Chronology

George Trice advertises his oyster restaurant and shoe shop opposite the Chapel Hill Hotel

George Trice's advertisement in The Tar Heel offered fresh oysters three times a week, fries, stews, steaks and eggs, board at $10 a month, and neat shoe repairing at low cost, all at his place opposite the Chapel Hill Hotel.

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

UNC sets up a chair of pharmacy under Edward V. Howell

In March 1897 the trustees set up a chair of pharmacy and elected Edward Vernon Howell, beginning the department that became the School of Pharmacy. An earlier College of Pharmacy under Dr. T. W. Harris, begun in 1880, had been short-lived. In 1953 the school's dean was E. A. Brecht.

Subject: UNC School of Pharmacy

The Order of Gimghouls builds its first lodge on Rosemary Lane

The Gimghouls, a junior-class order at the university, were building their own lodge in the spring of 1898 on a lot at Rosemary Lane and Boundary Street. By late 1899 the order was holding dances in the new lodge.

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

Gooch's Café opens in Chapel Hill with seven seats

Gooch's Café began feeding university students in Chapel Hill about 1903, with seven seats by its own later account. It stayed a student gathering place for more than fifty years.

Subject: Gooch’s Café

The university football team's training table is set up at George Trice's restaurant

The athletic association's advisory committee decided to set up a training table for as many as eighteen football players at George Trice's restaurant, under Dr. R. B. Lawson. Each player paid eleven dollars a month, about what the players had been paying for board, and the team manager paid the other seven.

The university opens Davie Hall for botany and zoology

Ordered by the trustees in June 1907 and begun late that year, the university's new building for botany and zoology, named William R. Davie Hall, was finished for the fall 1908 session. It was renovated and expanded in 1967.

Subject: Davie Hall

Faculty members organize the Chapel Hill Country Club

About forty-five people, mostly university faculty, organized a country club and rented a house and several acres at the edge of Chapel Hill, laying out golf links and tennis courts. Joseph Hyde Pratt chaired its board of governors.

People: Joseph Hyde Pratt · Archibald Henderson · Charles H. Herty

The Pickwick, a moving-picture theatre, opens on Franklin Street next to Brockwell's building

The Pickwick, a theatre for moving pictures and musical acts, opened to the public in late November 1909 in a new building on Franklin Street, the first door east of Brockwell's building. Students filled it from the first week.

Subject: Pickwick Theatre

The Tar Heel reports the monument's unveiling put off from the 1911 commencement for want of funds

The paper reported that the UDC chapters had been unable to fulfill their pledges toward the $7,500, so the monument could not be unveiled at the June 1911 commencement, the fiftieth anniversary of the war's beginning, and would certainly be unveiled in 1912. It was in fact dedicated in June 1913.

Part of Silent Sam · 20 events

People: John A. Wilson

Subject: The Daily Tar Heel · Silent Sam (UNC Confederate monument)

Kappa Sigma breaks ground for a new fraternity hall on Fraternity Row

The Tar Heel reported in mid-October 1912 that ground had been broken for a new Kappa Sigma hall between the Zeta Psi and Pi Kappa Alpha houses. The building, later called the Evergreen House, is the only one of the original Fraternity Row houses still standing.

The University Gymnasium Association votes to give Old Commons Hall to the university

Stockholders of the association that had owned the old ballroom, gymnasium and dining hall since 1885 voted at a meeting in Dr. R. H. Lewis's office to deed the building to the university. It was then used for class basketball games and, in 1917, for military drill.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Francis Preston Venable

The Tar Heel Theatre opens on Franklin Street beside Strowd's garage

A new movie house run by Lindsey and Strowd opened in one of the new buildings on Franklin Street, with a balcony and modern fittings. S. J. Brockwell's new Pickwick went up in the same row.

People: Samuel Jackson Brockwell

The Carolina battalion begins digging practice trenches east of the campus

Under Capt. Allen, the student battalion began a system of front-line, support and communication trenches, dugouts and barbed wire on a field behind Judge Brockwell's place, to train for the war in France. By late November the Tar Heel reported the works nearly complete.

Old Commons Hall is taken down

The 1885 building that had served the university as ballroom, gymnasium, dining hall and basketball court was still in use in March 1918 but was gone by January 1919, when the Tar Heel wrote that 'Old Commons is no more'.

750 University students are inducted into the Students' Army Training Corps

At noon on October 1, 1918, about 750 University students took the oath at the campus flag pole from Lt. Col. Stevens, the commandant, and became members of the Students' Army Training Corps, at the same moment as students at about 500 colleges across the country. President Edward Kidder Graham gave the address, and the corps was reviewed from the steps of the Alumni Building.

Part of Orange County in the First World War, 1917–1919 · 84 events

People: Edward Kidder Graham

The Tar Heel counts some 300 student cases and three deaths as the three-week campus quarantine eases

Confined to the campus for three weeks, the Student Army Training Corps men had their first leave on Saturday, October 19, under orders not to leave town. The paper counted about 300 cases among the students, three deaths and 35 still in the college infirmary, credited the second-year medical students with keeping the toll low, and noted that both of the university's physicians, Dr. Mangum and Dr. MacNider, had fallen ill.

People: William de Berniere MacNider · Charles Staples Mangum

Subject: The Daily Tar Heel

President Edward Kidder Graham dies of influenza and pneumonia at his home in Chapel Hill

Graham, 42, president since 1914 and regional director of the Student Army Training Corps for the South Atlantic states, died on Saturday night after five days' illness. The SATC battalion escorted the funeral, conducted at the grave by W. D. Moss of the Presbyterian church; Josephus Daniels and Newton D. Baker sent tributes.

People: Edward Kidder Graham · William Dygnum Moss

Members of the Woman's Association make 120 gauze masks for the campus Hospital Corps

Meeting in small groups during the epidemic, women of the university's Woman's Association sewed 120 gauze masks and sent them to the infirmary for the Hospital Corps. The county's 1919 war record, summing up the association's work that fall, counts 150 influenza masks.

Fire destroys three fraternity houses on Fraternity Row and nearly takes the Carnegie Library

Fire broke out about 2 a.m. and destroyed the Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Pi Kappa Phi and Sigma Nu houses at the lower end of Fraternity Row, a private lane behind the Carnegie Library. The library, about thirty feet from the Sigma Nu house, lost only some window panes and had water damage. The university then bought land across South Columbia Street and swapped it with the fraternities for their old lots, which led to the fraternity courts of the 1920s.

Subject: UNC Libraries · Hill Hall

Fire destroys Gooch's Café and a row of frame stores in Chapel Hill

An early-morning fire, thought to have started in Gooch's Café, burned five frame buildings in the business district, among them Pendergraft's grocery, Peace's barber shop and Foister's book store. Summer school students carried out the bookstore's stock, and the loss was put at $35,000.

Subject: Gooch’s Café

The University builds ten faculty houses

In the summer of 1920 the Tar Heel reported ten new faculty houses under construction, with more promised. These were most likely the Park Place houses, of which one survives at 620 Park Place Lane.

Chapel Hill's new federal post office opens on Franklin Street

Postmaster R. S. MacRae moved into the new government post office across Franklin Street from the Battle dormitory before the building was quite finished, leaving the crowded one-room office. Haymes Brothers had begun the one-story building with columns in April 1918 under a contract signed the December before.

Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza

Fire destroys the Chapel Hill Country Club clubhouse

The club's one-story clubhouse, partly of log, burned to the ground on a Saturday afternoon after a leaking oil stove soaked the floor. The faculty used the Gimghoul lodge as a clubhouse for a time, and that fall the club moved into the Gorgon's Head lodge.

Fire destroys the main building of the old University Inn

Fire on November 30, 1921 destroyed the main building of the old University Inn, the former Eagle Hotel, and left 42 student roomers without quarters; students on the roof with a hose saved the annex Nancy Hilliard had built for President Polk's 1847 visit. The annex stood until it was razed in January 1924 to clear the site for Graham Memorial.

People: Nancy Hilliard

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Retired judge Robert W. Winston reenters the university as a freshman

Robert W. Winston, class of 1879 and a former Superior Court judge, came back to UNC as a freshman in the 1922-23 session. At the year's end he addressed the freshman class in chapel, saying he had taken the freshman intelligence test the day before at sixty-three and would return as a sophomore.

Robert L. Strowd's two-story brick Strowd Building goes up on East Franklin Street

The Strowd Building was new and already taking tenants in January 1923, when a law fraternity moved in; by March a print shop was planned for its basement. The University Cafeteria had announced in June 1922 that it would open that fall in a larger new building.

People: Robert L. Strowd

Jody and Mattie Sparrow open a concrete swimming pool below their house

The Sparrows built the pool, a novelty for the area, across the stream from their hilltop house on Old Pittsboro Road, with parking above and bath houses and refreshment stands nearby; it had its first swim in late May 1922 as the Maple Spring pool. Sparrow's Pool charged admission and drew swimmers from Burlington to Raleigh, and Mrs. Sparrow kept it running until about 1959.

Fire destroys the Pickwick Theatre on Franklin Street

An early-morning fire burned the Pickwick movie theatre and the O'Kelly pressing club next door, and sparks threatened the fraternity houses nearby. Until it was rebuilt, films were shown in Gerrard Hall.

People: W. S. Roberson · Samuel Jackson Brockwell

Subject: Pickwick Theatre

The Orange Printshop moves into a new brick building off Rosemary Street

The Orange Printshop, which printed Louis Graves's Chapel Hill Weekly, moved into a new brick building made for it on the lot behind Patterson Brothers drug store. It added new presses and machinery with the move.

People: Louis Graves

Subject: The Orange Printshop

The Carolina Playmakers prepare Robert W. Winston's play The Honor of Bonava

The Tar Heel reported that the Playmakers' fall bill of three new folk plays would include The Honor of Bonava, a play of the Old South by Judge Robert W. Winston, set in a room of a plantation mansion built by the dramatic production class.

Subject: Carolina Playmakers

Robert W. Winston gives the Confederate Memorial Day address in Chapel Hill

At the annual Confederate Memorial celebration of the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, held at the old Episcopal church, Winston spoke on the characteristics of the Confederate soldier. He praised the South's leaders and told the audience that Lee was never defeated.

Howard Mumford Jones opens the Bull's Head Bookshop in Murphey Hall

English professor Howard Mumford Jones announced the Bull's Head Book Store, a non-profit shop for modern novels and short stories in his office at 214 Murphey Hall. It later moved to the YMCA building, the ground floor of the university library and, in 1968, the Daniels Building.

Subject: UNC Libraries · University YMCA

The Lower Quad dormitories are finished and named

By September 1928 the four three-story red brick men's dormitories of the Lower Quad stood in Battle Woods, soon to be named Aycock, Graham, Everett and Lewis. The quad had gone up from 1924; Everett was not a later addition.

Fire destroys the Pickard Hotel on Franklin Street

A fire that started in the attic destroyed the old Pickard Hotel late on Saturday night, January 7, 1928, at a loss of about $20,000. Firemen thought they had put it out, but were called back to find the whole roof burning. The hotel, built by the Pickards, was then owned and run by Colonel Uzzell.

Subject: Pickard Hotel

The Scuttlebutt, a Navy canteen, opens on the UNC campus

The Scuttlebutt, a canteen built as an extension of the Book Exchange for the Navy and Marine trainees on campus, opened on the morning of January 11, 1944, after months of delay over a sugar contract. Pete Pulley managed it, and at first only trainees with Swain Hall meal tickets could buy there.

Subject: The Scuttlebutt

Nelson Callahan and Morris Timmons open the Village Printshop next to the Porthole

The Village Printshop opened at 7 Fraternity Row, next door to the Porthole, run by Nelson Callahan, who had worked at the Orange Printshop since 1928, and Morris Timmons, operator of the Porthole. It did job printing by letterpress and offset.

The Terrace View supper club opens on the Greensboro road west of Chapel Hill

The Terrace View, a dining and dancing club about five miles out the Greensboro road, was "christened" on Saturday, May 26, 1945 with a private ATO fraternity party held partly on its roof garden. By December it was open to the public every night, for couples only.

Subject: Terrace View supper club