC's educational television station, which went on the air from Chapel Hill in January 1955.

People: William C. Friday · William D. Carmichael Jr.

Subject: WUNC radio and television

Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church builds a parsonage on West Corbin Street

Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church builds a brick parsonage at 211 West Corbin Street in 1953, under its pastor the Rev. J. R. Bridges. The church still owns the house.

Rebecca Clark moves from the University Laundry to nursing at Memorial Hospital

In 1953 Clark left the University Laundry for the newly built university hospital, where she spent the rest of her working years as a nurse. UNC's Employee Forum says she was the first licensed practical nurse in the campus infirmary and retired in 1979.

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

Robert F. Schenkkan becomes director of the university's educational television venture

After the FCC granted the Consolidated University of North Carolina an educational television license, Schenkkan became director of the new venture, which went on the air as WUNC-TV from the Communication Center in Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.

Subject: WUNC radio and television

The Bellevue mill employs 355 workers on two shifts

In 1953 the mill had 355 workers on two shifts, and the company still owned its mill village, whose houses now had indoor plumbing.

Subject: Bellevue Mill

The Hospital Savings Association moves from East Franklin into a large new building on West Franklin

The association left its two-bay store on East Franklin for big new quarters on West Franklin. By the late 1960s it had become Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

The Rock Baptist Church building on West Franklin Street is torn down

The Black Baptist congregation's church on West Franklin, in use since 1908, was demolished late in 1953 once its new church on North Roberson Street was finished.

The Webb brothers build a small two-level house for Ruth Price in Westwood

University instructor Ruth Price, on a tight budget, hired James and John Webb in 1953 to build her house at 4 Briar Bridge Lane, a steep corner lot in the older Westwood subdivision. The book ranks it among the smallest and best of the Webb houses; its main floor centers on a skylit living room with a built-in study nook.

People: John B. Webb · James M. Webb

The university gives J. Spencer Love an honorary doctor of laws

J. Spencer Love was among the five people the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gave honorary degrees in 1953, a year whose list also included the poet Robert Frost.

People: Robert Frost

UNC dedicates the Forest Theatre to Frederick Koch

In 1953 the university dedicated the stone amphitheatre in Battle Park to Koch, who had developed the site of the 1916 Shakespeare tercentenary dramas into a permanent theatre after he joined the faculty. The stone stage and seating had been rebuilt with Works Progress Administration funds in 1940.

Subject: Forest Theatre

William C. Coker dies and leaves his land north of town to Coker College

At his death in 1953, botanist and real estate developer William Chambers Coker left a large tract along Estes Drive, including the land around Eastwood Lake, to Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina. The college later had the land developed, producing Coker Hills and Lake Forest.

Covenant Presbyterian Church is organized in Chapel Hill

A second Presbyterian congregation, Covenant, was organized in Chapel Hill. It had 33 members and no building in 1953.

People: C. Hugh Holman

The county board gives up the High Rock School land

The county board waived its rights to the two acres of the abandoned High Rock School near Efland in favor of the landowner, John A. Thompson. High Rock had been merged into the Efland-Cheeks school in 1952.

Fire damages the Hillsboro Lunch on West King Street

A Sunday night fire, blamed on spontaneous combustion, broke a front plate glass window and damaged the partition between the kitchen and the lunch room. Owner Bill Chance said he was fully insured and would reopen once repairs were made.

Subject: Hillsboro Lunch

Matthew Strum takes over Dud's Tavern

Dud's Tavern advertised that it was under the new ownership and management of Matthew Strum, offering home-cooked food along with gas, oil and auto service.

Subject: Dud’s Tavern

North Carolina Memorial Hospital is dedicated

Exercises at Chapel Hill on April 23-24, 1953, dedicated North Carolina Memorial Hospital and marked the new four-year School of Medicine and the schools of dentistry and nursing. The hospital had opened in September 1952.

People: W. Reece Berryhill

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital) · UNC School of Medicine

The legislature drops Collier Cobb Jr. from the university trustees

After eight years on the board, Cobb, chairman of the trustees' buildings committee for the Chapel Hill campus during the largest building program in its history, was left off the nominating list by the legislature's joint committee on trustees. He said he held no ill will.

Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen

Robinson led the five candidates with 571 votes and Wager followed with 560; Kenneth Putnam took the third seat. The Weekly noted Robinson was the second Black person elected to public office in Chapel Hill, the first since Reconstruction, and it was Wager's first run for office.

People: Hubert Robinson · Wilson Swain Caldwell

The News of Orange prints the first picture of the Cedar Grove Negro School

A front-page photograph presented the new school as a major piece of the county's three-year building program. The story listed seven classrooms, a library, an office, a heating plant, two toilets and a multipurpose room used from the start as four classrooms.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Edmund Strudwick's portrait of C. T. Council is given to the School of Pharmacy

University President Gordon Gray presented a portrait of Durham's C. T. Council, painted by Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough, to the UNC School of Pharmacy, where Dean E. A. Brecht accepted it at a luncheon in the Morehead building.

People: Gordon Gray · E. A. (Edward Armond) Brecht

Subject: UNC School of Pharmacy · Morehead Planetarium

Gardner Hall, named for O. Max Gardner, opens with the new business school buildings

Gardner Hall, named for former governor O. Max Gardner, was one of three new School of Business Administration buildings set between the Library and South Building, with Carroll and Hanes halls. The University Placement Service moved into it, and the formal dedication of the three buildings was set for May 25, 1953.

Vermont Royster wins the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing

Vermont C. Royster, a UNC graduate, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his regular editorials in The Wall Street Journal.

The Church of the Holy Family breaks ground in Chapel Hill

The Episcopal Church of the Holy Family, organized in Chapel Hill the year before, broke ground for a building to seat 150.

Five Forks Baptist Church is organized in a converted pack barn

Prayer meetings begun in 1951 by Gattis Brown of Glen Hope Baptist Church in Burlington moved in 1952 to an old pack barn at the Five Forks crossroads, and the church was organized there on July 2, 1953 with 27 members. Brown was pastor until 1964.

Subject: Five Forks Baptist Church

Rock Hill Baptist, renamed First Baptist, holds its first services on North Roberson Street

The Black Baptist congregation organized in 1865 had worshipped for decades as Rock Hill Baptist Church on the south side of West Franklin Street. Under its pastor, the Rev. J. R. Manley, it raised $10,001 in the first months of 1952 and began a colonial-style brick church on North Roberson Street between Franklin and Rosemary streets. The first services in the $100,000 building were held on Sunday, September 27, 1953, opening three weeks of dedication services; with the move the congregation took the name First Baptist Church. By early 1954 the old Franklin Street lot stood vacant.

Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill

Milton Julian wins the right to build his modernist house on Ledge Lane

When W. C. Coker's chosen architect, Walter D. Toy, refused to approve the plans for clothier Milton Julian's house on Ledge Lane, designed by George Matsumoto of the State College School of Design, Milton and Virginia Julian sued on September 30, 1953; Coker's executors, his widow and neighbors Cornelius and Beulah Cathey opposed them. The North Carolina Supreme Court held on June 4, 1954 that the approval clause was personal to Coker and ended at his death in June 1953, and the International Style house was finished by November 1956.

People: George Matsumoto

Masons lay the cornerstone of the new Orange County courthouse at the county bicentennial

On the opening day of the county's bicentennial week, Grand Master Edwin T. Howard and Eagle Lodge No. 19 laid the cornerstone in the half-finished courthouse. Chief Justice William A. Devin gave the address.

Subject: Eagle Lodge

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough celebrates its centennial

The congregation marked its hundredth year in November 1953 under Charles E. Maddry, with its new educational building finished for the occasion.

People: Charles Edward Maddry

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough completes its educational building

First Baptist Church finished a brick educational building at the rear of its sanctuary at West King and South Wake streets, about a year after work began, in time for the church's centennial in November 1953.

The Planning Board approves Muirhead's street layout around Glen Lennox

The Chapel Hill Planning Board approved new streets on the fringes of Glen Lennox, including Ayr Street, which Muirhead named, extending the colony's central road across the highway so children could reach the new Glenwood School more safely.

A Modernist split-level with a butterfly roof is built on Fern Lane for Thomas H. Darden

The post-and-beam house has clerestory windows, vertical wood siding and a flat-roofed carport. Oral tradition credits the design to Jim Webb.

People: James M. Webb

A weatherboarded Cape Cod house is built on the new Fern Lane for Eleanor R. Rowe and Philip P. Green Jr.

The five-bay house has a center chimney and a side wing joined by a hyphen, possibly a converted garage. It was one of the first houses on the newly platted street.

Carrboro adds a fire station to its town hall on Lloyd Street

With a new Ford fire truck delivered in February 1954, Carrboro finished a fire house addition to the Town Hall on Lloyd Street. In April the firemen posed in front of the new annex with all four trucks the department had owned.

Carrboro's last general store closes

Cliff Partin bought the Carrboro Cash Store on Lloyd Street in 1945 and ran it with his son Wilbur until competition from newer stores closed it in 1954. The store building, which dated from 1888, was torn down about 1960.

Chapel Hill's aldermen adopt an ordinance setting separate sections for Black burials in the new town cemetery

The ordinance for the new Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery on the Durham road reserved some sections for Black burials and others for other races, as the old cemetery had done. The Rev. Charles Jones of the Community Church called it illiberal in a September sermon, and the citizens' committee had urged the town to rid itself of the new Black cemetery north of town.

First four-year class graduates from the UNC School of Medicine

In 1954 the UNC School of Medicine graduated its first class of students to complete all four years of medical training. The university's new dental and nursing schools graduated their first classes the same year.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

Franc Sidler meets Troy and Robin Andrews on their farm and sketches a house for it

In the summer of 1954 the Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a guest of anthropologists renting a small house on the Andrews farm, met Troy and Robin Andrews there and drew a floor plan for a house they might build later. The sketch grew into the house finished on the farm in 1967.

People: Roberta C. Andrews

Subject: Bolin Brook Farm (Troy and Roberta Andrews House)

George Watts Carr designs a Cape Cod house on Country Club Road for religion professor Bernard Boyd

The large story-and-a-half house for Bernard and Thelma Boyd has shake siding and three gabled dormers. Carr, a lifelong advocate of the Colonial Revival, had designed Laurel Hill houses since the late 1920s.

Iris Lane and Fern Lane are platted, extending Laurel Hill onto the Coker estate

After William C. Coker died in 1953, Laurel Hill spread into adjoining land of his estate. The new plat laid out two streets at the south end of the neighborhood, and most of their houses went up before 1960.

Subject: Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

Louis Graves sells the Chapel Hill Weekly

After 31 years as its editor and owner, Louis Graves sold the Chapel Hill Weekly in 1954 to the Chapel Hill Publishing Company. He stayed on as contributing editor through 1960.

Subject: The Chapel Hill Weekly

Robert Rhinehart sells the Hill Bakery to Thell Jernigan, who renames it Thell's Bakery

Rhinehart, who had bought the East Franklin bakery in 1943 from Mrs. William Brumfield Neal, sold it to Jernigan, and the new owner put his own name on it. Thell's Bakery stayed in business into the mid-1980s.

St. Paul's A.M.E. adds an annex with a meeting hall and kitchen

The annex was built at the northwest corner of the church.

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

Tenant farming drops sharply in Orange County

Tenant-operated farms in Orange County fell from 513 of 1,939 farms in 1954 to 295 of 1,405 in 1959, and croppers fell from 261 to 135. In 1959, 500 of the county's farms were classed as tobacco farms.

The Belk-Leggett-Horton department store opens on West Franklin Street

The department store opened next to the Masonic Hall. A few years later the hall was razed for its parking lot, and the store had closed by the early 1980s, when Southern Bell moved into its space.

The Pinetum at Rocky Ridge Farm is deeded to the university's botanical garden

A protected stand of Coker's remaining forest along Meeting of the Waters Creek on the west edge of the development, known as the Pinetum, was deeded in 1954 to the UNC botanical garden for its care.

Subject: North Carolina Botanical Garden · Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

The University tears down the Crystal Palace on East Franklin Street for planetarium parking

The University had bought the old building known as the Crystal Palace in 1945. In 1954 it razed it and turned the lot into parking for Morehead Planetarium, with a large sundial in a rose garden at the center.

The name Cedar Grove Negro School gives way to Cedar Grove School

The county board and local papers had called the school the Cedar Grove Negro School from the 1946 land purchase on. After 1954 they used Cedar Grove School or Cedar Grove Elementary School.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The university awards William Picard Jacocks an honorary doctor of laws

The University of North Carolina, where Jacocks had graduated in 1904, gave him an honorary doctor of laws degree while he was living in Chapel Hill in retirement.

William Sterling Roulhac dies and leaves the Ruffin house to his wife Charlotte

William Sterling Roulhac died and left the property to his wife, Charlotte Trant Roulhac, who owned it when the town of Hillsborough began negotiating to buy it for government offices.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Rev. Joe B. Brooks, founding pastor of Jones Grove, dies

Joe Bethel Brooks, a farmer who helped found Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church in 1926, led it as pastor until his death.

People: Joe Bethel Brooks

Subject: Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

Chapel Hill American Legion post gives an iron lung to N.C. Memorial Hospital

The Chapel Hill post of the American Legion presented an iron lung, bought for about $1,600, to North Carolina Memorial Hospital, with Congressman Carl T. Durham making the presentation. Hospital director Robert R. Cadmus said the hospital had treated 90 polio patients, two from Orange County, in its first 18 months; it was the hospital's second iron lung.

Part of North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the medical center, from 1952 · 24 events

People: Carl T. Durham

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

Sophie Livas is installed as Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star chapter in Chapel Hill

Sophie Livas was installed as Worthy Matron of University Chapter 264, Order of the Eastern Star, succeeding Elizabeth Montgomery.

The county school board decides to carry on as before after the Brown decision

Two days after Brown v. Board of Education, the Orange County Board of Education put on record that since the Court had not said when or how segregation would end, it would go on hiring teachers, preparing the budget and running the schools as in the past. Like other North Carolina boards, it took no step to comply.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro churches name a committee to help schools desegregate peacefully

Two weeks after the Brown decision, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Ministerial Association set up a steering committee to study how the churches could help bring a peaceful transition to non-segregated schools. Its members were the Rev. Charles Jones, Mrs. Harold Walters, George Esser Jr., the Rev. T. P. Duhart and Mrs. J. Snipes.

Part of School desegregation in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1959–1967 · 24 events

People: Charles M. Jones

The Pride of Orange Elks lodge clears ground for its hall on South Merritt Mill Road

The Black Elks lodge, Pride of Orange No. 276, cleared the lot and planned to start its $15,000 two-story hall in June, with members doing most of the work. The lodge hall was to be upstairs and the youth group's rooms below; until then the thirty-member lodge rented rooms over the West Franklin Street Grocery.

Albert Coates and James C. N. Paul prepare the Institute's report on the Brown decision for Governor Umstead

At Governor William B. Umstead's request, Coates wrote a history of the state's separate schools and Paul, who had clerked for Chief Justice Fred Vinson, examined the ruling and the plans for getting around it, concluding that segregated schools could not be kept. When Umstead named Thomas J. Pearsall's advisory committee on August 11, 1954, the report was the first paper its members received, and Coates then ran a shortened version in Popular Government.

People: Thomas J. (Thomas Jenkins) Pearsall · William B. Umstead

Subject: Institute of Government

Dr. Robert Murphy and his wife move into the Peter Taylor house on King Street

Dr. and Mrs. Robert Murphy moved from Chapel Hill into the Peter Taylor house on King Street in Hillsborough, and Mrs. M. B. Roberts gave a tea to welcome them. The Murphys went on to restore the house, later known as Seven Hearths.

Subject: Seven Hearths (William Reed’s Ordinary)

The Marathon Restaurant leaves its East Franklin Street building

The Marathon, a sandwich shop and restaurant in the building later numbered 115 East Franklin Street since the 1930s, gave up the building in the week before June 4, 1954. The College Cafe's owners had bought it from the J. T. Durham estate.

Subject: College Cafe

Charles E. Rush retires as the university's director of libraries

Rush retired as librarian on July 1, 1954, after thirteen years. Andrew H. Horn, associate librarian at the University of California at Los Angeles, was chosen to succeed him as director of libraries.

People: Andrew H. (Andrew Harlis) Horn · Gordon Gray · R. B. House

A windstorm damages the Frozen Kustard drive-in across from Brady's on the Durham road

An evening thunderstorm with winds put at 80 miles an hour struck the Durham road east of Chapel Hill. It tore two signs off the Frozen Kustard drive-in, damaged its roof and knocked down its phone booth; the wind blew Brady McLennan back through his restaurant door.

Dud's Tavern reopens after a July fire

Mr. and Mrs. Dud Walters thanked the Hillsborough and Mebane fire departments for helping save Dud's Tavern from a July fire and announced that business would resume on Sunday, August 1.

Subject: Dud’s Tavern

The College Cafe moves across Franklin Street into the former Marathon building

Max Yarbrough and Jesse West moved their College Cafe from the Robbins building across Franklin Street into the former Marathon Restaurant, which they had bought and rebuilt. It reopened next door to Rose's store with new equipment and seats for 40.

Subject: College Cafe

The University tears down Archer House to make room for the Ackland Art Museum

Demolition of the 47-year-old Archer House on South Columbia Street began in August 1954 and was still under way in late September. Its lot and the Roberson lot next door became the site of the Ackland museum.

Subject: Archer House

Two forgotten graves in a Noble Street backyard come to light

A neighbor noticed two weathered, unlettered tombstones under oak trees in the backyard of 108 Noble Street, and the News Leader could not learn whose graves they were. Alice Noble recalled the land as the old Castlebury place and a log cabin that once stood nearby.

People: Alice Noble

Rev. George W. Davis of Durham becomes pastor of Jones Grove

Rev. George W. Davis took charge of the Jones Grove congregation after Joe Brooks's death and served for twenty years, a period that saw the frame church replaced.

Subject: Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

Harold H. Webb becomes principal of Cedar Grove School

Harold Hudson Webb, a Greensboro-born veteran of the Tuskegee Airmen with two degrees from North Carolina A&T who had taught at Central High, was hired as Cedar Grove's principal. He led the school until 1962, when he joined the state education department; in 1977 he became North Carolina's first Black state personnel director.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Harry Macklin comes back to Chapel Hill to reopen Harry's Grill in the old Campus Cafe

Harry Macklin, who had run Harry's Grill until 1944, bought the Campus Cafe two doors from the post office and reopened it as a new Harry's Grill and delicatessen. The town board granted him a beer and wine permit.

Hillsboro leases the Exchange Club twelve acres for a community park

The town board gave the Hillsboro Exchange Club a fifteen-year lease at $1 a year on a twelve-acre tract bought for cemetery use, north of the town cemetery on Highway 70, so the club could develop a community park.

Orange County formally opens its new courthouse in Hillsborough

About 500 people came to the opening ceremonies and open house, held on the first day of the first court term in the new building. County offices had finished moving in from the old courthouse the week before.

Bayard Wootten sells her Chapel Hill studio and returns to New Bern

Bayard Wootten sold the Wootten-Moulton Studio to her longtime manager T. C. Moore, who kept it running, and left Chapel Hill for her old home town of New Bern.

Howard W. Odum dies in Chapel Hill

Odum died in Chapel Hill on November 8, 1954, while still at work on several books, after 34 years on the UNC faculty.

Chapel Hill aldermen elect Oliver K. Cornwell mayor

After Mayor Edwin S. Lanier won the Democratic nomination for county commissioner, the Board of Aldermen chose one of its own members, Oliver K. Cornwell, as mayor and elected Rogers Wade to his seat.

The county school superintendent's office moves into the old courthouse

Superintendent G. P. Carr and his staff finished moving into the first floor of the 1845 courthouse, which had been renovated after the other county offices left for the new building in October.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Community Church starts an integrated preschool

The congregation’s preschool admitted children across racial lines.

Subject: Community Church of Chapel Hill

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.

Subject: UNC School of Public Health

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.

Subject: The Daily Tar Heel

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.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

Subject: Carr Mill

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.

Subject: Bellevue Mill

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.

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.

People: O. David Garvin

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.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

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.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

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.

Part of Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough · 34 events

People: Bill France Sr.

Subject: Occoneechee Speedway

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.

Part of Public health in rural Orange County · 26 events

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.

People: Collier Cobb Jr.

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.

Part of School desegregation in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1959–1967 · 24 events

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

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.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · The Chapel Hill News

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.

Subject: UNC School of Law

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.

Subject: Cameron Park School · Hillsborough High 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.

Subject: Faucett Mill (Chatwood)

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.

Part of Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough · 34 events

Subject: Occoneechee Speedway

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.

People: Don Stewart · James M. Webb

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.

People: Don Stewart

Eno Mill houses are relocated

Most company houses moved into nearby neighborhoods.

Subject: Eno Mill

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

Subject: Woollen Gymnasium

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.

People: George Matsumoto

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.

Subject: Morehead Planetarium

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.