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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,531 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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12 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,531 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–12.Back to highlights

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12 dated events
1919Early twentieth century
  1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  2. The university hires Aberthaw and McKim, Mead and White for its expansion

    Appointment, election or service · UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    For the postwar building program the university engaged the Aberthaw firm in 1919 to survey the campus and rework its plan, and by May 1920 it had retained the New York firm of McKim, Mead and White, led by William Kendall, as consulting architects for red brick Colonial Revival buildings. Local supervision came later, under Thomas C. Atwood from 1921, with H. P. Alan Montgomery and, from 1922, Arthur C. Nash.

    People: Arthur Cleveland Nash · Thomas C. Atwood

  3. The trustees' building committee names Durham engineer Thomas C. Atwood its executive agent

    Appointment, election or service · UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    Atwood ran the campus expansion on the ground, hiring engineers, draftsmen, an inspector, the architect H. P. Alan Montgomery and the Charlotte contractor T. C. Thompson. Nash replaced Montgomery the next year.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

  4. Arthur Cleveland Nash comes to Chapel Hill as the university's architect

    Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill

    Nash moved to Chapel Hill in 1922 to serve as architect for the University of North Carolina during its major expansion, working with the builder Thomas C. Atwood and the consulting firm McKim, Mead and White of New York.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

  5. Murphey, Saunders and Manning halls are designed in the university's building office

    Construction or physical change · Polk Place, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    On the east side of the new south quadrangle, H. P. Alan Montgomery, architect in the university's building office under Thomas C. Atwood, laid out a smaller court of classroom buildings, with McKim, Mead and White as consulting architects: Murphey Hall for languages and literature, Saunders Hall (now Carolina Hall) for history and social science, and Manning Hall, with an Ionic portico and cupola, for the law school.

    People: Arthur Cleveland Nash · Thomas C. Atwood

    Subject: UNC School of Law

  6. Thomas C. Atwood and Arthur C. Nash form the firm Atwood and Nash, Architects and Engineers

    Founding or opening · Alumni Building, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    The firm served as the university's local architects and engineers through the 1920s building campaign, working under McKim, Mead and White's William Kendall. It kept its office in the Alumni Building and another in Durham.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

    Subject: Alumni Building

  7. University architect Thomas C. Atwood builds a duplex on Ridge Lane for his firm's workers

    Construction or physical change · 106 Ridge Lane, Gimghoul, Chapel Hill

    Thomas C. Atwood, supervising architect for the 1920s campus building program, built a one-story frame duplex in the Gimghoul subdivision to house employees of Atwood and Nash. It stayed a duplex until the 1970s, when it became a single-family house.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

    Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

  8. Chi Psi announces a Norman-style house for West Cameron Avenue

    Construction or physical change · 321 West Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill

    Chi Psi announced plans for a $50,000 Norman-style stone house by the university architects Atwood and Nash on the old McCauley place on Cameron Avenue. The design broke with the campus's Colonial theme: steep slate roof, casement windows with stone trim, an arched entrance and a stone terrace. The old McCauley house, the chapter's home, burned on Christmas night 1929, and in November 1930 the chapter was still without a new house.

    People: William Chambers Coker · Arthur Cleveland Nash · Thomas C. Atwood

  9. Thomas C. Atwood reports that Memorial Hall could collapse

    Chapel Hill

    After President Chase closed Memorial Hall over a bulge in its slate roof, university architect Thomas C. Atwood found the bases of the wooden roof arches rotted to powder. In a late November report to the building committee he warned that the building could fall at any minute and endanger passersby.

    People: Harry Woodburn Chase

    Subject: Memorial Hall

  10. Thomas Atwood's new firm, Atwood and Weeks, moves from Chapel Hill to Durham

    Closing or ending · Chapel Hill and Durham

    With campus building stopped by the 1929 crash and Nash retiring, Atwood took H. Raymond Weeks as his partner and moved the practice to Durham. Weeks succeeded Nash as university architect, with Nash advising him until 1953.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

  11. Chapel Hill builds a new town hall with WPA help

    Construction or physical change · 100 West Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill

    The Works Progress Administration paid about half the cost of the town hall at 100 West Rosemary Street, on the site of the town's first town hall; it went into use in late March 1939. University architects Atwood and Weeks designed the two-story brick building in a Williamsburg-inspired Colonial style with a hipped slate roof, cupola and swan's-neck pediment.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

    Subject: Chapel Hill Town Hall (1938)

  12. Lenoir Hall is built as the new campus dining hall

    Construction or physical change · Lenoir Hall, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    Atwood and Weeks designed Lenoir Hall, a red brick dining hall with large windows near Wilson Library, completed in 1939.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

    Subject: Lenoir Hall

  13. Engineer Thomas C. Atwood dies, ending the firm of Atwood and Weeks

    Life event · Chapel Hill

    Atwood's death in 1943 closed the partnership that had carried out much of the university's building since the 1920s.

    People: Thomas C. Atwood

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026