Chronology

Schley Grange No. 710 is chartered

Thirty residents of the Schley farming community north of Hillsborough chartered Schley Grange No. 710, one of five Orange County Granges formed in the state Grange revival of 1929 to 1931. The county board had merged Schley School into the Hillsboro school that June, and on November 2 it sold the Schley School building for $122 to Charles Wilson, who bought it for the Grange.

Subject: Schley Grange Hall

Coates and his law students open local police schools around the state

Less than a month after the Chapel Hill meeting, the first local police school opened in a Raleigh courtroom with Coates's students in tow, followed by schools in High Point, Greensboro, Wilmington, Asheville and Winston-Salem.

The new Memorial Hall is dedicated

Chase had found the money for the replacement auditorium within university accounts, helped by $5,000 from John Sprunt Hill, but none was left to furnish it. Guests at the dedication sat on the scarred heart-pine benches saved from the old hall, along with its marble tablets to the Civil War dead.

People: John Sprunt Hill

Subject: Memorial Hall

Frank Porter Graham is inaugurated as president in Kenan Stadium

On Armistice Day, delegates from campuses across the country attended a full-dress ceremony in the stadium. In an address of more than an hour and a quarter, Graham restated the university's freedom to teach and to report findings whatever powerful lobbies thought, and praised Chase. It was the last such inauguration for the Chapel Hill campus alone.

Subject: Kenan Stadium

Langston Hughes reads in Gerrard Hall after Contempo prints "Christ in Alabama"

Milton Abernethy of Contempo invited Langston Hughes to Chapel Hill and printed his Scottsboro poem "Christ in Alabama" in the issue dated December 1, timed to appear days before the visit. Hughes spoke and read to students and townspeople in Gerrard Hall on the night of November 19, 1931.

People: Guy Benton Johnson · Langston Hughes

Subject: Gerrard Hall

The Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower is dedicated at UNC

The bell tower given by John Motley Morehead III and Rufus Lenoir Patterson II was dedicated to the university on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1931, with Governor O. Max Gardner giving the dedication address. Morehead had proposed a tower to President Harry Woodburn Chase in the 1920s and been turned down on three sites.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase · O. Max Gardner

Adeline McCall plays piano in a Folk Music Institute laboratory concert

The university's Institute of Folk Music held its second laboratory concert at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 1931, in Hill Music Hall, with Lamar Stringfield on flute, Adeline McCall on piano and Thor Johnson on viola. The program included a composition by Herbert Hazelman, an Asheville freshman.

Subject: Hill Hall

Officials at the Carolina Inn back Coates's plan for schools of public officers

Forty-five judges, lawyers and lawmen invited by Judge W. A. Devin heard Coates propose an association of government officers served by a staff that would write guidebooks and train officials. They told him to go ahead, and Coates later called this the first meeting of the Institute of Government.

Subject: The Carolina Inn · Institute of Government

Carl Durham serves on the Orange County Board of Commissioners

Durham was an Orange County commissioner from 1932 to 1938 and in 1935 helped secure $22,000 in federal aid for rural electrification in the county. He was elected a UNC trustee in 1937.

Dr. Edwin Caldwell is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Dr. Edwin Caldwell, a Black physician and son of Wilson Caldwell, died in 1932 and was buried in the Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, near his father. He had taken his medical degree at Shaw University and practiced for many years in Chapel Hill.

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Eagle Lodge gets back its original number, 19

In 1932 the Hillsborough Masonic lodge, chartered as No. 19 in 1791 and revived in 1819 as No. 71, had its original number 19 reinstated. The lodge still owns and meets in its 1823 hall.

Subject: Eagle Lodge

Kennon Cheek moves that the Janitors' Association give to the student loan fund

Frank Porter Graham came to an association meeting to tell the janitors that the Depression would cut their wages but that everyone would come through together. Cheek then moved that the Janitors' Association give five dollars to the fund set up to keep students in school, the first campus organization to contribute to it.

Part of Black workers and campus labor · 31 events

People: Frank Porter Graham

Rebecca Clark moves to Chapel Hill and goes to work in a faculty home

Clark, born around 1915 in Chatham County, moved to Chapel Hill in 1932 to live with a relative on Church Street. She went to work in the home of professor Vernon Howell while enrolled at the Orange County Training School.

Richmond Motor Company opens as Hillsboro's Ford dealer

Richmond Motor Company began selling Ford cars in Hillsboro in 1932. It marked its 15th anniversary in July 1947 with a three-day open house, having sold 1,848 new and used cars.

Ridge Road School is built for Black children north of Hillsborough

In 1932 the county board had a two-room frame school for Black children built on Walter and Maggie Torian's land off Ridge Road (now Coleman Loop Road), just west of NC 86 north of Hillsborough. R. J. Forrest built it with lumber from the community. It replaced an earlier Ridge Road school and was not a Rosenwald school, though the 1993 survey had taken it for one.

Subject: Ridge Road School

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.

St. Joseph CME built its first church on West Rosemary Street

Henry Baldwin, Margaret Burnette and Kennon Cheek mortgaged their homes for the down payment on the Rosemary Street lot, which Black leaders had judged too small for a new high school. A frame church went up under Rev. Joseph S. Miller and was dedicated as St. Joseph Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

People: Kennon Cheek

Strum's Gas Station, a Spanish Mission-style filling station, is built on South Churton Street

The stuccoed Spanish Mission-style gas station at 200 South Churton Street, with a green tile pent roof, is built in 1932 and appears as a filling station on the 1943 Sanborn map.

Susan Grey Akers becomes UNC's first woman full professor

When Louis Round Wilson left the new School of Library Science, Akers was made its acting director and promoted to full professor, the first woman at UNC-Chapel Hill to hold that rank.

The state builds a prison camp for road crews near Hillsborough

The state prison camp near Hillsborough, whose inmates worked on road crews, was built in 1932. By 1960 it held about ninety felons and kept a vegetable farm behind its fence.

The university is consolidated with the Greensboro and Raleigh colleges

In 1932 the university at Chapel Hill, the North Carolina College for Women at Greensboro and State College at Raleigh were joined administratively into one University of North Carolina.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Graham Memorial is dedicated as the student union

After more than a decade of unmet alumni pledges, L. Ames Brown guaranteed the money to finish and furnish the building, which opened in the fall of 1931. At the January dedication Charles Tillett Jr. quoted a reader's entry in Nell Battle Lewis's News and Observer contest that counted Ed Graham's living spirit among the state's most beautiful things.

Subject: Graham Memorial

Hattie V. Brown buys the Nash law office

Hattie V. Brown bought the half of lot 10 that held the old Nash law office. The property then changed hands several times before the Hillsborough Historical Society bought it in 1970.

Subject: Nash Law Office

The county board bars hiring teachers related to a school's committeemen

The board ruled that every elementary teacher must hold at least a Primary C or Grammar Grade C certificate when elected, and that no one could teach in the county if a wife, child, brother or sister sat on the school committee.

About two hundred officials organize and name the Institute of Government

Mayors, legislators, judges and county commissioners met at the new Graham Memorial, endorsed Coates's plan for an association of government officials and formally adopted the name Institute of Government. Junius G. Adams chaired, with Coates as secretary, and a larger meeting was set for September.

People: Albert Coates · Gladys Hall Coates

Subject: Institute of Government · Graham Memorial

The Rockefeller Foundation grants Odum's Institute for Research in Social Science $30,000 a year

The foundation announced a yearly grant of $30,000 to support the work of the university's Institute for Research in Social Science under Howard Odum. Covington says the announcement came the same day Coates held his first conference of public officials.

The county board agrees to pay for five new or enlarged schools for Black children

Despite the Depression, the Orange County board agreed to fund buildings or additions at Merritts, Ridge Road, Sunnyside, White Oak Grove and Sartin, schools of one to three rooms for Black children. Each community had to supply its own lumber; Ridge Road was first allotted $500.

Subject: Ridge Road School · White Oak Grove School

Hundreds take typhoid vaccine at Chapel Hill clinic after new cases

After several new typhoid cases were reported in late June 1932, about 600 people received typhoid vaccine at the Chapel Hill public clinic in a single day, and the Infirmary gave the treatment on any day. Town health authorities said the water supply was not the source.

UNC names W. C. Jackson dean of a new School of Public Administration

Graham and Odum announced Jackson, history chair at the Woman's College in Greensboro, as dean of the school Odum had planned for three years with a small state allocation. Graham urged Coates to fold the Institute into it and made him one of its trustees, but Coates kept apart; short of state money, the school was dissolved after Jackson returned to Greensboro as chancellor.

People: Howard W. Odum · Frank Porter Graham · Albert Coates

Albert Coates convenes the Institute of Government's first statewide school for public officials

About six hundred officials and citizens from nearly every county came to Chapel Hill for a two-day meeting Coates had promoted all summer. Frank Graham opened the Friday evening session in Gerrard Hall and Harvard law dean Roscoe Pound gave the closing address on Saturday, when the organizing committee approved hiring Coates as director with a staff.

People: Frank Porter Graham · O. Max Gardner

Subject: Institute of Government · Gerrard Hall

The Institute of Government stages a statewide radio swearing-in of new county officers

Working with Raleigh station WPTF, Coates had a five-station network carry the oath-taking of incoming sheriffs, commissioners and other county officers, with speeches by governor-elect J. C. B. Ehringhaus and his Republican opponent Clifford Frazier. People gathered in courthouses across the state to watch and listen, and Coates billed the night as the Institute's formal launch.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

A three-mile rural power line from Chapel Hill to Calvander is built with federal money

Built in 1933 as a Civil Works Administration project, the line ran three miles from Chapel Hill to Calvander, and the Hogan brothers supplied cedar poles when funds ran short. The book says it was the first rural electric line in the United States built with federal funds.

Ben Cone pledges $5,000 a year for three years to the Institute of Government

After a $1,500 gift at the end of 1932, the Greensboro textile executive pledged $5,000 a year for three years and his brother Ceasar Cone II promised $5,000 more. The Cone money paid for the first staff, and by late 1933 it was more than three-quarters of all the Institute had deposited at the Bank of Chapel Hill.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

Black children attend 27 schools while white children are gathered into 12

By 1933 consolidation had brought Orange County's white children into twelve schools, while Black children still attended twenty-seven, most of them one- and two-room buildings.

Dean Isaac Hall Manning resigns after President Graham overrules his Jewish quota

Manning limited the admission of Jewish medical students. When Morris Krasny, a rejected Jewish applicant, appealed, President Frank Porter Graham ordered him admitted, and Manning resigned rather than change his decision.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

Farmers pay to carry the rural power line on to Orange Grove

Soon after the federally funded line from Chapel Hill to Calvander was built in 1933, a second line paid for by local farmers' donations carried power on from Calvander to Orange Grove.

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.

Subject: The Intimate Bookshop

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.

S. H. Hobbs Jr. heads UNC's Department of Rural Social Economics

Hobbs, who had taught in the department since 1916, headed it from 1933 until it merged with the Department of Sociology in 1939.

State senator John Umstead buys the Royster house on East Franklin Street

In 1933 state senator John Umstead bought the house at 619 East Franklin Street, and it has carried his name since.

People: James Finch Royster

The Carolina Playmakers stage a Shaw-Henderson Festival

The Carolina Playmakers held a Shaw-Henderson Festival in Chapel Hill honoring Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw's authorized biographer. It featured Shaw's You Never Can Tell, the play whose 1903 amateur performance had first drawn Henderson to Shaw.

Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events

Subject: Carolina Playmakers

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.

Subject: Pickwick Theatre

University physician Eric Abernethy is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Eric Abernethy (1876-1933), the university physician for whom Abernethy Hall is named, was buried in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

White Cross School is built as a consolidated brick school

White Cross School, built in 1933, is a brick school with four large classrooms split by an auditorium in the middle. The form names it one of the county's two best examples of the larger central schools that replaced one- and two-room schools during consolidation.

Subject: White Cross School

Dr. Eric A. Abernethy resigns as university physician

Abernethy, appointed university physician in charge of the infirmary after he came home wounded from the First World War, resigned because of poor health and went into private practice in Chapel Hill with his son. Dr. Foy Roberson of Durham took temporary charge of the infirmary.

Subject: University infirmary (Abernethy Hall)

Henry P. Brandis Jr. becomes the Institute of Government's first associate director

Paid from the Cone pledges at $50 a week, Brandis, a Salisbury native with a Columbia law degree, left a New York firm and went straight to Raleigh to follow the General Assembly and digest its new laws. He was later dean of the UNC law school.

People: Albert Coates · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

Subject: Institute of Government

Kay Kyser's band closes the May Frolics dances in the Tin Can

Kay Kyser and his orchestra, made up of former UNC students, played the formal dance that closed the fourth annual May Frolics in the Tin Can. The band also gave a benefit concert in Memorial Hall the next afternoon.

Subject: Memorial Hall

The Bank of Chapel Hill closes its Bank of Carrboro branch

With the Carrboro mills idle and other business falling off, the Bank of Chapel Hill closed its Carrboro branch and moved its accounts to the parent bank. The branch cashier, W. E. Thompson, went with them.

Subject: Bank of Chapel Hill

Free health examination clinic for children entering school in Chapel Hill

The Parent Teachers' Association arranged a free clinic at the school building to examine all children due to enter school that fall, with physicians from Duke Hospital and Chapel Hill dentists, and urged vaccination against smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid.

Coates and law dean Van Hecke withdraw their resignations after meeting with President Graham

That spring law dean Maurice T. Van Hecke had recommended that Coates stop teaching and work only for the Institute, and first Coates and then Van Hecke offered to resign. At a June 6 meeting in Graham's South Building office both stayed on: Coates got a fall leave and a second chance in the law school, and he agreed to stop presenting the law school or the university as the Institute's sponsor.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: South Building · UNC School of Law

More than a thousand people attend the Institute of Government's second statewide conference

Officials and citizens met in Chapel Hill to hear the state's congressional delegation, led by Senator Josiah Bailey, explain the first New Deal recovery laws, and President Roosevelt sent a letter urging other states to copy the Institute. The organizing committee then gave Coates new work, among it a report on proposed constitutional amendments and a guidebook for election officials.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

Elizabeth Janet Gray publishes Jane Hope, a novel set in Chapel Hill

Viking Press issued Jane Hope, a novel for young readers set in Chapel Hill, whose heroine comes from Philadelphia to live with her grandparents. The Chapel Hill Weekly noted that the author had absorbed the village's history, with a chapter on the Buchanan commencement.

Civil Works crews tear down the old stone jail on Hillsborough's courthouse square

As part of a Civil Works Administration project around the courthouse, relief workers demolished the old jail, and flagstones from its walls were used for sidewalks around the square. The work was nearly done in late December and complete by late January.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Albert Ray Newsome heads the UNC history department

When R. D. W. Connor left to become the first Archivist of the United States, Newsome returned to Chapel Hill to head the history department and teach American history. He ran the department until poor health made him give up administrative duties in 1950.

People: R. D. W. Connor

Carl Snavely becomes head football coach at UNC

Snavely came to Chapel Hill from Bucknell University in 1934. His first UNC team won seven games, lost one and tied one, and included George Barclay, the university's first football All-American.

Curry Roberts builds a brick house for the Cates family on West Union Street

A two-story brick Colonial Revival house was built for the Cates family at 112 West Union Street, set far back on a lot running the depth of the block. Curry Roberts built it and the Black brickmason Roosevelt Warner laid the brick; it replaced an earlier house on the lot.

Edgar Wallace Knight is named a Kenan professor

The university recognized Knight's teaching and scholarship with a Kenan professorship in 1934.

Former university president Francis Preston Venable is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Francis Preston Venable (1856-1934), the chemist and university president under whom UNC gained national standing, was buried in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Geologist Collier Cobb is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Collier Cobb Sr. (1862-1934), professor of geology at the university for forty-two years, was buried in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

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.

Girls from the Efland Home receive free care at Durham's Lincoln Hospital

In 1934 the Efland Home's residents were treated without charge at Lincoln Hospital, the Black hospital in Durham, where Dr. Stanford Lee Warren, husband of home trustee Julia Warren, had been a founding trustee.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

James J. Freeland moves to Hillsborough

Born in Durham in 1918, Freeland came to Hillsborough in 1934. In his early years there he operated the Sunny Side Inn, a barbecue restaurant, worked part time at a sawmill and helped run a dry cleaning plant in West Hillsborough.

People: James John Freeland

Janitors' Association president Elliot Washington asks for help joining a union

In 1934 Dean Robert House wrote to President Frank Porter Graham about a request from association president Elliot Washington for help with union membership, since the janitors could not afford local union dues.

People: Frank Porter Graham · R. B. House

Jim Tatum is named an All-Southern tackle at UNC

Tatum enrolled at UNC with the persuasion and financial aid of his uncle William Donald Carmichael Jr. He played tackle under Chuck Collins and Carl Snavely, was named All-Southern in 1934, also caught for the baseball team, and graduated in 1935.

People: Carl Snavely · William Donald Carmichael

Mary Strayhorn Berry's recollections of antebellum Hillsborough are typed

A typed transcription of Mary Elizabeth Strayhorn Berry's "Reminiscences of the Old South" records the names, family ties and skills of many people enslaved by the Strayhorn, Nichols and other Hillsborough families, and her father's store and cobbler shop.

Murphey School enrolls 182 pupils

In the 1934-35 school year Murphey School had 182 pupils. It was one of nine county schools, with Hillsboro, Orange Grove, St. Mary's, Caldwell, Efland, Aycock, Carrboro and White Cross, apart from the Chapel Hill city schools.

Subject: Murphey School

Ridge Road School counts 80 pupils enrolled and 51 attending

In the 1934-35 term Ridge Road School, a two-room school for Black children north of Hillsboro, had 80 pupils on its roll, 51 of whom attended regularly.

Subject: Ridge Road School

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.

Subject: Carolina Theatre (1942)

Robert B. House becomes Dean of Administration at Chapel Hill

As part of consolidation, President Frank Graham chose Robert Burton House, confirmed by the trustees in 1934, as Dean of Administration for the Chapel Hill campus. His title became chancellor in 1945.

People: Frank Porter Graham · R. B. House

The Institute of Government publishes its digest of the 1933 laws and its first guidebook, for clerks of court

Henry Brandis's summary of the laws passed by the 1933 General Assembly came out as an issue of Popular Government, followed by a guidebook written for clerks of court. Covington treats them as the Institute's first substantial publications that local officials could use in their daily work.

People: Henry P. Brandis Jr.

Subject: Institute of Government

Coates moderates a debate on proposed constitutional amendments and keeps the Institute neutral

Pressed by the amendments' sponsors and by Attorney General Dennis Brummitt, Coates held that the Institute would never lobby for or against any measure. In mid-April he moderated a debate in the state House chamber before about 125 officials, with Chief Justice Walter Stacy and revenue commissioner Allen J. Maxwell for the amendments and Brummitt against.

Certified teacher J. A. Lassiter becomes matron of the Efland Home

J. A. Lassiter, a certified teacher, replaced Sadie F. Powell as matron in May 1934, and her husband took over the farm. That year the girls canned, sewed clothes and bedding, and made cornhusk mattresses, baskets and rag rugs, and the cottage's porch was painted and its floors oiled.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Architect H. D. Carter becomes supervisor of Orange County relief projects

Chapel Hill architect H. D. Carter replaced J. A. Page as supervisor of Orange County's Federal Emergency Relief Administration projects, which included painting and repairing schools. The next year he designed Public Works Administration buildings and additions for nine county schools.

Catholics organize a congregation in Chapel Hill

The Catholic Church of Chapel Hill was organized under its first priest, Francis J. Morrissey. With no building of its own, it held services in Gerrard Hall on the university campus.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Popular Government becomes a monthly magazine

With new gifts from Winston-Salem backers and Ceasar Cone and some subscription income, Coates moved the Institute's journal from quarterly to monthly, with advertising to help pay for it. Each monthly issue sold for ten cents and carried a courthouse or other government building on its cover.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

A Chapel Hill branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is founded

Charlotte Adams founded a Chapel Hill branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The branch is now called WILPF Triangle.

A Church of God congregation is organized in West Hillsborough

Garland Crabtree and T. E. Boman organized the Church of God of West Hillsborough, with Edd Mize as first pastor. It built a 250-seat church in 1945.

A Colonial Revival cottage with an attached garage is built on Country Club Road for Robert B. Voitle

The story-and-a-half weatherboarded cottage has an original garage on one side. The 2008 documentation redates it to about 1935 and makes it contributing; the 1989 district nomination had dated it 1955.

A Mission Revival Sinclair gas station is built at Churton and Corbin streets

A stuccoed Mission Revival gas station with a tiled porte-cochere is built in the late 1930s at 105 West Corbin Street, set at an angle to face the corner of North Churton and West Corbin. A large two-story addition went up behind it in 2003.

A federal plan to replace the campus rock walls with concrete is dropped after protests

Among the Public Works Administration projects approved in the state was one to replace the stone walls on the Chapel Hill campus with new concrete. Town and campus objected to tearing out Elisha Mitchell's walls, and the approval was withdrawn.

A house marked as the PWA's Little River Teacherage stands on Warner Lane

The frame house at 116 Warner Lane carries a Public Works Administration sign naming it the Little River Teacherage, project N.C. 1127-F. Warner Lane and its houses are not on the 1924 Sanborn map; the house is on the 1943 map.

Alethea Burt moves to Hillsboro and takes charge of Ridge Road School's upper grades

Alethea Arrington Burt, a Hampton Institute graduate, came from Currituck County to Hillsboro in 1935, the year her husband Moses became the county's Black farm agent. She taught fifth through seventh grades and served as principal of the two-room school until it closed in 1951.

Subject: Ridge Road School

Andrews and Lloyd sell their North Greensboro Street cedar mill site to Fitch Lumber

Dick Andrews and Brodie H. Lloyd had kept running a cedar mill on the lot after leasing buildings to Fitch in 1923. They then sold the whole industrial site, including early frame sheds built for the Thelma Knitting Mill, later Blanche Hosiery.

Attorney and three-time mayor William Roberson is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

William Roberson (1869-1935), a lawyer who served three times as mayor of Chapel Hill, was buried in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Benjamin Swalin joins the UNC music faculty

Benjamin F. Swalin, a violinist with a Vienna doctorate, took a position in the University of North Carolina's Music Department in 1935. He went on to direct the North Carolina Symphony from 1939 to 1972, and by 1946 was on indefinite leave from the department for the symphony.

People: Maxine M Swalin

Botanist William C. Coker marries Louise Venable

William Chambers Coker married Louise Venable, daughter of former UNC president Francis P. Venable, in 1935. After her death in 1983 part of the grounds of The Rocks, the Coker home on North Street, became a public garden in her memory.

Subject: The Rocks (William C. Coker House)

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.

Dr. I. H. Manning leads the founding of the Hospital Saving Association

After a 1933-1934 study of hospital care for people of small means, the Hospital Saving Association of North Carolina, known as the Chapel Hill Blue Cross plan, was founded in 1935. Dr. Isaac H. Manning, longtime medical dean, was its leading figure and first president.

Federal Public Works money pays for thirteen new university buildings

Once the state supreme court settled the legal questions in the fall of 1935, the university could apply to the Public Works Administration. Between 1935 and 1941 it added thirteen buildings with nearly $3 million in federal aid, among them a swimming pool, dormitories for men and for women, and a dining hall to replace Swain Hall.

Graham refuses to move Albert Coates out of the law school

In May 1935 Dean Van Hecke reported that Coates's teaching had failed again and, with the whole law faculty behind him, asked that Coates be freed from law school duties to run the Institute. Coates threatened to demand an academic trial; Graham declined the transfer and again refused Van Hecke's offer to resign, and Coates rejoined the law faculty in February 1936 and taught there for thirty years.

People: Frank Porter Graham · R. B. House

Subject: UNC School of Law

Hilda C. Allen becomes superintendent of the Efland Home after a poor state report

Following a critical June 1935 state inspection and complaints about the home's management, the board's executive committee met in Durham in July and soon hired Hilda C. Allen as superintendent, keeping Lula Henderson as matron.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Kenneth Tanner builds West House on the campus's old Fraternity Row

Textile manufacturer Kenneth S. Tanner, a 1911 alumnus, put up the one-story brick West House near Swain Hall to lodge his son and other relatives at the university, with room for five students.

M. C. Burt begins work as the county's agent for Black farmers

From 1935 Burt served Orange County's Black farmers as extension agent, for a time shared with Chatham County. Edwin P. Barnes became assistant county agent the same year.

Mr. Brooks and J. I. Chandler open the NC Cafeteria in the later Porthole building

Mr. Brooks, a former manager of Gooch's cafe and the Carolina Coffee Shop, and J. I. Chandler opened the NC Cafeteria in 1935 in the building later home to the Porthole restaurant. The cafeteria moved to a new location in 1944.

Oliver K. Cornwell leads UNC's new Department of Physical Education

When the university created a Department of Physical Education in 1935, Oliver K. Cornwell directed its academic program. He chaired the department, in its various forms, until Richard E. Jamerson replaced him in 1967.

R. E. Coker chairs UNC's zoology department

Coker chaired the zoology department from 1935 to 1944 and at the same time chaired the Division of Natural Sciences.

Shelby Foote arrives in Chapel Hill to enroll at UNC

Shelby Foote came to Chapel Hill in fall 1935 to register at UNC despite having been turned down, following his Greenville friends Walker and LeRoy Percy. He stayed two years and contributed nine stories to Carolina Magazine.

People: Walker Percy

Standard Oil builds a Spanish Revival service station on West Main Street

Brothers Stacy and Eric Neville ran the stuccoed station at 210 West Main Street, with its stepped pilasters and imitation tile roof, for many years. Before it was built they had worked from a frame station on the small paved triangle across the street.

Superintendent Hilda Allen sends the girls' Efland Quartette to sing in local churches

To raise money and show the home's progress, Hilda Allen taught the girls spirituals and arranged for the Efland Quartette to sing at churches around the area during her superintendency.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

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.

The University again makes Archer House a residence for women students

Archer House, the old boardinghouse also called the Battle house or Russell Inn, had housed the University's women students from about 1921 until fire gutted it in January 1925. From 1926 Mrs. Victor Humphreys ran it as lodging and a dining room for men students; in 1935 the University made it a women's residence again, with Mrs. Humphreys in charge until 1937.

Subject: Archer House

The Williams family buys a 38-acre farm on Mount Carmel Church Road

In 1935 the Williams family acquired a farm whose buildings were already old: an antebellum frame hall-and-parlor house, two log outbuildings of the same age and two log tenant houses.

UNC creates the General College

The university added a new division, the General College, at Chapel Hill in 1935.

Walter Spearman joins the UNC journalism faculty

Spearman, a 1929 UNC graduate and former Daily Tar Heel editor, returned to Chapel Hill after five years at the Charlotte News to teach journalism at the university.

The commissioners turn relief money over to welfare officer George Lawrence

As Depression requests multiplied, the board stopped voting on each small grant and paid Lawrence $150 a month for January and February 1935 to put into the ERA fund for totally disabled people on the relief list. In March it gave him charge of all relief for March and April.

Institute of Government staff begin daily bulletins on the General Assembly

From rented offices in the Raleigh Building, Brandis, Dillard Gardner and T. N. Grice followed every bill of the 1935 session from the gallery and put a bulletin of the day's action on each member's desk by the next morning. A weekly digest of statewide bills went to every newspaper in the state, so local officials learned of bills before they became law.

People: Albert Coates · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

Subject: Institute of Government

Parents turn back a plan to merge the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools

A large crowd of parents appeared before the board to fight a plan that would have folded the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools into one. The opposition was strong enough that the board dropped the plan, which returned in 1963 as Orange High School.

Subject: Orange High School · Aycock School · Efland schools · Hillsborough High School

Black families from five northern Orange schools ask for a brick consolidated school

Parents from five schools for Black children, Cedar Grove, Carr, Harmony, Sartins and White Oak, asked the board for a new brick building to replace them. The board promised to look into it; a site near Vincent's Store for a Cedar Grove school for Black children was bought in 1946.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Matron Lula B. Henderson and farm manager Lewis Walker are hired at the Efland Home

After J. A. Lassiter's husband was let go in March 1935, the home hired Lula B. Henderson as matron and Lewis Walker to run the farm in April. Henderson's husband, a retired minister living in Chapel Hill, taught the girls under the Emergency Relief Administration's adult education program.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Paul Green finishes a small writing retreat on his land east of Chapel Hill

Playwright Paul Green finishes a small building for study and writing on the tract he had bought about two years earlier beyond the Strowd farm, between the Durham and Raleigh roads. He meant to build a family house near it later.

Popular Government launches a campaign for an Institute of Government building

The April 1935 issue spread across its center pages a drawing of a three-story 'governmental laboratory building' by the university's architects, Atwood and Weeks, and opened a public drive for funds. Coates told Roscoe Pound that building-supply dealers would donate the materials.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

The Hill family gives the Carolina Inn to the university

John Sprunt Hill and his family gave the Carolina Inn, which he had built in 1924, to the university on the condition that its income support the North Carolina Collection.

Subject: The Carolina Inn · UNC Libraries

Dr. Charles Mangum outlines a proposed federally aided health district tied to UNC training

Dr. Charles S. Mangum described a proposed public health district of Orange, Person and Caswell counties, largely paid for by the U.S. Public Health Service. It would also train health officers, sanitary inspectors, public health nurses and secretaries, building on UNC's 1934 to 1935 public health administration courses.

People: Charles S. (Charles Staples) Mangum

Temporary county health unit starts work in Orange during a typhoid outbreak

Because typhoid fever had appeared in the county, a temporary health organization, set up as part of the planned district unit, began operating in Orange County on July 1, 1935. Its staff were acting health officer Dr. G. A. Sumner (lent by the State Board of Health), acting health nurse Marie Strickland, secretary Ida Lloyd and sanitary inspector E. B. Caruthers.

Orange-Person District Health Department organized with Dr. Malcolm Rourk as health officer

Full-time public health service began in Orange County on July 1, 1935, when a temporary unit under Dr. G. H. Sumner of the State Board of Health answered a typhoid outbreak. By August the district health department for Orange and Person counties was organized as a model unit linked to UNC's public health teaching, with Dr. Malcolm Henderson Rourk as district health officer, sanitary inspector E. B. Caruthers, and a public health nurse and clerk in each county. The district officer also took over Chapel Hill's municipal health authority.

The county board hires builders for White Oak Grove, Sartin, Piney Mountain and New Branch schools

After architect H. D. Carter ran the bidding, the board chose the contractors Forrest and Roberts to build a two-room White Oak Grove School and add second rooms to Sartin and Piney Mountain schools, all for Black children, and W. H. Woods to build a one-room New Branch School.

Subject: Piney Mountain School · White Oak Grove School

Grace E. Holcombe revives home demonstration work in Orange County

Hired jointly by Orange and Chatham counties, Holcombe organized four home demonstration clubs and nine 4-H clubs within a year. By 1941, under her successor Woodward Byars, the county had 17 home demonstration clubs.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

The Institute prints 250,000 copies of a highway safety issue of Popular Government

The September 1935 issue was given over to traffic safety, using fatality figures gathered by law student Harry McGalliard at a time when North Carolina had the most deaths per mile driven. Standard Oil helped pay for a pocket-size 32-page edition sent to high schools, police departments and civic groups.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

Trustees offer land and the PWA approves a grant for an Institute of Government building

University trustees agreed to give the Institute a site valued at $15,000 on the western edge of the campus south of the Carolina Inn, the building to go to the university if the Institute ended. The Public Works Administration approved $55,498 for labor, one of 52 grants from 300 applications in the state, toward a building then estimated at $123,000.

People: Albert Coates · Frank Porter Graham · Herman G. Baity

Subject: Institute of Government

A state mental health survey finds the Efland Home's building failing its girls

At Hilda Allen's request, the state welfare board's Division of Mental Health studied the home in November 1935. It urged more vocational training, and reported one bathroom for all, a furnace idle every winter because the basement flooded, a pump that often failed, and barbed wire over every window to stop runaways, which it advised removing.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A WPA-funded auditorium wing is added to Murphey School

A 30-by-80-foot brick auditorium with a Doric portico was built onto the west end of the school with federal WPA money, together with a water tank, a new sewer and plumbing system, and repairs to the teacherage, for $16,365. George W. Kane was the general contractor, and the county board inspected and accepted the auditorium on June 1, 1936.

Subject: Murphey School

A federal WPA grant pays for ten Orange County school building projects

A federal grant of $155,454 to the county school board in 1936 paid for new buildings at West Hillsboro School, Hillsboro Negro School and Chapel Hill High School, and for additions and updated equipment at Murphey, Carrboro, Aycock, St. Mary's, Orange Grove, Chapel Hill Negro School and Hillsboro schools.

Subject: West End Graded School (West Hillsborough School)

A state survey finds only one brick building among Orange County's 28 schools for Black children

The state's administrative survey of Orange County school units, compiled from 1934-35 figures, counted 28 schools for Black pupils, all but one of them frame, and rated 19 in bad condition. White pupils by then attended ten consolidated schools, and all but one of their twelve buildings were brick.

Betty Smith comes to Chapel Hill with the Federal Theatre Project

The Federal Theater sent Smith to Chapel Hill in 1936 to work with Frederick H. Koch of the Carolina Playmakers. She stayed when the federal project expired, helped Koch compile American Folk Plays and took his classes for him in his absence.

People: Frederick H. Koch

Subject: Carolina Playmakers

Dillard Gardner sells Institute of Government memberships to cities and counties

Taking a city manager's suggestion, Coates offered local governments yearly 'unit memberships' priced by population, from $413 for Charlotte to $7.50 for the smallest towns, covering guidebooks, the magazine, legislative bulletins and staff help. Gardner set out in the winter of 1936 and enrolled more than a hundred cities, towns and counties; memberships brought in over $10,000 in 1937.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

Dr. Bryan Roberts buys the Roulhac-Hamilton House and remakes it as a brick Colonial Revival house

In 1936 the Hamilton heirs sold the old Laburnum Cottage on West Tryon Street to Dr. Bryan Roberts and his wife. About 1940 they covered it in brick veneer and added a new Colonial Revival entrance and a two-story rear wing, leaving little of the 1840s house visible.

Subject: Roulhac-Hamilton House (Laburnum Cottage)

Former summer school and education dean N. W. Walker dies

Walker had headed the university's summer school and its school of education until he retired with a heart ailment in the summer of 1934. After his death his house at 517 East Rosemary Street was sold to education professor Guy B. Phillips, and Albert and Gladys Coates stayed on in the cottage behind it.

Subject: University Summer School

Hillsboro High School gets an addition built with PWA money

An addition to the Hillsboro high school was under construction in May 1936 as part of the county's $346,000 school building program, paid for partly by a federal Public Works Administration grant.

Subject: Hillsborough High School

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.

Lebanon Methodist Church loses its old building

The old church of the Lebanon congregation, one of the rural churches tied to the Hillsborough charge, was destroyed in 1936.

Mr. and Mrs. James Webb Cheshire buy Over-the-River

The Norwood house across the Eno, which James Webb Jr. and his wife had bought in 1848, was sold in 1936 to Mr. and Mrs. James Webb Cheshire.

Subject: Over-the-River (Norwood-Webb-Cheshire House)

Oak Grove Baptist Church is organized

Oak Grove Baptist Church was organized in 1936, led by Robert A. Thompson, Jesse E. Sykes, Woody Thompson and M. E. Thompson.

Orange County builds a brick school for Black students in Hillsboro

Under a PWA-aided building program the county built an eight-room brick school for Black children in Hillsboro in 1935-36, with an auditorium, steam heat and plumbing. High school grades are first reported there for 1938-39, as the Hillsborough High School for Negroes; it became Central High School.

Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough

Passenger trains stop running on the University Railroad

Mixed passenger service on the ten-mile line between University Station and Carrboro ended as car ownership spread and roads improved, leaving the line to freight.

Subject: University Station

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.

S. H. Hobbs Jr. buys an Orange County farm for agricultural experiments

The rural sociologist acquired a farm in Orange County in 1936 to use for agricultural experimentation.

St. Mary's School gets a WPA brick auditorium

St. Mary's School, a Colonial Revival brick school built in 1931 near Murphey School to replace a log schoolhouse, received a Neoclassical brick auditorium in 1936 through the same WPA program, plainer than the one at Murphey.

Subject: St. Mary's School

The Berry Brick House leaves the Berry family after 131 years

The Berry family sold the West Queen Street brick house in 1936 to Mr. and Mrs. F. S. McLarty, who added rear dormers and perhaps the front ones. The McLartys sold it in 1943 to Mr. and Mrs. F. Ross Porter.

Subject: Berry Brick House

The Durham Bank and Trust Company buys the Bank of Orange

The Bank of Orange stayed independent until 1936, when the Durham Bank and Trust Company bought it. Its assets were about $750,000 at the sale.

The PWA withdraws its grant for the Institute of Government building

Coates won two thirty-day extensions, the first from President Roosevelt at Senator Josiah Bailey's request, and in February 1936 was allowed to let a contract on his word that the money was in hand. The promised materials and cash never fully came through, and in the summer of 1936 PWA administrator H. G. Baity rescinded the grant; a brief revival by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes in 1937 also failed.

People: Albert Coates · Herman G. Baity

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

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 sheriff stops serving as the county's tax collector

The sheriff had collected Orange County's taxes since colonial days, and that ended in 1936, with collection moving to the county accountant's office. Carl C. Davis became tax collector in 1938.

UNC Press publishes Odum's Southern Regions of the United States

The University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill published Odum's Southern Regions of the United States, a 664-page study of social conditions across the South prepared for the Social Science Research Council's Southern Regional Committee.

Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events

West End Graded School is built on the old Cadwallader Jones homesite

A larger one-story brick Colonial Revival school for grades one through six, six classrooms and an auditorium, was built in 1936 to replace the two-story frame West End School on Bellevue Avenue, which became a community club building. It stood on the highest ground in West Hillsborough, inside a low stone wall, where the Cadwallader Jones house had stood.

Subject: West End Graded School (West Hillsborough School)

William Meade Prince moves back to Chapel Hill to teach art

The illustrator William Meade Prince and his wife, Lillian Hughes Prince, moved from Westport, Connecticut, to Chapel Hill, where he became a lecturer in the university's art department.

People: Lillian Hughes Prince

Dr. W. P. Richardson becomes health officer of the district serving Orange

Richardson followed Dr. M. H. Rourk, who left in February 1936, and served until Dr. O. D. Garvin replaced him in 1944.

People: William P. Richardson

Grace Beatty appointed supervising nurse of the district health unit

Acting district health officer Dr. William P. Richardson appointed Grace Beatty, who held a master's degree in public health nursing from Columbia, as supervising nurse under an enlarged program funded by Social Security money. By July 1936 the Orange-Person staff of 11 included staff nurses Agnes Tolbert in Chapel Hill and Ruth O'Briant and Lieotta Hall in Roxboro.

People: William P. Richardson

The county school board buys land for a new Black school in Hillsboro

The Orange County Board of Education bought the Hillsboro colored school site from Louis Wilson and George Mayo, paying $1,100 to each. The new school for Black students went up there that year.

Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough

The county board applies for home economics and agriculture teachers at Hillsboro School

The board voted in April 1936 to apply for teachers of agriculture and home economics at the Hillsboro School, while seeking federal funds for new buildings and additions.

Subject: Hillsborough High School

Carl Snavely leaves UNC for Cornell after the Graham Plan dispute

Snavely did not see eye to eye with university president Frank Porter Graham, whose Graham Plan would have reduced the place of big-time football at UNC and across the Southern Conference. Snavely left Chapel Hill in April 1936 to become head coach at Cornell University.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Carolina Coach Company opens a new bus station at Rosemary and Columbia streets

Carolina Coach Company moved Chapel Hill's bus station from East Franklin Street to new quarters at the corner of Rosemary Lane and Columbia Street, opened the week of April 24, 1936. It ran ten round trips a day to Durham and four between Raleigh and Greensboro through Chapel Hill.

Health officer reports on the preschool clinics in Chapel Hill and Carrboro

The health department finished its round of preschool clinics, with 25 children at the Chapel Hill clinic and 34 at Carrboro. Health officer W. P. Richardson credited a committee of women with much of the success and reported that 56 correctible defects were found among 38 of the 59 children examined.

Part of Public health in rural Orange County · 26 events

Paul and Elizabeth Green sell their village home and lay out a new house east of town

Paul and Elizabeth Green sell their home in the Glen to Mr. and Mrs. J. Manson Valentine and, with advice from a landscape architect, site a family house, gardens and outbuildings on their tract east of the village, hoping to move in by September.

People: Elizabeth Lay Green

First field training course for North Carolina public health workers held in the Orange-Person District

A month-long field training course for 29 new public health workers (14 nurses, 6 sanitary officers, 4 sanitary engineers and 5 health officers), described as the first in North Carolina, ended in Chapel Hill in early July 1936 under Dr. William P. Richardson. The Orange-Person and Durham health departments then ran as a joint field training center, and by July 1937 it had trained 109 workers.

People: William P. Richardson

The school library at Hillsborough High School for Negroes also served as the public library for Black residents

Hillsborough's new school for Black students, a Public Works Administration building of eight classrooms and an auditorium, was put up in 1936 and ready in July on land bought from Louis Wilson and George Mayo, and its library served the local Black community as a public library. Albert L. Stanback became principal in 1942 and had the school renamed Central High School in 1943.

Part of Segregated schooling and the rise of Lincoln and Central High Schools · 45 events

Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough

Harry Stern moves his Carolina Grill into a new building on East Franklin Street

Harry Stern moved his Carolina Grill, a restaurant and delicatessen, into a larger new building that T. C. Atwood put up on the lot next to the Model Market. The Weekly counted it among the year's new business buildings.

Hope Summerell Chamberlain talks about Old Days in Chapel Hill at the Bull's Head Bookshop

The Bull's Head Bookshop on the ground floor of the University Library announced a Tuesday afternoon talk by Chamberlain about her book, with autographed copies on sale for $1.35.

Subject: UNC Libraries

A puppet Hansel and Gretel is staged in Adeline McCall's music series for children

The Music Club and the Parent-Teacher Association presented Hansel and Gretel, a puppet show with music, at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 1936, in Hill Music Hall. It was the fifth in a series of music events for children under Adeline McCall's direction, and elementary school children sang songs from Humperdinck's opera.

Subject: Hill Hall

Betty Smith edits a collection of plays with Frederick Koch and Robert Finch

Smith coedited Plays for Schools and Little Theatres with Koch and Finch in 1937 and wrote a catalog of one-act plays.

Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events

People: Frederick H. Koch

Brickmason Roosevelt Warner builds his own house on West Corbin Street

Roosevelt Warner, a Black brickmason, built himself a two-story brick Colonial Revival house at 117 West Corbin Street, with a garage apartment of brick and glazed tile behind it. He also laid brick for other Hillsborough houses and in 1963 became the first Black town commissioner.

Daniel Huston Buchanan builds a two-story house with a gallery on Laurel Hill Road

The Buchanan house, of stone and weatherboard with a two-story pedimented gallery, is one of the Colonial Revival houses of Rocky Ridge Farm's second building period, 1936-40.

Dudley Carroll builds a red brick house on Country Club Road

A red brick Colonial Revival house with an asymmetrical front and a fanlighted entry went up for Dudley Carroll in Rocky Ridge Farm's second building period.

Dudley D. Carroll chairs the Orange County Building and Loan Association

Carroll was a director of the Orange County Building and Loan Association from 1920 to 1950 and chaired its board from 1937. He also chaired the county draft board and the county ABC board.

G. C. Kennedy and Sons build the Piedmont Packing Company plant north of Hillsborough

The meat packing plant about five miles north of Hillsborough was first built in 1937 and later enlarged. It held state permit No. 18, employed about 40 people and supplied markets from Hillsborough to Raleigh.

Guion Griffis Johnson serves as president of the Chapel Hill PTA

Guion Griffis Johnson was president of the Chapel Hill PTA in 1937–1938 and a district PTA officer the following year.

Lebanon Methodist Church puts up a new building

A year after its old church was destroyed, the Lebanon congregation built a new one, seating 250.

The Historic American Buildings Survey records the academy barracks

By the Depression the empty Barracks of the old military academy sheltered homeless families. In 1937 the Historic American Buildings Survey measured and photographed it, a year before it was torn down.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Parks family sells the Parks-Richmond House to J. W. and Marguerite Richmond

The house at 175 West King Street, which D. C. Parks had used as the office, reception room and dining room of his hotel, stayed in the Parks family until 1937, when it was sold to J. W. and Marguerite Richmond. It now operates as the Inn at Teardrops.

The Parks-Richmond kitchen is moved west to face South Wake Street

The kitchen of the Parks-Richmond House, built about 1870, is moved west around 1937 and becomes a house fronting South Wake Street.

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.

The university names its new gymnasium for Charles T. Woollen

The university named its new gymnasium for Charles T. Woollen, its longtime registrar, business manager and comptroller, who had advocated for the building and helped oversee its construction. He died the following year.

Subject: Woollen Gymnasium

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.

Subject: Walker’s Funeral Home

Walnut Grove Methodist Church replaces its wooden church with a stone one

On May 4, 1937 the Walnut Grove congregation in northern Orange began building a rubble-stone Gothic Revival church, with buttresses and stained glass, from fieldstone that local farmers gathered, to replace its frame church of the early 1890s. The church was dedicated on April 14, 1942.

Subject: Walnut Grove Methodist Church

William Van Sprinkle designs a brick Colonial Revival house on Pine Lane for Richmond and Marjorie Bond

Contractors Ellington & Sparrow built the five-part brick house, a story-and-a-half main block with lower wings joined by hyphens. It is the oldest house in the Laurel Hill boundary increase, and the nomination ranks it the best of the neighborhood's later Colonial Revival houses.

William de Berniere MacNider serves as dean of the UNC School of Medicine

MacNider succeeded Charles Staples Mangum as dean of the medical school in 1937 and resigned the deanship in 1940 to return to research.

People: Charles S. (Charles Staples) Mangum

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

The Institute of Government opens its first ten-day school for police officers

Sixty-one lawmen, about a quarter of them police chiefs, attended, taught in part by instructors lent by the FBI's new National Police Academy. J. Edgar Hoover then gave agent Edward Scheidt, a former Coates student, a year's paid leave to write Institute guidebooks on arrest, search and seizure, and crime detection.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

Ben Johnson, born enslaved near Hillsborough, recalls the Klan lynching of Cyrus Guy for a WPA interviewer

Interviewed at 85 in Hecktown, Durham, by Federal Writers' Project worker Mary A. Hicks, Johnson said the Ku Klux came for Cy Guy a hundred strong, tried him in the woods and hanged him over the road. He said nobody would touch the body for four days, until the sheriff took it down.

Hilda Allen resigns as superintendent, leaving Lula Henderson in charge of the Efland Home

Saying she could not handle all her duties, Hilda C. Allen resigned in early May 1937 after making real gains in the home's conditions, and matron Lula Henderson took charge.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

State inspectors find the Efland Home failing and tell its board to fund it or close it

State welfare agents W. C. Ezell and T. L. Grier visited on July 2, 1937, and found the heat, plumbing and building in poor repair, about twenty acres in crops, the only cow dead and the mules unfit. Grier judged the home was not rehabilitating its girls and told the federation's board to raise enough money to fix it or shut it down.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The county welfare department is reorganized under Social Security

A new three-member welfare board of O. L. Crabtree, Bruce Strowd and Charlie McDade, a Black member, took charge, and W. T. Mattox became superintendent in July 1937. The office moved to Hillsborough that year and kept a branch in Chapel Hill.

Farm women open the Orange County curb market in Carrboro

A curb market run by Orange County farm women opened in the former McCauley store in Carrboro, selling vegetables, fruit, chickens, eggs, sausage, preserves and canned goods. It was organized with the county home demonstration agent, with thirteen women signed on as sellers before opening.

Subject: Carrboro Farmers’ Market · Home demonstration clubs

The first of the new women's dormitories, later Alderman Residence Hall, opens

Built in 1937 with Public Works Administration money, the university's new women's dormitory, later named for Edwin Alderman for his support of women's education, was occupied by September 1937. Two more women's dormitories, later Kenan and McIver, opened in September 1939.

Lloyd descendants dedicate a memorial stone to Thomas Lloyd north of Chapel Hill

The Thomas Lloyd Memorial Association set up a granite marker to Thomas Lloyd near Old Highway 86 at Stony Hill Road, northwest of Calvander. Its inscription mixes in details from the life of a different Thomas Lloyd of New Hanover County.

People: Archibald Henderson

Chatham County joins the Orange-Person Health District

District health officer Dr. William P. Richardson announced that Chatham County had joined the Orange-Person Health District, which would provide a physician, a nurse and a sanitary officer for the new county. The State Board of Health had kept a nurse in Chatham for the past year with U.S. Children's Bureau funds.

People: William P. Richardson

Second Baptist Church is organized in Chapel Hill

A second Black Baptist congregation was organized in Chapel Hill and put up its building in April 1938.

The first air mail leaves Chapel Hill by plane

Mayor Foushee, Postmaster Robert A. Eubanks, Assistant Postmaster William S. Hogan and other residents went to the airport to see off the first mail to leave Chapel Hill by plane.

Subject: Horace Williams Airport

Louis H. Hackney dies in Chapel Hill

Louis H. Hackney, pastor, principal of the Quaker school from 1898 to 1912 and founder of Hackney's Educational and Industrial School, died in Chapel Hill on December 19, 1937. He was buried in the segregated Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Archaeologists excavate the wall site believing it to be Occaneechi Town

Joffre Coe began digging a village site on a bend of the Eno at Hillsborough in 1938 in the belief that it was the town John Lawson visited in 1701, and Robert Wauchope carried the work on in 1940 and 1941 with federal funding. A state highway marker for the Occaneechi village was erected at Hillsborough in 1941. The village Coe had found was in fact an earlier settlement of about 1400 to 1600.