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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–18.Back to highlights
- Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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William C. Coker begins turning a boggy pasture into the campus arboretum
UNC's first professor of botany began developing a five-acre boggy pasture on the campus into an outdoor classroom for the study of trees, shrubs and vines native to North Carolina. From the 1920s through the 1940s he added many East Asian trees and shrubs.
Subject: Coker Arboretum
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Botanist William C. Coker builds his house at The Rocks
At The Rocks, his estate north of the village (now 609 North Street), botanist William Coker built a stuccoed two-story house raised on a high stone base, with wide eaves and a fieldstone wainscot. Little finds it the nearest thing in Chapel Hill to Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie houses; its architect is unknown.
People: William Chambers Coker
Subject: The Rocks (William C. Coker House)
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UNC sets up a separate botany department with Coker as its chair
By 1908 William C. Coker, who had come to the university as an associate professor in 1902, was a full professor and chair of the newly established Botany Department, housed in Davie Hall.
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President Edward K. Graham engages planner John Nolen to study the campus
Urged by a faculty grounds committee of W. C. Coker, George Howe and Collier Cobb, formed in 1913, and after the trustees endorsed a full campus plan in spring 1916, Graham brought in the national planner John Nolen. Between 1917 and 1919 Nolen studied the campus and recommended building out the land south of South Building, the direction the 1920s expansion took.
People: Collier Cobb · William Chambers Coker · George Howe
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William C. Coker directs a university bureau for school grounds
Coker set up and ran the UNC Extension Division's Bureau of Design and Improvement of School Grounds, which sent plans and a field assistant to schools around the state; 33 towns were helped in 1920-21. In 1921 the bureau began advising on home and factory grounds as well.
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Louis R. Wilson and W. C. Coker are raised to Kenan professorships
At the 1920 commencement meeting the trustees made librarian Louis Round Wilson and botanist William C. Coker Kenan professors, in the same action that recognized Horace Williams.
People: William Chambers Coker
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William C. Coker's committee is put in charge of the care of the whole campus
After Coker drew his 'Plan A' for siting dormitories on the campus's east side, the grounds and buildings committee in December 1922 gave him and a subcommittee charge of the care and improvement of the entire campus, with its own budget. The nomination calls him in effect the university's first resident planner.
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William C. Coker gives the Chapel Hill Country Club land for a clubhouse and golf course
By early 1923 Coker had given the new Chapel Hill Country Club its grounds south of the campus. The clubhouse went up that spring and the golf course over the next two years. The land later passed to the university and is used for tennis courts and a greenway park; the Laurel Hill subdivision was laid out along the course.
People: William Chambers Coker
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William C. Coker plats the Laurel Hill subdivision
On his land southeast of the campus, Coker had T. Felix Hickerson lay out Laurel Hill Road along a ridge beside the golf course, with short cul-de-sacs and large lots. Coker approved every house plan and seems to have sent builders to Atwood and Nash; seven houses were built before the 1929 crash.
People: William Chambers Coker · Thomas F. (Thomas Felix) Hickerson
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William C. Coker's Rocky Ridge lot deeds restrict the race of residents
In selling the lots of his Rocky Ridge Farm development, Coker wrote covenants into the deeds that set the number of buildings, the cost of houses and, in the early deeds, the race of the residents. These private restrictions governed the neighborhood before Chapel Hill had residential zoning.
People: William Chambers Coker
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W. C. Coker buys Dr. Jones's Gothic cottage, which becomes the Chi Psi fraternity house
In 1928 W. C. Coker bought the property at 321 West Cameron Avenue, and the 1850s Gothic cottage of Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones became the Chi Psi fraternity's house.
People: William Chambers Coker
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Chi Psi announces a Norman-style house for West Cameron Avenue
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
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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)
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Citizens buy land for a Negro Community Center
Ten Chapel Hill men, among them Louis Graves, R. B. House and Paul Wager, signed a $1,500 note at the Bank of Chapel Hill to buy about five acres of the old Craig place at the west end of Rosemary Lane for a Black community center. The project grew out of concerns raised by the Negro Civic Club.
People: William Chambers Coker · Louis Graves
Subject: Hargraves Community Center
- Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Morgan Creek Hills subdivision begins beside the new 15-501 Bypass
Work on Morgan Creek Hills, on the south side of the 15-501 Bypass, started while the bypass itself was being built between 1952 and 1954. The land had several owners, among them William Chambers Coker and Bill Hunt, and the neighborhood filled in over many years with large houses on rough, hilly lots.
People: William Chambers Coker
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William C. Coker dies and leaves his land north of town to Coker College
At his death in 1953, botanist and real estate developer William Chambers Coker left a large tract along Estes Drive, including the land around Eastwood Lake, to Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina. The college later had the land developed, producing Coker Hills and Lake Forest.
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UNC completes Coker Hall and names it for William C. Coker
The university completed a new building in 1963 and named it Coker Hall for William Chambers Coker, Kenan professor of botany and long-time head of the buildings and grounds committee.
- Recent decades · 1976–2026
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The Rocks in Chapel Hill and Cedar Grove School join the Study List
Among nine central and southeastern public requests approved on October 12, 2017 were William C. Coker's house, The Rocks, in Chapel Hill and the Cedar Grove School north of Hillsborough. The same meeting placed the Hillsborough survey's Ja-Max Motor Lodge and Military Academy dining hall site on the list.
People: William Chambers Coker
Subject: Cedar Grove schools · The Rocks (William C. Coker House) · Ja-Max Motor Lodge
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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 2, 2026.
