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Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998): A lot-by-lot record of Franklin Street drawn from deeds, directories and recollections.Open the sourceAll sources
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Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
- 1770s
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James Patterson keeps an inn on the road where Chapel Hill will be laid out
Before the university existed, James Patterson's inn stood near the sharp bend in the road west of the later campus, serving travellers on the two roads that met at New Hope Chapel. It was the only inn on the site when the first village lots were sold in 1793.
- 1790s
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William Nunn buys James Patterson's inn and adds a tavern
Captain William Nunn, a Revolutionary War officer and former Orange County sheriff, bought Patterson's inn. He and his wife Betsy enlarged the rooms for lodgers and added a tavern, and the business stayed in the Nunn family for more than half a century.
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John Taylor Sr. opens a tavern on Franklin Street
By 1799 the former steward had put up a tavern on Lot #13, which he had bought in 1796. The lot stayed in the hotel trade for decades: Alsobrook's hotel, the Watts Hotel, the Eagle Hotel and the Union Hotel all stood on it.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
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John McCauley builds a store on Franklin Street
By 1803 John McCauley had a store on the northeast corner of Lot #11, one of the village's first. James Hogg's large house, built on the same part of the lot a year or two later, may have grown out of it.
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James Hogg builds a large house on Franklin Street
James Hogg acquired the eastern half of Lot #11 from William R. Davie when his son Gavin entered the university, and built a ten-room house there. Debts forced him to sell in 1806, though he kept living in it; the house later passed to merchants and became the core of the Central Hotel.
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Betsy Nunn carries on the tavern and inn after her husband's death
When William Nunn died, his widow Betsy kept the tavern lot and went on running the inn. She held it until her death in her nineties, and the frontage maps label it Nunn's Tavern and Inn through 1848.
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The name Franklin Street appears in Chapel Hill documents
The village's main road was being called Franklin Street in written records by 1806, about thirteen years after the first lots along it were sold.
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President Joseph Caldwell marries Helen Hooper and moves to her Franklin Street house
Caldwell married Helen Hogg Hooper and left the President's House on campus for her home on Lot #19, which he appears to have owned already. The house stayed in the family until 1849, when the university bought it as President Swain's residence.
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Thomas H. Taylor builds and runs a shoe store on Franklin Street
Tom Taylor, son of John Taylor Sr., put up a shoe store on the western half of Lot #14, which his father bought in 1812. The building later housed Dr. Walter Norwood's medicine shop.
- 1810s
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William Watson and William Barbee open a lumber yard
William Watson came to Chapel Hill in 1813 to work on South Building and went into the lumber business with William Barbee. Their yard supplied much of the lumber used in village building; its site is not known.
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Christopher Barbee opens a blacksmith shop on Franklin Street
Christopher Barbee, the university's largest land donor, rented the southwest corner of Matthew McCauley's Lot #8 for a smithy with a 33-foot front on the street. He bought the corner in 1824, and William D. Kirksey was advertising as the village blacksmith by 1833.
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James Thompson and George Trice build a store on Franklin Street
Thompson and Trice bought a 20-by-30-foot piece of Matthew McCauley's Lot #8 and put up a store on its narrow street front. Known later as Trice's store, it was held back when McCauley's heir sold the rest of the lot in 1822.
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Thomas H. Taylor buys Lot #17 and builds the Tom Taylor house
Taylor bought Lot #17 from Frances Benton, enlarged the log cabin on it, and later built a much larger house around it, moving in about 1817. The university acquired the house in 1835, and it became President Swain's home and then housing for faculty.
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Edward Robson keeps a store and the post office on Franklin Street
Before selling the property to Thomas H. Taylor in 1816, Edward Robson ran a store on the eastern half of Lot #10 and kept the village post office in it.
- 1820s
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The university rents the empty Grammar School house to hunter Peyton Clements
Two years after closing its preparatory school, the university let the building on the Grand Avenue ground to Peyton Clements, a hunter who supplied game to the college and the village boarding houses.
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David B. Alsobrook buys Taylor's tavern and makes it a hotel
Attorney David B. Alsobrook bought John Taylor Sr.'s tavern and, after improvements, ran it as a hotel with a ballroom that became a favorite in the village.
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Dr. Charles R. Yancey builds a house and farm buildings on Franklin Street
Dr. Yancey bought most of Lot #8 from William McCauley and put up a large house with a barn, carriage house, smokehouse, separate kitchen and quarters for enslaved people. Jesse Hargrave bought the place in 1840; the house burned in 1866.
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Dr. Hudson Cave builds a house on Franklin Street
Dr. Cave bought the eastern half of Lot #6 from his father-in-law William Barbee and built a house set well back from the street. The frontage maps show the Cave residence there through 1868.
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Dr. Walter A. Norwood opens a medicine shop opposite Alsobrook's hotel
Dr. Norwood's medicine shop stood on Thomas H. Taylor's half of Lot #14, probably in Taylor's old store building, which Norwood later bought. From 1841 the shop housed the practice of Drs. Jones and Moore.
- 1830s
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A small nondenominational Union Church goes up on the Grand Avenue ground
After the university sold the old Grammar School property, a small church open to all denominations, called the Union Church or the Village Chapel, was built on the Grand Avenue plot facing Franklin Street.
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Benton Utley buys the Hogg house and opens a dry goods store
Gavin Hogg sold the family house to Benton Utley, who shared it with James Hogg and built a dry goods store beside it. The store failed, and Utley sold house and stock to Zachariah Trice in 1837.
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Isaac J. Collier and Jones Watson open a cabinetmaking business
The two men started making furniture on Franklin Street in 1833. After the partnership dissolved in the later 1830s, Collier kept the business going.
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Pleasant Henderson leaves Chapel Hill for Tennessee
Still deep in debt, the former steward and storekeeper moved west. His son Dr. Alexander Martin Henderson secured the family home on Franklin Street, and the store on the property was advertised that year as Norfleet and Henderson's.
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William D. Kirksey advertises as the village blacksmith
After Christopher Barbee's death, his corner blacksmith shop passed through his son William, and by 1833 William D. Kirksey was advertising as Chapel Hill's blacksmith. Maps show Kirksey's shop on the corner through 1843.
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Dr. Walter A. Norwood closes his medicine shop and moves to Hillsborough
Norwood gave up his Franklin Street shop and left for Hillsborough. Elisha Mitchell owned the land and building by the end of the year and soon sold them on credit to Isaac Partridge for a hotel.
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Former sheriff Thomas D. Watts takes over Alsobrook's hotel
Thomas D. Watts, once sheriff of Orange County, took charge of the hotel on Lot #13, which became known as Watts's hotel. His widow Lucy bought the property in 1839 and ran it until 1846.
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Thomas H. Taylor trades his Franklin Street house to the university
Taylor exchanged Lot #17 and his house for university land in Tennessee and left Chapel Hill. The university gave the Tom Taylor house to its new president, David L. Swain, whose wife disliked the old Caldwell house.
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John H. Rhodes advertises a barber shop beside the hotel
Barber John H. Rhodes advertised that his shop stood next to the hotel on Lot #13. The frontage maps show a Rhodes barber shop beside the hotel from 1838 to 1848.
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Isaac C. Partridge leaves Chapel Hill and his struggling University Hotel
Partridge, whose newspaper The Harbinger had already failed, ran off to New York and left the hotel, still unpaid for, in the hands of Elisha Mitchell.
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Matthew McCauley Jr. sells Elisha Mitchell a lot on West Franklin Street
Professor Elisha Mitchell bought a West Franklin Street lot from Matthew McCauley in 1838 and sold it in 1847 to Patterson H. McDade.
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Lucy Watts buys the hotel on Lot #13
Lucy Watts, widow of Thomas D. Watts, bought the hotel lot and the western half of Lot #15 from Dr. James Webb and kept the house open as the Watts Hotel until 1846.
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Sidney Mulholland Barbee and L. S. Tower buy Zachariah Trice's store
After Trice, like Utley before him, failed as a storekeeper, he sold the store and house to Barbee and Tower. Barbee moved into the house and the partners made the business pay, the start of Barbee's run as one of the street's main merchants.
- 1840s
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Jesse Hargrave opens a general store whose upstairs room serves the Methodists
Jesse Hargrave, in Chapel Hill since 1835, had a general store on Franklin Street by 1840, and bought the Yancey house the same year. In the 1840s (from about 1843) the Methodists, who had first met in Miles Davis's house, used the store's upstairs room, a former Masonic hall that Charles Deems named Bethesda.
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Drs. Johnston Blakeley Jones and George Moore open a medical practice and teach medicine
Dr. Jones moved to Chapel Hill and took over the old medicine shop, and with Dr. George Moore ran a practice that also trained medical students. The maps show the two doctors' office there through 1868.
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John Wesley Carr buys his mother-in-law's Franklin Street house
Carr married Elizabeth, daughter of Martha Bullock, in 1839; the couple moved in with her in 1841, and in 1843 he bought Martha Bullock's house.
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Sidney Mulholland Barbee builds a house and three stores on Franklin Street
After buying out his partner, Barbee used the store's profits to buy land on the north side of the street, where he built a large house, two stores just west of it, and a third near the northeast corner of Franklin and Columbia.
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The Union Church is moved off Franklin Street and becomes a school
When the university sold the Grand Avenue ground to Andrew Mickle and Richard James Ashe and the Presbyterians, the little Union Church was moved away from Franklin Street and later used as the village school.
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Nancy Hilliard buys the Watts Hotel from Lucy Watts
Lucy Watts sold the hotel and the land beside it to Nancy Hilliard, already known as a Chapel Hill hotel keeper. A year later Hilliard enlarged it for President Polk's commencement visit.
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John Wesley Carr builds a home and store at Franklin and Columbia
Carr built his house west of the middle of Lot #7 and a store on its southeast corner at Columbia Street. The store burned partly in the January 1862 fire but stayed in business, and the maps show Carr's general merchandise there through 1868.
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Jones Watson buys Barbee's old store and house for a drugstore
Jones Watson acquired Sidney Barbee's former house and store on the south side of the street, the old James Hogg property, and probably ran his drugstore from the store before remodeling both buildings. By 1858 they had become his Central Hotel.
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Robert Loder and William Watson run a dry goods store near Franklin and Columbia
Loder and his father-in-law kept a dry goods store near the corner, probably in a building of Sidney Barbee's. By 1858 Loder was selling men's clothing there on his own, until fire destroyed the store in 1862.
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Charles Phillips buys the house William Mercer Green built on East Franklin
Professor Charles Phillips bought the house at 513 East Franklin, just east of his father's, from the Rev. William Mercer Green, who had built it a few years earlier and was leaving to become Episcopal bishop of Mississippi. Phillips lived there until his death in 1889.
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The Presbyterian church on Franklin Street is finished and dedicated
Built with money and effort from James and Charles Phillips, Elisha Mitchell and President Swain, the small Presbyterian church on the old Grand Avenue ground was completed and formally dedicated.
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The university buys the old Caldwell house as President Swain's residence
William Hooper sold his stepfather's former house to the university, which renovated it heavily for President David L. Swain. Professor John Thomas Wheat moved into Swain's old quarters in the Tom Taylor house.
- 1850s
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Dr. J. S. Lucas opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson
Lucas opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Henderson and Franklin streets. Richard Benbury Saunders bought it in 1855.
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Nancy Hilliard builds the house students called the Crystal Palace
After selling her hotel, Hilliard built a large two-story house east of it on land she had bought from Lucy Watts. Students nicknamed it the Crystal Palace for its many big windows.
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David McCauley and Thomas A. Long take over Jesse Hargrave's store
After Hargrave's death, his business was sold to the two young clerks he had hired in 1850. McCauley and Long's general store appears on the maps through 1868.
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Walter A. Thompson sells the old Nunn tavern property to Isaac Hudson
Betsy Nunn's grandson, a butcher who had inherited the run-down tavern and inn in 1852, sold it to Isaac Hudson, ending sixty years of Nunn family ownership. Hudson later built a brick house on the land.
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Richard Benbury Saunders buys the Lucas drugstore
Saunders, a UNC graduate of 1854, bought Dr. Lucas's drugstore at Franklin and Henderson and ran it until he moved to Raleigh in 1868.
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E. Hunt opens a photography studio and student boarding house
Hunt took over the building that had been Isaac Partridge's University Hotel and used it for a photographic studio and rooms for students. He had closed both and left Chapel Hill before 1863.
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The Baptists build a schoolhouse, and the lane beside it becomes Church Street
A schoolhouse went up next to the new Baptist church on West Franklin Street, and the dirt road just east of the two buildings took the name Church Street.
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Charles P. Mallett keeps the University Bookstore on Franklin Street
Mallett's University Bookstore was one of four businesses the book first maps in 1858, along with Andrew Mickle's dry goods, John R. Hutchins's clothing store and C. Gottenburg's mattress shop. All may have opened before 1853.
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Jones Watson opens the Central Hotel
Watson remodeled and enlarged the old James Hogg house and the Barbee store beside it into the Central Hotel, which had several shops on the ground. It appears on the maps through 1868.
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The brick McDade House is built on West Franklin Street
The two-story brick I-house at 113 West Franklin Street, with late Greek Revival touches and a long rear ell, was built after Isaac Hudson bought the old Nunn lot in 1854, probably for him about 1858-60, and stood by 1865. The 1992 survey's "about 1850" is a guess from its style. The McDades did not own it until 1894.
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The university opens its first infirmary, the Retreat, with Dr. Mallett in charge
The small building known as the Retreat stood in the southwest corner of the university-owned Tom Taylor property, and the town physician William P. Mallett ran it. It served as the infirmary until 1894.
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Professor William J. Martin buys the Franklin and Boundary corner and builds a house
Martin, who replaced Elisha Mitchell on the faculty and later served as a Confederate colonel, bought the northeast corner of Franklin and Boundary streets from Charles Phillips and built his home there soon after. He resigned his chair in the fall of 1867 and moved to Tennessee.
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Samuel F. Phillips closes his law school and shares the office with Judge Battle
Phillips, who had taught law in his Franklin Street office since 1854, closed the school, went back to practice, and shared the building with Judge William Horn Battle.
- 1860s
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Dr. Armand J. DeRosset of Wilmington buys a West Franklin house as a wartime refuge
DeRosset bought Mary Southerland's house and kept it as his family's refuge from the coast for the rest of the war. He sold it to Caroline Frederica Baudry in 1867.
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Druggist Richard Benbury Saunders makes blue mass for the Confederacy
Saunders enlisted in 1861 but was back at his Franklin Street drugstore by 1862, compounding blue mass, a mercury purgative the Confederate army counted as essential.
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Fire destroys Robert Loder's clothing store
Robert Loder's store near Franklin and Columbia burned on Friday, January 17, 1862, with a large stock of soldiers' clothing, and the fire crossed Columbia Street to John Wesley Carr's store before it was put out.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Fire destroys the Hargrave house on Franklin Street
The large house Dr. Charles Yancey built in 1822, owned by the Hargraves since 1840, burned. Jesse Hargrave's children Molly and Fred stayed on the lot in a much smaller building facing the street.
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Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones sells his West Franklin home to banker William A. Wright
Bankrupt by 1865, Jones left for a new practice in Charlotte in 1868 and sold his house to William A. Wright, president of the Bank of Cape Fear, who wanted it as a refuge.
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Solomon Pool's new faculty move into the old professors' houses
With Swain and the old faculty gone, the professors Pool brought in took over their Franklin Street homes: Fisk P. Brewer the Tom Taylor house, David Settle Patrick Swain's house, and James A. Martling the late James Phillips's house.
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Black families make homes on Lot 16 on East Franklin Street
After E. Hunt closed his boarding house and Dr. Johnston B. Jones left town, Black families moved into both buildings: Tom Moore into the larger two-story house and the Burnett family into the small former medicine shop. Several other Black families settled on what had been Lot 16.
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David McCauley buys the Union Hotel and renames it the Chapel Hill Hotel
McCauley bought the Union Hotel, the house Nancy Hilliard had once kept as the Eagle Hotel, and gave it the name Chapel Hill Hotel. He also bought the building at the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets where Richard Benbury Saunders had kept his drugstore.
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Dr. Abner B. Roberson opens a general store that specializes in drugs
With Saunders gone, the village's new druggist, Dr. Abner Benton Roberson, opened a general store on the south side of Franklin Street that dealt mainly in drugs and medical supplies. It stood on the property of his father-in-law, Haywood Stone.
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Samuel F. Phillips sells his East Franklin Street house to Henry J. Hogan
Samuel Phillips sold his East Franklin Street house and lot to Henry J. Hogan, who moved to Tennessee right away and left the place to his father, William J. Hogan. The sale sent Phillips's mother and his sister Cornelia Phillips Spencer to live in Charles Phillips's house.
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Solomon Pool buys Nancy Hilliard's house, the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale
When the hotel keeper Nancy Hilliard went bankrupt, university president Solomon Pool bought her Franklin Street home, known as the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale for $150. He let Col. Hugh B. Guthrie and his wife Jane, a daughter of Hudson Cave, move in, which Bryant reads as a way of forcing Hilliard out.
- 1870s
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David McCauley buys out his store partner Thomas A. Long
Merchant David McCauley bought out his partner, Thomas A. Long, and kept the Franklin Street general store on his own. Bryant credits the store's success, and McCauley's 1873 marriage to a daughter of Sidney Mulholland Barbee, for the property he was able to buy afterward.
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David McCauley lets Nancy Hilliard live rent free in her old hotel
After losing her house and giving up hotel work at the Exchange Hotel in Raleigh, Nancy Hilliard came back to Chapel Hill destitute by 1872, and the firm of Long and McCauley, which now owned her former Eagle Hotel, let her live rent free in a room there. Former students sent her money until her death in 1873.
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George Trice turns Tom Moore's former house into a restaurant and shoe shop
George Trice made the East Franklin Street house where Tom Moore had lived into a restaurant and ice cream parlor with a shoe shop. He gave up the restaurant after his wife died in 1899, and by 1903 a tailor and a shoe shop were in its place.
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Pine Street is cut through Lot 16 from Franklin Street to Rosemary
A new street, Pine Street, was opened through the old Lot 16, running from Franklin Street to Rosemary Street.
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Seaton Barbee opens a drugstore on Franklin Street
Seaton Barbee, a son of merchant Sidney Mulholland Barbee, opened a drugstore on the south side of Franklin Street across from his father's house, with Tom Dunstan's barbershop on the floor above.
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Algernon S. Barbee opens his own general store
Civil War veteran Algernon S. Barbee left his clerk's job with his brother-in-law David McCauley and opened his own general store. From its location Bryant judges that he took over the store of his father, Sidney Mulholland Barbee, then about seventy.
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Dr. Thomas W. Harris opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson streets
Dr. Thomas W. Harris, the first dean of the university's medical school, opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets. He sold the business to Robert Strange MacRae in 1884.
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John H. Watson buys the Chapel Hill Hotel from David McCauley
John H. Watson, a brother of Jones Watson, bought the Chapel Hill Hotel from McCauley. By 1891 he had taken W. W. Pickard as a partner.
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Joseph A. Harris publishes the Chapel Hill Ledger
Joseph A. Harris began printing the Chapel Hill Ledger in a small wooden shop on the south side of East Franklin Street. He stopped publishing it in 1880.
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John Wesley Carr builds a second store at Franklin and Columbia
Merchant John Wesley Carr put up a second store on his corner lot at Columbia Street on West Franklin. By about 1904 one of the two Carr stores was a meat market and the other a grocery.
- 1880s
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Alphonso J. McDade builds the first brick building in the business district
McDade put up the first brick building in Chapel Hill's business district, on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets. F. P. Booth rented it for a dry goods store in 1883, and Junius D. Webb later kept a grocery there.
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Fire destroys the old Pleasant Henderson house on East Franklin Street
The old Pleasant Henderson house, where the children of Dr. George Moore were then living, burned. In 1881 Dr. William P. Mallett bought the lot and built on it.
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Dr. William P. Mallett builds a house on the old Henderson lot
Dr. Mallett bought the burned-out lot from the heirs of Anna Ashe and built a large two-story house, keeping a chemist's shop at its southeast corner. After his death in 1889 his widow ran the house as a boarding house where new professors stayed.
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Henry H. 'Hoot' Patterson opens a general merchandise store
Henry Houston 'Hoot' Patterson, a Civil War veteran married to Dr. Thomas Hogan's daughter Mary, started a general merchandise business in the building Andrew Mickle had used. Bryant calls it very successful.
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William N. Pritchard and Thomas F. Lloyd open a general store on East Franklin Street
William N. 'Captain Billy' Pritchard and T. F. Lloyd opened a general store on East Franklin Street, probably in the building where John R. Hutchins had sold clothing.
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Adam A. Kluttz takes over management of Dr. Roberson's general store
Adam Alexander Kluttz became the active manager of Dr. Abner Benton Roberson's general store. He later opened stores of his own and built a brick store on East Franklin in 1893 and 1894.
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Robert Strange MacRae buys Dr. Harris's drugstore and its building
MacRae bought the drug business from Dr. Thomas W. Harris and the building it occupied, at Franklin and Henderson streets, from David McCauley. He sold the drugstore to Dr. R. H. Whitehead in 1893.
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Dr. William P. Mallett begins handing out Chapel Hill's mail from his lot
Dr. Mallett and his daughter started distributing the village mail. The post office building he put up on the southwest corner of his East Franklin Street lot also held his doctor's office at the back, and after his death Thomas Kirkland ran the post office there.
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Professor Thomas Hume buys the house across from the Baptist church
Burned out of the president's house, Professor Thomas Hume bought the West Franklin Street house opposite the Baptist church. It had been home to the Baptist minister Needham Byron Cobb until the congregation turned its school building into a parsonage.
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Battle Lane is cut along the edge of the president's house lot
After the president's house burned, the eastern edge of its lot on East Franklin Street was opened as Battle Lane, and the rest of the eastern part was leased to Professor James Lee Love for fifty years at $15 a year.
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Barbee Drive is cut beside Algernon Barbee's house lot
A road was opened along the eastern edge of Algernon S. Barbee's residential lot on Franklin Street and named Barbee Drive.
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James Lee Love leaves Chapel Hill for Harvard
Love left the university with his family in 1889 to teach mathematics at Harvard. His mother-in-law, Cornelia Phillips Spencer, stayed on in his East Franklin Street house.
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Law professor John Manning builds his house on East Franklin Street
Before 1892 Laura Phillips sold John Manning the lot west of the Presbyterian manse, and he built his home there. Manning had earlier set up the university's law school, and his daughter Mary stayed on in the house after he died in 1899.
- 1890s
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Dr. Abner B. Roberson buys the Central Hotel and moves his drugstore into it
After the hotel's owner, Jones Watson, died, Dr. Roberson bought the Central Hotel, moved his drugstore into it with Clyde Eubanks as druggist, and leased the hotel's management to 'Bunn' Patterson. Adam A. Kluttz opened a store called the Glass Front in the many-windowed west end of the building.
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Laura Phillips sells the old Fetter house to Sarah Welling
After Charles Phillips died, his widow Laura sold off much of the family's property, including the old Fetter house on East Franklin Street, which went to Mrs. Sarah Welling of Warwick, New York. Professors John Manning, Edwin A. Alderman and Edward Vernon Howell lived there in turn over the next years.
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Robert Allen Eubanks opens a general store on Franklin Street
Robert Allen Eubanks opened a general store in the Franklin Street building that Dr. Abner B. Roberson had left when he moved his drugstore into the Central Hotel. He kept the store until 1933.
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Professor Walter Dallam Toy buys the Graves house and makes it a bachelors' hall
The widow of mathematics professor Ralph Henry Graves sold their West Franklin Street house to Walter Dallam Toy, who shared it with several other unmarried professors.
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Watson and Pickard rebuild the Chapel Hill Hotel and add the University Inn Annex
With money from W. G. Peckham, a New York lawyer, John H. Watson and his partner W. W. Pickard tore down the old hotel except for the Polk apartment, rebuilt it, and added a large new section called the University Inn Annex.
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Adam A. Kluttz builds a brick store on East Franklin Street
Kluttz bought half an acre from the heirs of John Wesley Carr and began a brick building just west of David McCauley's store. In 1894 he moved his general merchandise business across the street into it; the building later carried the number 149 East Franklin.
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Black families' homes on Lot 16 are razed and an Alpha Tau Omega cottage goes up
The houses of Jordan Weaver, a Black preacher, and of two other Black families who had built on the old Lot 16 were torn down, and a cottage for the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity was built on the lot facing the Episcopal church.
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Dr. Richard H. Whitehead buys Robert Strange MacRae's drugstore
Dr. R. H. Whitehead, head of the revived medical school, bought MacRae's drugstore at Franklin and Henderson streets. By 1904 Pickard and Strowd's confection and grocery store was in the building.
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Robert L. Strowd runs a general store on Franklin Street
Robert L. Strowd had a general store in the building where Charles L. Lindsay had sold furniture, dry goods and groceries. In 1901 he bought the building and its lot from Adele Tankersley.
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Adam A. Kluttz buys the old Sam Phillips house and law office
After the owner, Margaret Miller, died, her only heir, Mary Jane Cooper, sold the old Sam Phillips house on East Franklin Street, with the old law office, to the merchant Adam A. Kluttz.
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Alphonso and Anne McDade buy the house later called the McDade House
The heirs of Isaac Hudson sold the western half of the original Lot 5 on West Franklin Street to Alphonso J. McDade and his wife Anne. The McDades never lived there and rented the house to their daughter Minnie and her husband, J. E. Merritt.
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Dr. Roberson adds a ten-room annex to the Central Hotel
Roberson enlarged the Central Hotel with a ten-room wing facing the campus. After his death in 1897 Kluttz ran the hotel for a short time before 'Bunn' Patterson took back its management.
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The old Nunn tavern building reopens as the Patterson Hotel
Dr. Abner Benton Roberson bought from McDade the old building on the eastern half of Lot 5, once Nunn's tavern and inn and for some years the McDades' home. 'Bunn' Patterson remodeled it and added four or five rooms, and it opened as the Patterson Hotel, which did not last long as a hotel.
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The Canada School takes over Dr. Roberson's Patterson Hotel building
The Canada School had outgrown its rooms behind the post office, so in 1896 John W. Canada hired more teachers and moved into the Patterson Hotel building, which Dr. Abner Benton Roberson owned. The building's run as a hotel was short.
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Clyde Eubanks buys Dr. Roberson's drugstore
When Dr. Roberson died, his druggist Clyde Eubanks bought the drugstore and kept it in the Central Hotel until 1901.
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W. W. Pickard opens a livery stable at Franklin and Pine streets
Hotel man W. W. Pickard opened a livery stable on the northwest corner of Franklin and Pine streets. William J. 'Tank' Hunter bought it in 1910.
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J. T. 'Bull' Durham opens a general store at Franklin and Columbia streets
Durham opened a general store in the building on the southeast corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where S. W. Andrews had kept a Farmers' Alliance meat market. By 1912 he also ran a jitney service.
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Hoot Patterson's house is the first in Chapel Hill with indoor plumbing
Bryant lists merchant Henry H. "Hoot" Patterson's home as the first in Chapel Hill to have indoor plumbing, one of several local firsts of these years, along with Eben Alexander's telephone and Edward Vernon Howell's automobile.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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Adam A. Kluttz buys the lot west of his store and moves its houses back to Rosemary Street
Kluttz bought the property just west of his East Franklin Street store and had its two old houses moved to the rear of the lot, turned to face Rosemary Street, where they stood until 1963. He is said to have built a second store beside the first, run as a haberdashery.
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Clyde Eubanks moves his drugstore into a building of his own
Eubanks left the Central Hotel and set up his drugstore in a new building he had put up on the west corner of the Tankersley property on Franklin Street.
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Eben Alexander has the first telephone in Chapel Hill
Bryant lists Professor Eben Alexander, who lived in the old Tom Taylor house on East Franklin Street, as the first in town to have a telephone; in 1901 his number was 1.
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John W. Canada's school closes and its building becomes a rooming house
The John W. Canada School closed, and the old building on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where it had met became a rooming house. The brick building beside it was used as a Masonic hall.
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S. J. Brockwell builds a three-story brick building at Franklin and Columbia streets
Samuel Jackson Brockwell put up a three-story brick building on the northeast corner of Franklin and Columbia streets. Its first tenant, Samuel Weldon Andrews, took both ground-floor storefronts, with groceries on the Columbia Street side and dry goods on the other.
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Walter Dallam Toy builds a new house on West Franklin Street
Newly married, Professor Toy built a new house on the land he had bought from Julia Graves. In 1912 Robert B. House noted it near the corner of Church Street.
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Edward Vernon Howell owns Chapel Hill's first automobile
Pharmacy dean Edward Vernon Howell, then living in the old Fetter house on East Franklin Street, became the first in town to own a car, a one-cylinder Oldsmobile.
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Brockwell turns his building's ground floor into a skating rink
When Samuel Weldon Andrews was elected sheriff and closed his store, Brockwell remodeled the first floor of his building at Franklin and Columbia streets as a skating rink.
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Swain 'Kern' Pendergraft opens a fruit store and newsstand
Pendergraft opened a fruit store and newsstand where Merritt Cheek's house had stood. By 1912 he also ran a jitney service in competition with J. T. Durham.
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The Peoples Bank is organized
The Peoples Bank was organized in Chapel Hill. By 1911 it was in a building just east of W. B. Sorrell's shop on East Franklin Street, which may or may not have been its first home.
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The old Belle Hutchins house becomes a restaurant
The former home of Miss Belle Hutchins, daughter of John R. Hutchins, was turned into a restaurant with living quarters.
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W. B. Sorrell keeps a jewelry and optometry shop on East Franklin Street
W. B. Sorrell sold jewelry and fitted eyeglasses from a building just west of Adam A. Kluttz's stores, likely the site of the earlier Pritchard and Lloyd store.
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Walter W. Pickard builds a new Pickard Hotel at Franklin and Pine streets
After the old hotel he had leased passed to the university, Pickard and his wife built a new seventy-five-room Pickard Hotel on the northwest corner of Franklin and Pine streets.
- 1910s
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Edward Arthur Brown opens a hardware and furniture store
E. A. Brown opened a large store just east of Sid L. Herndon's hardware store, selling hardware at first and soon furniture.
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Robert W. Foister opens his first camera shop
Foister began selling cameras from a section of E. A. Brown's store. The shop moved several times in later years.
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William J. 'Tank' Hunter runs a jitney between Chapel Hill and Durham
Hunter, who had bought W. W. Pickard's livery stable in 1910, began running a jitney from the Royal Cafe, a new store beside the post office, to Durham. By 1912 J. T. Durham and Swain Pendergraft ran competing services.
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Alphonso McDade sells the McDade House to his daughter and son-in-law
McDade sold J. E. Merritt and his wife Minnie, McDade's daughter, the West Franklin Street house they had been renting for years.
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Harriet Cole's house is moved to clear a site for a public school
Mrs. Harriet Cole's house was moved several hundred feet east along West Franklin Street to make room for a planned public school.
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The university razes the old Central Hotel to build dormitories
The university bought the old Central Hotel from Dr. Roberson's estate, tore it down in 1912, and built the Vance, Battle and Pettigrew dormitories on the site.
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Andrew Henry Patterson builds a house on East Franklin Street
Patterson was one of several faculty members and townspeople who built new homes in the East Franklin Street residential district in these years.
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Clyde Eubanks moves his drugstore into a building of his own on Franklin Street
Clyde Eubanks put up a new building on his own lot, about a hundred yards west of the Tankersley-owned store he had rented, and moved Eubanks Drug Store into it. Robert Foister's camera shop took the old space.
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S. Berman opens a department store at Franklin and Columbia streets
Newly arrived in Chapel Hill, S. Berman started a department store on the southeast corner of Franklin and Columbia, where J. T. Durham had kept a general store. Berman's stayed on East Franklin for decades.
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The Bank of Chapel Hill moves into a new building on Franklin Street
Short of room, the Bank of Chapel Hill moved into a new building just west of Clyde Eubanks's new drugstore, and a barbershop took over the space it left.
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Hoot Patterson rents his Franklin Street store to Frank and Clarence Pickard
Patterson had groomed his son Fred to take over the business, and after Fred died in 1914 he lost interest and in 1915 rented the store to Frank Pickard and his son Clarence. Patterson's store account books end the same year.
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The 1880 brick building on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia is torn down
Judged unsafe, the brick building put up in 1880 at the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets was razed. The Baptists later built their church on this corner.
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Adam Kluttz sells his Franklin Street store to the Solomon Brothers, who keep his name on it
After a heart attack, merchant Adam Alexander Kluttz sold his original store to the Solomon Brothers of New York on the condition that it go on carrying his name. B. Y. C. Buice became manager.
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Bank cashier Milton E. Hogan buys the Thomas Hume house on West Franklin Street
Milton E. Hogan, cashier of the Bank of Chapel Hill, bought the West Franklin Street residence of Dr. Thomas Hume. The house later passed to Caesar Cone, a fraternity and the University, and in 1943 held the high school.
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Professor W. S. Bernard rents the old Sam Phillips law office from the Kluttz family
Professor William Stanley "Bully" Bernard rented the old Sam Phillips law office on East Franklin Street from the Kluttzes, remodeled the inside and made it his home.
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Walter W. Pickard sells the Pickard Hotel to William and Louisa Uzzel
Walter W. Pickard sold his Franklin Street hotel to Major William Uzzel and his wife, Louisa. The maps carry the hotel under Uzzel's ownership until it burned.
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Wilson Odell Lacock opens a shoe store and repair shop on Franklin Street
Lacock, who had clerked at Herndon's hardware, set up his own shoe store and repair shop in a small frame building west of R. A. Eubanks's general store that the express office had used. The family kept a shoe shop on the street into the 1940s.
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Bud Perry and Moody Lloyd open the Carolina Barbershop
The Carolina Barbershop started in a small frame building beside the new post office. It moved west in 1920 and was still on the street in the late 1930s.
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Henry Guthrie opens a movie theatre on West Franklin Street
Henry "Buddy" Guthrie opened a picture house just west of Graham Street, in the blocks where Black families were settling. Under Davie O'Kelly it became the Standard Theatre.
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W. S. Roberson builds a two-store brick building west of the Bank of Chapel Hill
Roberson's building, nearly finished in 1918, held two stores. In the early 1920s the Peoples Bank took the western half and the Lowe brothers' Chapel Hill Hardware the eastern.
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Gus Paviakis opens the Carolina Confectionery, later the Carolina Coffee Shop
Paviakis opened the Carolina Confectionery in the space the University Athletic Shop had used. George Livas and James Gust later bought it and renamed it the Carolina Coffee Shop.
- 1920s
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Delta Tau Delta buys Alice Jones's West Franklin Street property
The Delta Tau Delta fraternity bought the West Franklin Street house and lot of Miss Alice Jones. In 1936, remodeled, the house became Dr. W. Reece Berryhill's home.
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The center of East Franklin Street is paved
With the town's cars numbering 95 in 1921, an 18-foot strip down the middle of East Franklin Street was paved. About ten feet of packed dirt was left on each side.
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John T. Fowler buys the Model Market at auction
After Sam Pickard died, John T. Fowler bought his Model Market at auction. Fowler's sons enlarged it after 1925, and Robert L. Fowler later moved it across the street.
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The Pope Mattress Company builds a two-story brick store on East Franklin Street
The Pope Mattress Company, mostly a furniture dealer, left Columbia Street for a large two-story brick building it had just put up on the north side of East Franklin. Berman's department store moved into it in 1926.
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Eugene Andrews turns his West Franklin Street home into a funeral home
Andrews converted his residence into a funeral home. After his death his widow, Nellie Andrews, kept it running.
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The Tankersley house on East Franklin Street is torn down
Frances Adele Tankersley, tired of the business district's noise, built a new house east of the Presbyterian church, and her old house was razed. Three stores later went up on the lot.
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Work begins on Graham Memorial on the site of the burned University Inn
Construction of Graham Memorial started where the University Inn had stood until the 1921 fire. By 1928 only its social room was in use.
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Cameron MacRae builds the MacRae building at Franklin and Henderson streets
Cameron F. MacRae, son of Robert Strange MacRae, put up the MacRae building on the northeast corner. By 1928 it held Clarence Pickard's grocery, the Jefferson-Standard insurance office and a basement barbershop.
-
Fire destroys the building that housed Foister's Camera Shop
The building burned, and Robert W. Foister moved across Franklin Street, with a photo laboratory upstairs and a student supply and soda shop below. A new building on the site later held the University Cafeteria.
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Merchant Adam Kluttz dies, and a deathbed remark is later linked to the phrase "southern part of heaven"
Kluttz died in 1926. The book tells of a parson at his bedside likening heaven to Chapel Hill in spring and suggests this may be where the town's nickname began.
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Sam Berman moves his department store into the old Pope Mattress building
Mr. Pope sold out to his partner John P. Crowder, who held a liquidation sale and sold the building to Berman. Berman then moved his store across Franklin Street into the much larger space.
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The store bearing A. A. Kluttz's name closes
The Kluttz store shut, and Stetson D, a men's clothier, took its space. Its manager, B. Y. C. Buice, blamed too many like stores, cars and better roads drawing customers away, and credit buyers slow to pay.
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The Carolina Theatre and Jeff's Campus Confectionery open in the new Sorrell building
When W. B. Sorrell's building was finished, its first tenants were his optometry shop on the west, the Carolina Theatre in the middle and Jeff's Campus Confectionery on the east.
-
Chapel Hill homes and businesses get street numbers for mail delivery
Numbers were given to residences and places of business on the street so the post office could deliver to them.
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Fire destroys Ralph Pendergraft's Chevrolet agency on West Franklin Street
The frame building of the Chevrolet dealership Pendergraft had opened at Franklin and Roberson streets burned. A small brick building went up on the site and later housed a grocery and an auto service.
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Herbert Ledbetter and Clarence Pickard open Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery
Ledbetter, a former clerk at Alfred Williams's stationery, and Clarence "Doc" Pickard, whose grocery had failed, opened the store in part of Foister's photo shop. It did well enough to move to a larger space in 1932.
- 1930s
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James M. Pritchard and Thomas P. Lloyd buy the bankrupt Patterson Brothers drugstore
The Patterson Brothers drugstore failed in 1930, and Pritchard and Lloyd bought it from Wallace Durham Patterson. The maps then list it as the Pritchard and Lloyd Rexall store.
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Johnson-Moore Hardware goes bankrupt and Orange Hardware takes its place
The hardware store that had succeeded Chapel Hill Hardware failed in 1930, one of several Franklin Street businesses lost in the Depression, and Orange Hardware took it over.
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Texaco builds a service station at Franklin and Columbia after the town lets nine elms come down
To put a station on the southeast corner, Texaco needed nine old elms cut. The town agreed, with reluctance, once the company promised a tasteful yellow building with roses in the planting.
-
The University gives up its Service Plants appliance business to two employees
The UNC Service Plants, which supplied water, power and laundry, had begun selling electrical goods. After the state barred the University from competing with private business, Harvey D. Bennett and Frank C. Blocksidge took over the shop in the same place.
-
Robert L. Fowler moves the Model Market across Franklin Street into a new building
Fowler carried his stock to a new building on the south side over one weekend and opened there the next Monday.
-
Beppie Branson moves The Little Shop to 142 East Franklin Street as sole owner
Elizabeth Lanier Branson and Mary Henderson had started a women's specialty shop near Henderson Street in the early 1930s. Branson took it across the street and ran it alone, and the old shop went on as Henderson's millinery.
-
Milton Abernethy moves the Intimate Bookshop across Henderson Street
Abernethy, who began selling books from his dormitory and had moved over the Carolina Cafeteria in 1931, took the shop into the west end of Hoot Patterson's old store.
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Robert A. Eubanks closes his general store when he becomes postmaster
Eubanks shut his long-running general store on the south side of East Franklin when he took over the Chapel Hill post office. The building was razed in 1934.
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The Pickwick Theatre closes in the Depression
Hard times forced the Pickwick to shut. For some years the building served as a town courtroom before it reopened as the Pick in 1938.
-
George and Mabel Bason open Whitehall in the old MacRae house
Leaving the Widow Puckett house after George Bason resigned from the University, the couple bought the MacRae house across from the Episcopal church, which had been a fraternity house. They named it Whitehall and took boarders, sold crafts and later antiques.
-
Robert A. Eubanks's old general store is torn down
The store on the south side of East Franklin was razed. The new Carolina Theatre went up on the site in 1942.
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Caesar Cone sells the former Hume house, a Zeta Beta Tau home, to the University
Cone had bought the house from Milton Hogan between 1929 and 1933 and rented it to the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. He sold it to the University in 1935; the high school used it after the 1942 fire.
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The Methodist parsonage is moved to face Rosemary Street to make way for a Pure Oil station
The parsonage built on the old John Wesley Carr homesite was shifted and turned toward Rosemary Street, clearing the Franklin Street frontage for Ben Strowd's Pure Oil service station.
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James M. Pritchard buys out Thomas Lloyd and becomes sole owner of the drugstore
Pritchard took sole charge of the former Patterson Brothers store, now Pritchard's Drugstore. Lloyd opened his own Carolina Pharmacy in 1940.
-
Rose's 5-10-25 cent store opens on East Franklin Street
When John P. Crowder closed his variety store and left town, Rose's took his space and shared the building with the A&P.
-
The Village Apartments are built on East Franklin Street
An apartment house went up just east of the University Presbyterian Church, among the street's houses.
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The old West Franklin Street high school becomes Chapel Hill's elementary school
When the new high school on South Columbia Street was finished, the 1916 building on West Franklin was turned over to the elementary grades.
-
The Standard Theatre building becomes a funeral home and a grocery store
The West Franklin Street movie house that had served the Black community was given over to a funeral home and a grocery.
-
Walker's Funeral Home opens in the enlarged Bill Lloyd house on West Franklin Street
The old "Bill Lloyd" house was enlarged and made over as Walker's Funeral Home, near the Columbia Street end of West Franklin.
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Robert Varley opens a men's clothing store on East Franklin Street
Varley's store took the space of Alfred Williams's stationery on the south side of the street.
-
Alpha Delta Pi moves into Blanche Patterson's former home on East Franklin Street
The sorority moved into the house Mrs. Fred Patterson had built in the late 1910s.
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Alpha Gamma Delta moves into the old "Crystal Palace" on East Franklin Street
The sorority took over the house known as the Crystal Palace, once Algernon Barbee's home.
-
Maurice Julian opens a shoe store on East Franklin Street
Julian started out selling shoes at 167 East Franklin, in the space James R. Ellis's dress shop had left.
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UNC tennis coach John Kenfield opens the Carolina Sports Shop
Kenfield started a sporting goods store on the north side of East Franklin. New owners bought him out in 1942 and made Henry Sawtelle McGinty manager.
- 1940s
-
John Scott Trotter turns the old Bryan boarding house into The Hill House
Mrs. Green Bryan's heirs sold her West Franklin Street boarding house to Trotter, who renovated it and named it The Hill House, with hotel rooms and rental apartments.
-
Thomas P. Lloyd opens the Carolina Pharmacy
Lloyd, once James Pritchard's partner, opened his own drugstore in the space Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery left when it moved a door east.
-
Maurice Julian opens The College Shop, a men's clothing store
Julian moved into the space Durham Dairy Products had left at 140 East Franklin and opened a men's clothing store he called The College Shop.
-
The Methodist church annex on Franklin Street becomes a recreation center
The former Methodist church, kept as an annex when the new church went up in 1926, was converted into a recreation center.
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The old Carolina Theatre is renamed The Village
With the new Carolina Theatre open on the south side of the street, the 1927 house on the north side took the name The Village.
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Wilbur Kutz opens The Varsity, a clothing store with a basement soda fountain
Kutz's clothing store on the north side of East Franklin had a soda fountain downstairs that drew a crowd.
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Rachel Crook opens a fish and produce market on West Franklin Street
Crook made an old service station, lately a chicken house, into a fish and produce market.
-
Robert Rhinehart buys the Hill Bakery from Mrs. William Neal
Rhinehart bought the bakery that William Brumfield Neal's widow had run since his death in 1935.
-
Pritchard's drugstore on East Franklin Street closes after its owner dies
James Manning Pritchard died and his drugstore shut. Rachel Crook sold pecans in the empty store for a short while before the North Carolina Cafeteria, formerly on Fraternity Row, bought the building and moved in.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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A. H. Poe buys Ben Strowd's Pure Oil station on West Franklin Street for his DeSoto dealership
Poe bought the Pure Oil service station from Ben Strowd and moved his DeSoto car agency into it.
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John Scott Trotter sells the Hill House on West Franklin Street to the Baptist church
Trotter sold the Hill House, next to the Baptist church, to the congregation, which went on renting out its apartments. In 1958 the town's first public library opened in one of its rooms.
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An old house said to contain part of the Nunn Tavern is moved across Kenan Street for the bus station
To clear the lot for the new bus station, a large two-story house was hauled across Kenan Street to 405 West Franklin, where W. W. McCauley later lived. Bryant traces the house to a section of the Nunn Tavern of about 1776, which had already been moved to this lot in 1923 when the Baptist church was built at Franklin and Columbia.
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Johnson-Strowd-Ward opens a furniture store on West Franklin Street
The furniture firm began in one of A. H. Poe's car showrooms and in 1947 moved further west on West Franklin into a building put up for it.
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The Pick Theatre on East Franklin Street closes
The Pick Theatre shut its doors in 1946. Its building was later remodeled for J. B. Robbins's House of Fashion, a clothing store that ran until 1969.
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Milton Julian opens the Clothing Cupboard on West Franklin Street
Milton's Clothing Cupboard was among the businesses started on West Franklin in 1947 and 1948. It later moved to East Franklin, where it stayed until the mid-1990s.
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The A&P leaves East Franklin for a new store on the old Toy lot on West Franklin Street
The grocery chain moved off East Franklin into a building it put up on the former Walter Dallum Toy property, bought for the purpose in 1947. Rose's store then spread into the space the A&P had left.
-
William Sloan opens Sloan's Drugstore on East Franklin Street
Sloan opened his drugstore in the store where D. Pender's grocery had been. It lasted until the mid-1970s, when Spanky's Restaurant took the space.
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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 4, 2026.