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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1940s
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District health department X-ray unit offers free chest X-rays in Chapel Hill
The Orange-Chatham-Person Health Department's X-ray unit operated at the Chapel Hill health department from March 13 to 20, 1946, offering free chest X-rays for tuberculosis to any Orange County resident. Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin urged residents to use it.
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Swalin's newly professional North Carolina Symphony plays Memorial Hall
Benjamin Swalin brought the North Carolina Symphony to Memorial Hall after an expansion campaign that let him hire a professional orchestra for the first time. The Daily Tar Heel's critic, a longtime skeptic, wrote that it had become the most capable musical organization then playing in the state.
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Mrs. Collier Cobb sells the Cobb Terrace bungalows to private owners
Collier Cobb had kept the Aladdin kit bungalows at the north end of Henderson Street as rentals for young faculty. After his death in 1934 his widow kept them until April 1946, when she offered them for sale, first to the tenants and then to other faculty; by late June nine of the eleven had been sold.
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The old Pre-Flight Armory reopens as a Scuttlebutt snack bar and bookstore
Instead of razing it for a dormitory, the university turned the Pre-Flight School's armory into a second Scuttlebutt, a soda fountain, bookstore and student hangout in the lower quadrangle.
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Lutherans organize Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chapel Hill
Holy Trinity, the first Lutheran congregation in Orange County, was organized with 34 charter members and D. P. Rudisill as pastor. Its building was consecrated on January 6, 1952.
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Poe-Mangum Auto Service finishes a showroom and parts wing at its West Franklin Street station
Bill Poe and Marvin Mangum added a DeSoto-Plymouth showroom and a parts department to their Pure Oil service station, stretching the building to a 140-foot front. The Weekly called it one of the biggest building projects in town since the war.
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Bayard Wootten shows her Mobile photographs at Person Hall
Bayard Wootten gave a talk, A Photographer Discusses Mobile in the Spring, in the small gallery at Person Hall, where a collection of the pictures she had made in Mobile that spring was on exhibit.
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The Institute of Government's first State Highway Patrol school opens in Chapel Hill
With money from the legislature to bring the Patrol back to its prewar strength, Governor Gregg Cherry's administration turned to the Institute, which offered an eight-week course for about a hundred recruits chosen from 1,300 applicants. Classes began on October 13, with instructors from the FBI, the State Bureau of Investigation, Northwestern University and New York University.
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Forty-four graduates of the Institute's Patrol school are sworn in as state troopers
Fifty-three men finished the first eight-week course, and 44 took the oath as State Highway Patrol officers on December 7; the other nine were hired as places opened within the year. After the 1947 legislature voted to double the Patrol, Sanford and Pace ran two more sessions.
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An Order of the Eastern Star chapter is established in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill gained a chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, twenty-two years after Hillsborough's.
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Architect James Webb moves to Chapel Hill to help start UNC's planning program
James Webb, an architect and planner trained at Berkeley and MIT who had worked for William Wurster, came to Chapel Hill in 1947 to help John Parker set up the university's program in city and regional planning. He taught there until 1975 and kept a private practice that brought San Francisco Bay area modernism to the town.
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Brinkhous begins research on dogs that carry hemophilia
Brinkhous began studying canine carriers of hemophilia in 1947. The work led to the laboratory now called the Francis Owen Blood Research Laboratory and to UNC's hemophilia research and treatment center.
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Clyde Roberts wins the Bank of Chapel Hill corn growing contest
The Bank of Chapel Hill sponsored a yearly corn contest with at least 50 entrants. In 1947 Clyde Roberts won with 93.3 bushels of N. C. Hybrid 26 on one acre, against a contest average of 61.9.
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General Assembly funds the Good Health Plan's four-year medical school and teaching hospital
The General Assembly appropriated money in 1947 to expand the UNC medical school at Chapel Hill to four years, enlarge the medical sciences building, and build a 400-bed hospital, a School of Nursing and staff residence halls. The plan grew out of a study commission Governor J. Melville Broughton created in 1944.
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Local 403 petitions for student support in a campaign over university wages
After the legislature approved a 20 percent raise for state employees and the university dropped a wartime bonus, Local 403 workers circulated petitions and flyers asking students for support. Under shop steward Rebecca Clark laundry workers won wage increases, safer workspaces and better schedules.
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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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North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the medical center, from
The Good Health Plan of 1947 funded a four-year medical school and teaching hospital at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina Memorial Hospital admitted its first patients in September 1952. It ended racial segregation in 1965, became UNC Hospitals in 1989 and the UNC Health Care System in 1998, and with the cancer and neurosciences hospitals made the town a medical center employing about 7,000 people by 2010.
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Orange County breeders organize the Spotted Poland China Breeders Association
Hog breeders formed a county Spotted Poland China association in 1947, building on 4-H pig chains started by the Chapel Hill Rotary Club and the Sears-Roebuck Foundation. It had 65 members four years later.
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The first section of the new Chapel Hill High School opens on West Franklin Street
After five years in borrowed rooms, Chapel Hill's white high school moved into a new building on West Franklin Street, whose first section was paid for largely with insurance money from the 1942 fire. That section was nearly ready in late 1946, and the 1947 school year opened with an assembly in front of the new building.
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Journey of Reconciliation comes to Chapel Hill
Interracial riders testing segregation on interstate buses reached Chapel Hill on April 12, 1947. The next day police arrested four of them at the bus station and a white cab driver struck rider James Peck. Convicted in Orange County, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joe Felmet surrendered at the Hillsborough courthouse on March 21, 1949 to serve chain-gang sentences.
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Joseph Felmet is tried in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on the bus seating charge and sentenced to the roads
Felmet's trial, put off in May while Bayard Rustin and Igal Roodenko were tried, was held in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on June 24, 1947. He was sentenced to the county roads, appealed to Superior Court and posted a $50 bond.
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A bronze plaque honoring Lt. George Howard Jr. is placed at the Naval Armory
A plaque to naval officer Lt. George Howard Jr. was put up under the armory's portico, where it still hangs.
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Mrs. Walter D. Toy sells her West Franklin Street home for business use
Mrs. Walter D. Toy sold the house she and her late husband had owned since the late 1890s to Margaret Davis Haywood of Durham, and the lot was to be used for business. The Weekly tied the sale to the business district's spread west along Franklin Street and noted talk of an A&P store on the site.
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Dr. S. A. Nathan opens the Curve Inn, a curb-service stand on Strowd Hill
Dr. S. A. Nathan opened the Curve Inn, a curb-service place on the Durham road halfway down Strowd Hill, with his son Marx as co-manager. It sold beer, sandwiches and fried chicken and was known for the pronto pup, a batter-dipped hot dog.
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Chapel Hill NAACP holds its first meeting at the Community Center
On October 23, 1947, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP held its first official meeting at the Negro Community Center, now the Hargraves Center. The branch, which marked 75 years in 2022, gave Black residents a civil-rights organization apart from church and school.
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The League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill applies for recognition
Thirty-three women applied for provisional status as the League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill, raising the required finance money that fall. The league later became the League of Women Voters of the Chapel Hill Area in 1997 and of Orange, Durham and Chatham Counties in 2001.
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Architect James Webb designs a modernist house on Round Hill Road for Norman Eliason
One of Webb's first Chapel Hill commissions was a modest low-gabled house for English professor Norman Eliason and his wife, with a broad carport at the front and a covered walk leading to the door.
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Carl Boettcher carves the Circus Parade for the Circus Room
University woodcarver Carl Boettcher carved the Circus Parade, a redwood frieze nearly 25 feet long based on William Meade Prince's drawings, for the Circus Room snack bar in the Monogram Club building (now Jackson Hall).
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George Campbell and his father build a stone house on North Graham Street
On a lot owned by George Campbell, he and his father John Wesley Campbell, helped by the other Campbell sons, designed and built a small one-story fieldstone house at 203 North Graham Street, finished in 1948. It is the only one of the family's Northside stone houses whose stonework runs up into the gable.
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George Kirkland, Chapel Hill's first African American dentist, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
George Kirkland (1899-1948), the first Black dentist in Chapel Hill, was buried in the cemetery.
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J. L. Phelps wins the county corn contest with 136.4 bushels an acre
In the 1948 Bank of Chapel Hill contest eleven growers topped 100 bushels an acre. The winner, with 136.4 bushels, was J. L. Phelps, from the county's sandy tobacco section.
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James Welch Patton becomes director of the Southern Historical Collection
Patton succeeded J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton as director of the Southern Historical Collection at the UNC library and taught a North Carolina history course each year while he held the post.
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Ted Danziger names the passage to his Rathskeller Amber Alley
Danziger gave the name Amber Alley to the passageway off East Franklin Street that led down to his new Rathskeller. The Weekly said the name came from the yellow lanterns along its walls, not from the novel Forever Amber.
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Ted Danziger opens the Rathskeller in the basement of his father's candy shop
Edward Danziger's son Ted opened the Rathskeller in the basement of the Danziger candy store on Franklin Street. The Hall of Fame credits it with being the first local restaurant to serve draft beer.
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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.
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UNC re-establishes its School of Education
The university, which had discontinued its School of Education in 1933, set it up again at Chapel Hill in 1948.
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William Friday serves as assistant dean of students at UNC in Chapel Hill
After receiving his law degree from UNC in 1948, William Friday was assistant dean of students and later acting dean of students on the Chapel Hill campus until 1951, when he became assistant to Consolidated University president Gordon Gray.
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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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Fire damages the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house, the old Graham home on Battle Lane
A fire that began in the attic of the Alpha Gamma Delta house on Battle Lane, built for Edward Kidder Graham and still owned by his son, did about $6,000 in damage and left nine students without a home. Students carried out the furniture within ten minutes while a crowd of about 650 watched.
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An Orange County Superior Court jury convicts Felmet and the other three Chapel Hill bus defendants
A jury found Andrew S. Johnson, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joseph Felmet guilty of breaking the bus seating law, and Judge Chester Morris sentenced each to 30 days. The men, defended by C. J. Gates, Herman L. Taylor and E. R. Avent, appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court and posted bond.
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Political scientist Donald Hayman joins the Institute of Government staff
Recommended by political science chair Charles B. Robson when Coates wanted help screening Patrol recruits, Hayman was hired on the spot as an assistant director, the first non-lawyer on the staff since accountant T. N. Grice. He took the place of Terry Sanford, who had left to practice law in Fayetteville.
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The district board of health extends its ordinances to Lee County
The District Board of Health for Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties met at the Bank of Chapel Hill and extended the district's milk and excreta disposal ordinances to Lee County, which had joined the district in September 1946. Collier Cobb Jr. chaired the board.
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Health officer urges typhoid shots after a case in Hillsboro
District Health Officer O. David Garvin urged Orange County residents to take the health department's typhoid vaccinations after a case of typhoid fever occurred in Hillsboro. Clinics were held at the Chapel Hill and Hillsboro health departments on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, and he advised sound privies and tested water.
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Fowler's Food Store opens its new building on West Franklin Street
Fowler's Food Store, successor to the old Model Market, held a grand opening in a new 80-by-200-foot building on West Franklin Street, with a parking lot reaching through to Rosemary Street. Robert L. Fowler of Chapel Hill and Marvin M. Fowler of Durham owned the store.
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Piney Mountain School closes and its pupils go to Morris Grove School
The county consolidated Piney Mountain School, one of its Black schools, with Morris Grove School. A new gravel road into the area let a bus carry the children out; the school had been kept open only because no bus could reach it.
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Chapel Hill's polio quarantine on children is lifted
The month long mandatory quarantine of children sixteen and under, imposed during a polio outbreak in Chapel Hill and the vicinity, was ended, though District Health Officer O. David Garvin asked parents to keep children close to home and discouraged trips to the movies. He and the university physician notified the Veterans' Club and Graham Memorial that they could reopen.
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George Esser and Alexander McMahon join the Institute of Government
Recruited by Coates at Harvard Law School that spring, Esser and McMahon started the same day, joining new Carolina law graduates Donald McCoy and Dickson Phillips; Philip Green came a few months later. It was the largest group of assistant directors Coates had yet employed, and he put them to work on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg study.
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The university tears down the old Pre-Flight Armory on the day it was to meet student defenders
University officials bulldozed the former Pre-Flight Armory, then the Emerson Scuttlebutt, on the same day they were due to meet students petitioning to keep it, and did not come to the meeting. The administration said refreshments would move to the Monogram Club.
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Kay Kyser leads a rained-out pep rally in Memorial Hall
When rain cancelled the outdoor rally and torchlight parade before the Texas game, Kay Kyser, his wife Georgia Carroll and coach Carl Snavely entertained more than 1,800 students in a packed Memorial Hall.
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Carmichael serves as acting president of the consolidated university
Carmichael was acting president in 1949 and 1950, after Frank Porter Graham resigned to take a seat in the United States Senate.
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Chapel Hill builds a brick tool shed in the wall between the white and Black sections of the cemetery
In October 1949 the cemetery committee found the old tool shed past repair and asked for a brick one at a gap in the wall dividing the white and Black burial grounds. The small shed stands in the rubblestone wall that separates Section B from Section I.
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Henry Brandis becomes dean of the UNC law school
Brandis, the Institute's first associate director, was promoted from professor of law to dean in 1949. Under him the law school and the Institute drew closer, with Institute staff teaching Coates's classes when he was away.
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Jim and John Webb design the Spearman house, the first of their Whitehead Circle houses
The Webb firm designed a house at 418 Whitehead Circle for Walter Spearman of the UNC School of Journalism and his wife Mary, placed around a large rock that juts from the site. It was the first of five houses the brothers designed on the street.
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Jim and John Webb open their office in the old Methodist church on Rosemary Street
The brothers opened a planning and architecture practice in the left side of the 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets, which had been used as a garage. In the early 1970s they bought the building and turned all of it into offices.
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Joel Carter directs the Chapel Hill Choral Club
Joel Carter of the university's Music Department was musical director of the Chapel Hill Choral Club, a town choir founded in 1921, for fourteen years. The club's records he kept are now at Wilson Library.
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Miltos Tassos buys J. Edgar Merritt's West Franklin property and opens the Cafe Mouza
Tassos renovated the building he bought from Merritt, next to 107 West Franklin, and opened it as The Cafe Mouza.
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The Carl Smith Building is completed on North Columbia Street
Carl Smith's commercial building on North Columbia Street was completed in 1949; Gooch's Cafe moved in, and the area office of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis took rooms on the second floor.
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The Town of Chapel Hill buys land for a new cemetery for its Black residents
The town bought about ten acres of the former Roberson property, just beyond the railroad on the Carrboro side of town, for a segregated cemetery for Black residents. It became the West Chapel Hill Cemetery on Village Drive.
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The two Orange County dairy cooperatives merge and take the Long Meadow name
In 1949 the Latta and Farmers cooperatives merged and bought the Long Meadow Dairies plant in Durham County, taking its name. Processing stopped in Hillsborough and went on in Chapel Hill.
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UNC organizes the Division of Health Affairs
In 1949 the university grouped its schools of medicine, public health and pharmacy, the new schools of nursing and dentistry, and the University Hospital into a Division of Health Affairs to coordinate teaching and research.
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North Carolina Supreme Court upholds the convictions of Felmet and the other Chapel Hill bus riders
In State v. Johnson the court affirmed the Orange County convictions, holding that the state seating statutes applied unless the riders proved they were interstate passengers. The opinion, like the lower court record, spells his name Joseph A. Felmont.
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The county school board puts the Piney Mountain School site up for auction
The Board of Education advertised the two-acre Piney Mountain School site for public auction at the Hillsboro courthouse door, with its two one-room frame buildings to be sold apart from the land.
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A federal appeals court awards the Ackland Trust to the university at Chapel Hill
After Duke refused Ackland's bequest, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled for UNC-Chapel Hill over Rollins College, citing the university's finances, its graduate arts program and its nearness to Duke.
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Governor Kerr Scott appoints UNC President Frank Graham to the U.S. Senate
On March 22, 1949, Governor W. Kerr Scott named Frank Porter Graham to the United States Senate, ending his presidency of the university. Controller W. D. Carmichael Jr. became acting president.
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District health department takes UNC public health students for field training
Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin announced that the district health department would serve as a field training center for eight UNC public health students, four in health education and four in public health nursing, working for ten weeks across Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties.
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Orange County Training School is renamed Lincoln High School
In March 1949 the Parent-Teachers Association of the Orange County Training School, Chapel Hill's school for Black students, voted to rename it Lincoln High School and sent the request to the superintendent and school board. By May 13, 1949, the Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the name had been changed.
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Railway Express agent Lonas Williams starts Chapel Hill's first Lustron house, on Stephens Street
Lonas Williams and his wife began putting up a factory-made Lustron house of porcelain-enameled steel off Airport Road, the first of its kind in or near Chapel Hill. Mrs. Williams had read about the houses in Life, and the parts came by trailer from the Columbus, Ohio, plant through Taylor-Made Homes of Greensboro.
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Morehead Planetarium is dedicated
Morehead Planetarium was dedicated at UNC on May 10, 1949.
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The Chapel Hill Jaycees open the Williams Lustron house for public inspection
For a week the Junior Chamber of Commerce showed Lonas Williams's new all-steel Lustron house, furnished by local stores, at 25 cents a visitor, expecting guests from Raleigh, Durham, Pittsboro and Hillsborough. The showing cleared $240 for the club's community projects.
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Phillip Andrews opens a Gulf service station at 214 West Franklin Street
Phillip Andrews opened a Gulf service station in a new Colonial-style building at 214 West Franklin Street, next to Fowler's Food Store, with three opening days starting Thursday, July 7.
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Political scientist Federico Gil moves into Chapel Hill's second Lustron house, on Mount Bolus
Federico G. Gil, an assistant professor of political science, moved into a factory-made, all-steel Lustron house in the new Mount Bolus colony north of town, the second in Chapel Hill. By March 1950 it was one of three houses built on the tract.
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Principal C. A. McDougle opens Lincoln High School's year under its new name
The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that Lincoln High School, the town's school for Black students, would open at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, September 12, 1949, as announced by Principal C. A. McDougle. The faculty list printed with the notice includes elementary teacher Mrs. Lucille R. McDougle and high school teacher Reginald D. Smith.
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Black law students sue to enter UNC's Law School
On October 25, 1949, Harold Epps and other law students at North Carolina College in Durham sued for admission to UNC's law school. A federal district court ruled against them on October 9, 1950, but the Fourth Circuit reversed on March 27, 1951, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the university's appeal on June 4, 1951.
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The Institute of Government delivers its Charlotte-Mecklenburg consolidation study
Asked in 1946 by Charlotte and Mecklenburg County leaders after a Charlotte News series, the Institute spent nearly three years inventorying every city and county department. Coates gave the first public report on November 1, 1949, staff members presented eight more over four months, and the study took no side on merger; the city and county schools were combined about a decade later.
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William Muirhead opens the rental office of Glen Lennox
Muirhead named his apartment colony on the Raleigh highway Glen Lennox, after his wife's family, and opened its rental office in one of the apartments. It was to have 314 apartments in 48 one-story buildings; by March 1950, 66 families had moved in.
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Will W. Alexander speaks to the Chapel Hill AAUW on the Julius Rosenwald Fund
Alexander, retired and living in the country near Chapel Hill, was scheduled to address the Chapel Hill branch of the American Association of University Women in the Morehead building on his years as director of the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
- 1950s
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A brick Colonial Revival house is built at the entrance to Laurel Hill for Dean C. O. Cathy
The story-and-a-half house on Country Club Road has end wings and a recessed columned porch. Historian H. G. Jones, later curator of the North Carolina Collection, owned it for many years.
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African American flower sellers known as the Flower Ladies set up on Franklin Street
A group of Black vendors, each working independently, began selling fresh-cut flowers on the Franklin Street sidewalk around 1950 and became one of the town's best-known enterprises.
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Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro in
The 1950 census counted 34,435 people in Orange County, 9,177 in the town of Chapel Hill and 1,795 in Carrboro. Chapel Hill township as a whole had 18,222.
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Charlie Justice receives UNC's Patterson Medal
UNC placed Justice in the 1950 class of Patterson Medal winners, the university's award for its leading athlete. He had been Walter Camp National Player of the Year in 1948 and Heisman Trophy runner-up in 1948 and 1949.
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Colonial Drugstore moves into the West Franklin store left by Milton's Clothing Cupboard
Colonial Drugstore took over the West Franklin building that Milton Julian's clothing store had vacated.
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Guion Griffis Johnson is president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches
After returning to Chapel Hill from Atlanta in 1947, Johnson served on the boards of the Chapel Hill Community Council and Community Club, and in 1950 she was president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches.
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James Webb designs a house on Dogwood Drive for Kenneth and Frances Brinkhous
Architect James Webb designed a one-story Contemporary house with wood-shingled walls, deep eaves and a walkout basement on a steep lot at 524 Dogwood Drive for pathologist Kenneth Brinkhous and his wife Frances.
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Jim and John Webb design a house on Stagecoach Road for Earl Wynn
The brothers designed a long house set at an angle to the road at 900 Stagecoach Road for Earl Wynn, head of UNC's radio, motion picture and television department, with low overhanging gables, a central clerestory, vertical pine siding and bands of windows.
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Nellie Stroud Strayhorn, who learned of her freedom in 1865 as a girl, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Nellie Stroud Strayhorn (1850-1950) was buried in the cemetery at about one hundred; as a teenager in 1865 she was said to have been told by passing soldiers, while sitting on a cabin porch, that she was free.
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Paul Smith becomes owner of the Intimate Bookshop
Paul Smith took over the Intimate Bookshop on East Franklin Street, formerly Abernethy's, and fitted it with display fixtures designed for his earlier shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
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The Nash house's open sleeping porch is enclosed and a flat-roofed carport is added
The same round of changes enclosed the rear porch, covered the original fanlight over the back door and added French doors. The nomination judges these changes minor and reversible.
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The Southern Part of Heaven is published
William Meade Prince wrote and illustrated The Southern Part of Heaven, a book about growing up in Chapel Hill. Its title became a common nickname for the town.
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The Webb brothers design a Whitehead Circle house for Bill and Ida Friday
In the early 1950s James and John Webb designed a group of similar Bay area style houses on Whitehead Circle for young faculty families. The one built for William and Ida Friday at 412 Whitehead Circle is a long, plain rectangle whose translucent back wall looks out into the woods.
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The census counts 37 masons in Chapel Hill, up from five in
Federal census returns show the number of masons living in Chapel Hill rising from seven in 1930 and five in 1940 to 37 in 1950, growth the nomination ties to the town's Black masonry trade.
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UNC establishes its School of Dentistry
The university's School of Dentistry dates from 1950, with John C. Brauer as dean. Its first class was due to graduate in 1954.
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UNC trustees create schools of social work and journalism
In 1950 the Board of Trustees established a School of Social Work and a School of Journalism, and renamed the School of Commerce the School of Business Administration.
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William Van Sprinkle designs a shingled Colonial Ranch on Laurel Hill Road for math professor Ed Cameron
T. D. Green built the four-bay house, which has a board-and-batten front wing and an original screen porch. The nomination cites it as Sprinkle dressing the new Ranch form in colonial details.
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R. D. W. Connor is buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery
Connor died in February 1950, a year after retiring from the university, and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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W. N. Tyler's Esso Servicenter holds its formal opening at West Franklin and Church streets
W. N. Tyler, a former Standard Oil sales supervisor, opened a new Colonial-style Esso station on the site of the old Ralph Weaver home at West Franklin and Church streets, with free movies and prizes on opening day.
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UNC's General Faculty adopts new rules creating a Faculty Council
The General Faculty approved the Faculty Legislation on University Government on May 10, 1950, to take effect in January 1951. It made an elected Faculty Council, meeting each month, the faculty's governing body.
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The pre-Civil War Hume house is moved across the Chapel Hill High School grounds
To clear ground for a new high school building, the pre-Civil War house known in turn as the Hume, Hogan and Cone house was put on rollers and moved to the west edge of the school lot, still facing Franklin Street, for use as offices and classrooms.
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Henry T. Clark Jr. heads the university's Division of Health Affairs
Clark became the first permanent administrator of the Division of Health Affairs, created in 1948, with charge of the schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, public health and pharmacy and of North Carolina Memorial Hospital. His title later became vice chancellor.
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Health officer closes the University pool as polio cases rise in Chapel Hill
After an emergency conference with six Chapel Hill physicians, District Health Officer O. David Garvin ordered the University swimming pool and all recreational facilities closed, with six polio cases in Chapel Hill and three more in the county. He asked parents to keep children at home or on their own block but did not recommend cancelling University classes or closing nursery schools.
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Reeves Service Station takes over the Phillip Andrews station on West Franklin Street
The Gulf station at 214 West Franklin Street reopened under new management as Reeves Service Station on October 7, 1950, replacing Phillip Andrews Service Station.
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Gordon Gray is installed as president of the University of North Carolina
Gray, who had been secretary of the army, was installed as president of the three-campus University of North Carolina on October 10, 1950 at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, the last day of a program that moved from Greensboro to Chapel Hill to Raleigh. The board of trustees had approved his selection on February 6, 1950.
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Alpha B. Wettach joins the university as dean of women students
Wettach also founded the Chapel Hill Experimental Kindergarten, the town's first kindergarten, and ran it in Mary Nash's old painting studio in the Nash house, where she and her husband rented.
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Colonial Stores opens on West Franklin Street in a building put up by Jack Hazzard
The Colonial Stores chain opened in a new building Hazzard had built. After Colonial Stores left, the Chapel Hill Newspaper moved into the building in late 1973.
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Gordon Ellis of the UNC education department builds a brick Cape Cod house on Pine Lane
Chemistry professor Henry Thomas and his wife Mary, a librarian at the UNC medical school, bought the house soon after it was finished.
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James Webb designs a house on Whitehead Circle for Joseph and Pearl Morrison
Architect James Webb designed a modern house at 407 Whitehead Circle for Joseph L. Morrison, a member of the university's journalism faculty, and his wife Pearl. The Morrisons lived there for more than fifty years; the house was sold in 2010.
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John Ehle teaches in UNC's radio, television and motion pictures department
Ehle, an Asheville native who came to Chapel Hill after infantry service in World War II and graduated from UNC in 1949, taught in the university's Communications Center, later the Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures, from 1951 to 1963. He published his first books while teaching there.
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Kay Kyser retires from show business and settles in Chapel Hill
Kay Kyser left radio and television and returned with his wife Georgia to Chapel Hill, where he lived on East Franklin Street for the rest of his life.
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Lincoln High School opens on Merritt Mill Road
In 1951 Lincoln High School, Chapel Hill's high school for Black students, moved from the old Orange County Training School building on Caldwell Street to a new building on Merritt Mill Road, and the old building became Northside Elementary. Lincoln used the Merritt Mill Road campus until 1966; the building is now the school district's Lincoln Center.
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Manly Wade Wellman settles in Chapel Hill
The writer Manly Wade Wellman, who had moved to Pinebluff, North Carolina, after the Second World War, relocated to Chapel Hill, where he lived for the rest of his life.
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Masons lay the cornerstone of North Carolina Memorial Hospital
University Lodge No. 408 shared in the Masonic ceremony that laid the cornerstone of the new Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill.
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Produce seller Rachel Crook is abducted and murdered
Rachel Crook, who ran a fish and produce stand at the corner of West Franklin and Merritt Mill Road, was kidnapped and killed. Her killer was never identified, and the restaurant that later opened on her corner took the name Crook's Corner.
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The Unitarian Fellowship of Chapel Hill is organized
A lay Unitarian fellowship began holding religious meetings in Chapel Hill. It had 25 members in 1953.
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The first Morehead scholars are selected
The scholarship Morehead endowed at Chapel Hill made its first selections in 1951.
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The name Northside began to replace Pottersfield and Sunset
When the old Lincoln building became Northside Elementary in 1951, the school's name spread to the Black neighborhoods around it. By the mid-1950s Pottersfield, north of West Rosemary and west of Columbia Street, and its western neighbor Sunset were both being called Northside.
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UNC establishes its School of Nursing
The School of Nursing was established at Chapel Hill in 1951, with Elizabeth L. Kemble as dean. Its first class was due to graduate in 1955.
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Lucille Caldwell becomes the Negro Community Center's first paid director
Lucille Caldwell was hired in February 1951 as the first paid director of Chapel Hill's Negro Community Center on Roberson Street, now the Hargraves Center. A town history calls her North Carolina's first Black professional recreation administrator. She led the center for twelve years and resigned in 1963.
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UNC admits Edward O. Diggs, its first Black medical student
UNC mailed Edward O. Diggs of Winston-Salem, a pre-medical student at A&T College in Greensboro, his letter of admission to the School of Medicine under the trustees' April 4, 1951 policy. He enrolled in the fall of 1951.
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The Grand Lodge of North Carolina meets in Chapel Hill
The state's Grand Lodge of Masons came to Chapel Hill for its annual session, with W. E. Caldwell, a member of University Lodge, as Grand Master.
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The Village Theatre becomes the Varsity under new owners
Varsity Theatres, Inc., of High Point, headed by Hugh J. Smart, took over Chapel Hill's Village Theatre, renamed it the Varsity and made it a first-run house. The Village was the old Carolina Theatre, renamed in 1942 when the new Carolina opened.
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Dean Brandis handles the applications of Pauli Murray and three other Black students to the law school
After the trustees left admissions to each professional school's dean, Brandis wrote Chancellor R. B. House about four Black applicants, Pauli Murray, J. Kenneth Lee, Harvey E. Beech and William C. Chance Jr., and on June 6 told Murray the school offered no graduate law courses. The UNC Libraries exhibit reads these letters as showing the law school resisting integration.
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Trustees make the campus heads chancellors and add a university vice-presidency
On May 22, 1951, on President Gordon Gray's recommendation, the trustees made the controller a vice-president, created a second vice-presidency, and gave the heads of the branches the title of chancellor. Logan Wilson filled the new post that fall.
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Desegregating the University of North Carolina
After a 1951 federal court decision in McKissick v. Carmichael, five Black students began law school classes at UNC on June 22, 1951. In September 1955, again under court order, LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon of Durham registered as the university's first Black undergraduates.
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UNC Law School begins desegregation
About a week after the Supreme Court refused on June 4, 1951, to review McKissick v. Carmichael, Black students registered for summer session at UNC's law school, the first African Americans to enroll at the university. UNC Law names them as Harvey E. Beech, James L. Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd B. McKissick and James R. Walker.
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The main building of Chapel Hill High School opens on West Franklin Street
The new main building of the high school on West Franklin Street opened in part on September 10, 1951, with five classrooms and the science department ready and the rest due about two months later. It joined the first section, later called the old wing, in use since 1947.
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State says Chapel Hill's new tuberculosis hospital will take Black and white patients
A State Medical Care Commission spokesman said the $1,100,000 tuberculosis hospital under construction at Chapel Hill would treat Black and white patients. He noted that federal rules barred discrimination in federally aided hospitals but still allowed patients to be segregated.
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William Meade Prince dies at his home in Greenwood
William Meade Prince, illustrator, former head of the university's art department and author of The Southern Part of Heaven, died by suicide in the studio of his Greenwood home. The Weekly wrote that the village felt the loss deeply.
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Albert and Gladys Coates move into their own house on Hooper Lane
In 1947 the couple bought a lot on Hooper Lane in what had been the back garden of Edward Kidder Graham's house. Coates rejected a contemporary design by architects Jim and John Webb, the house went up as a two-story Georgian, and they moved in about the time the Gardner Award money arrived.
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Architect George Matsumoto draws plans for Dr. Isaac Taylor's house on Morgan Creek Road
George Matsumoto of the State College School of Design drew the plans for the house of Dr. Isaac M. Taylor, new to the medical school faculty, in Morgan Creek Hills. The Taylors raised their children there, among them the singer James Taylor.
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Architect John B. Webb joins his brother James in Chapel Hill
John B. Webb, also Berkeley-trained and shaped by William Wurster, practiced alongside his brother in Chapel Hill from 1952 to 1957. The two are credited with bringing the regional modernism of the San Francisco Bay area to the town.
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Bob Cox and Monk Jennings open Town & Campus in place of Wilbur Kutz's Varsity Shop
Cox and Jennings's clothing store, Town & Campus, took over the East Franklin store where Kutz had run the Varsity Shop. It was replaced by another clothier between 1989 and 1993.
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Chapel Hill builds a new elementary school in the Glen Lennox area
In the fall of 1952 an elementary school was being built in the Glen Lennox area, the first of several planned so young children would not have to travel into downtown traffic.
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Dr. Robert T. Cadmus, first director of Memorial Hospital, builds a colonial Ranch on Iris Lane
The five-bay brick Ranch has a large picture window and a sunporch at one end. Cadmus came to run the new North Carolina Memorial Hospital, part of the postwar wave of medical staff who needed houses near campus.
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Frank McGuire arrives at UNC to coach basketball
McGuire came to Chapel Hill in 1952 to take over a basketball program that ranked far behind football in the university's priorities. His first office at Carolina was the ticket booth at Woollen Gym.
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Isaac M. Taylor joins the new Department of Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine
Taylor, a 1942 Carolina graduate with a Harvard medical degree, returned to Chapel Hill in 1952 at the invitation of medical dean Reece Berryhill as one of the first members of the medical school's department of medicine.
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J. Spencer Love gives the Institute of Government $50,000 to spend as Coates sees fit
Textile executive J. Spencer Love, whose $15,000 in 1942 had carried the Institute until the state budget took over its costs, sent Albert Coates another $50,000 with no conditions on its use.
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Jim Webb designs a Contemporary house on Laurel Hill Road for psychologists Louis and Thelma Thurstone
The low L-shaped house has vertical wood siding, a hipped roof with wide eaves and a carport joined by a screen porch; Ellington & Sparrow built it. Webb counted it among his firm's best work.
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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.
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Neurosurgeon Warner Wells buys the Pratt house on East Franklin Street
Ten years after Joseph Hyde Pratt's death, Dr. Warner Wells, a neurosurgeon on the UNC medical school faculty, buys the Pratt house on East Franklin Street, which became known as the Pratt-Wells House.
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Oliver K. Cornwell becomes chair of UNC's Department of Physical Education and Athletics
After Robert Fetzer retired in 1952, Cornwell became chair of the combined department, while Charles P. Erickson became director of athletics. By 1955 the two parts had been separated again.
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Philip Green's guidebook for zoning and planning boards is published
Green, who had learned the field on the Charlotte study, wrote a 430-page guidebook that the Institute published in 1952, the first such work for local zoning and planning boards in North Carolina. He went on to a national reputation in zoning and planning law.
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The 15-501 Bypass is built along the south side of Chapel Hill
The book places construction of the 15-501 Bypass in 1952 to 1954. Morgan Creek Hills, one of the town's large postwar subdivisions, was laid out along its south side during those same years.
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The district health department starts bedside nursing in southern Orange County
When the book was written, the health department's latest service was a small bedside nursing program for southern Orange County, carried on jointly with the University Hospital and its outpatient department. For 1952-53 the county appropriated $14,000 to the department.
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UNC names Cobb Dormitory for Collier Cobb
The university named its new Cobb Dormitory in honor of the geologist Collier Cobb, who had taught at UNC for forty years.
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UNC trustees set aside Mason Farm land for a botanical garden
The university's Board of Trustees allocated about 72 acres of its Mason Farm property for the North Carolina Botanical Garden, officially establishing it. Botanist H. R. Totten's efforts helped procure the site.
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UNC's new dental school building opens with separate facilities for Black and white patients
The School of Dentistry's new building opened with what a university memo called separate, complete facilities for white and Black patients. Publicity photographs showed separate waiting rooms for each race.
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Holy Trinity Lutheran Church consecrates its Chapel Hill church
Holy Trinity Lutheran's new church in Chapel Hill, built in 1951 with 300 seats, was consecrated on January 6, 1952.
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Episcopalians organize the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill
A second Episcopal congregation in Chapel Hill was organized with Maurice Arthur Kidder as its first pastor. Ground was broken for its building in June 1953.
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University trustees give Albert Coates the O. Max Gardner Award
By unanimous vote the trustees named Coates the faculty member of the Consolidated University who had done most that year for the welfare of humanity, under the award created by the late governor's will. Coates accepted it for the Institute, and it carried $10,000.
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Howard Mumford Jones gives the address at the dedication of the university library addition
Howard Mumford Jones, a former member of the university's English faculty then at Harvard, gave the principal address, on the library in higher education, at the dedication of the $1.6 million addition to the university library, held in Memorial Hall.
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Eben Merritt stops highway crews with an injunction over land taken for the new bypass
Filling station owner Eben G. Merritt got an injunction that briefly halted State Highway Commission work near Morgan Creek, arguing that the new bypass and the rerouted Pittsboro road would cut through his pasture, isolate his new house and pull his station off the main highway for far less than they were worth. A court-appointed commission set his damages at $6,000 in March 1953, and he appealed.
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Assistant track coach Joe Hilton designs and builds his own house on Oakwood Drive
Joe Hilton, UNC's assistant track coach, cleared the lot by axe, drew the plans with his wife, and with their son and Victory Village neighbors built a $22,000 ranch house, starting in June 1952. Carrboro contractor Herman Lloyd advised him; the family hoped to move in by September 1953.
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Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee graduate from UNC's law school
A year after they entered as the first Black students at UNC's law school, Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee received their law degrees. UNC also lists James Robert Walker among the 1952 graduates.
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Dr. L. L. Vine buys the Nathan Veterinary Hospital and renames it
Dr. S. A. Nathan and Dr. L. L. Vine dissolved their partnership, and Vine, who had worked with Nathan for some years, took over the animal hospital on the Durham road as the Vine Veterinary Hospital.
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Ben Schreiber turns the Harry's Grill building into the Youth Center, a children's clothing store
Ben Schreiber and his wife closed their restaurant, Harry's Grill, and opened the Youth Center, a clothing store for infants and children, in the same building next to the Carolina Theatre.
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North Carolina Memorial Hospital opens
North Carolina Memorial Hospital opened to patients on Tuesday, September 2, 1952, without a formal ceremony, as the core of the new University Medical Center. Its opening allowed the UNC School of Medicine to grow from a two-year program into a four-year school.
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The Hong Kong, an American-Chinese restaurant, opens in the former Curve Inn
The Hong Kong, advertised as an American-Chinese restaurant, held its grand opening on the site of the former Curve Inn on the Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard.
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UNC School of Medicine admits its first third-year class
A month after the hospital opened, the School of Medicine admitted its first third-year class, beginning clinical training in Chapel Hill. The school had offered only the first two years of medical study since its Raleigh clinical branch closed in 1910.
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UNC cancels two football games after a player and three students get polio
The University of North Carolina called off its football games with Georgia on October 4 and N.C. State on October 11, 1952, because a player and three other students had been stricken with polio.
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The Knapp Foundation pledges $500,000 toward a new building for the Institute of Government
University President Gordon Gray secured a commitment from the foundation of the late Joseph Palmer Knapp for a $500,000 grant, to be matched by the same sum from the state, to build the Institute a new home. Coates had wanted the money as an endowment beside a state-built building, but Gray followed the matching plan that Margaret Knapp favored.
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Stephen J. Edwards's Midway Barber Shop is open on West Rosemary Street
Edwards's Midway Barber Shop was advertising on West Rosemary Street, at the Chapel Hill and Carrboro line, by late 1952. His son Stepney Edwards later ran the Black-owned shop.
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Architect Edward Waugh designs a house for Dr. C. G. Thomas on Morgan Creek Road
Edward (Terry) Waugh of the State College School of Design drew several of the first Morgan Creek Hills houses for doctors who came to teach at the enlarged medical school. His 1953 house at 408 Morgan Creek Road, for surgery professor C. G. (Tim) Thomas and his wife, is a small side-gabled house of long red Norman brick and redwood that steps down its slope.
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Binkley Baptist and the Community Church of Chapel Hill
The Community Church of Chapel Hill formed in 1953 as an interracial congregation and started an integrated preschool in 1955; Binkley Baptist organized in 1958 under Robert Seymour. The Baptist association refused Binkley membership in 1966 over its open membership, the state and Southern conventions disassociated from it in 1992, and the Community Church joined the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1993.
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Bruce Strowd sells his car business to Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard
After thirty years at 100 West Franklin Street, Strowd sold the dealership in 1953. The new owners kept it in the same building for two more years.
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Carroll Hall is built and named for Dudley D. Carroll
The university completed the main building of its business school in 1953 and named it Carroll Hall for the School of Commerce's first dean. It became home to the journalism school in 1999.
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Community Church of Chapel Hill forms
An interracial congregation organized with Charles M. Jones as minister.
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Fletcher M. Green chairs the UNC history department
Green, a Kenan Professor since 1946, chaired the University of North Carolina's Department of History from 1953 to 1960. He retired in 1968.
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Hugh Lefler and Paul Wager edit a bicentennial history of Orange County
For the county's 200th anniversary, Lefler and Wager edited Orange County, 1752-1952, with chapters by about fifteen contributors on early history, agriculture, industry, schools and more, plus a dictionary of county biography and lists of county officials.
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Kay Kyser helps raise the money to put WUNC-TV on the air
Kay Kyser toured the state with William C. Friday and Billy Carmichael Jr. to raise money for UNC's educational television station, which went on the air from Chapel Hill in January 1955.
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Rebecca Clark moves from the University Laundry to nursing at Memorial Hospital
In 1953 Clark left the University Laundry for the newly built university hospital, where she spent the rest of her working years as a nurse. UNC's Employee Forum says she was the first licensed practical nurse in the campus infirmary and retired in 1979.
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Robert F. Schenkkan becomes director of the university's educational television venture
After the FCC granted the Consolidated University of North Carolina an educational television license, Schenkkan became director of the new venture, which went on the air as WUNC-TV from the Communication Center in Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.
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The Hospital Savings Association moves from East Franklin into a large new building on West Franklin
The association left its two-bay store on East Franklin for big new quarters on West Franklin. By the late 1960s it had become Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
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The Rock Baptist Church building on West Franklin Street is torn down
The Black Baptist congregation's church on West Franklin, in use since 1908, was demolished late in 1953 once its new church on North Roberson Street was finished.
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The Webb brothers build a small two-level house for Ruth Price in Westwood
University instructor Ruth Price, on a tight budget, hired James and John Webb in 1953 to build her house at 4 Briar Bridge Lane, a steep corner lot in the older Westwood subdivision. The book ranks it among the smallest and best of the Webb houses; its main floor centers on a skylit living room with a built-in study nook.
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UNC dedicates the Forest Theatre to Frederick Koch
In 1953 the university dedicated the stone amphitheatre in Battle Park to Koch, who had developed the site of the 1916 Shakespeare tercentenary dramas into a permanent theatre after he joined the faculty. The stone stage and seating had been rebuilt with Works Progress Administration funds in 1940.
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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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Covenant Presbyterian Church is organized in Chapel Hill
A second Presbyterian congregation, Covenant, was organized in Chapel Hill. It had 33 members and no building in 1953.
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WCHL begins broadcasting
WCHL, Chapel Hill's new commercial radio station, went on the air in January 1953 at 1360 on the dial with 1,000 watts, broadcasting from sunrise to sunset from a site on the Durham highway. General manager Sandy McClamroch ran it with partners Roy E. Fullen and Lonnie Dark; its first broadcast was set for January 18.
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North Carolina Memorial Hospital is dedicated
Exercises at Chapel Hill on April 23-24, 1953, dedicated North Carolina Memorial Hospital and marked the new four-year School of Medicine and the schools of dentistry and nursing. The hospital had opened in September 1952.
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Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
Robinson led the five candidates with 571 votes and Wager followed with 560; Kenneth Putnam took the third seat. The Weekly noted Robinson was the second Black person elected to public office in Chapel Hill, the first since Reconstruction, and it was Wager's first run for office.
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Edmund Strudwick's portrait of C. T. Council is given to the School of Pharmacy
University President Gordon Gray presented a portrait of Durham's C. T. Council, painted by Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough, to the UNC School of Pharmacy, where Dean E. A. Brecht accepted it at a luncheon in the Morehead building.
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Gardner Hall, named for O. Max Gardner, opens with the new business school buildings
Gardner Hall, named for former governor O. Max Gardner, was one of three new School of Business Administration buildings set between the Library and South Building, with Carroll and Hanes halls. The University Placement Service moved into it, and the formal dedication of the three buildings was set for May 25, 1953.
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The Church of the Holy Family breaks ground in Chapel Hill
The Episcopal Church of the Holy Family, organized in Chapel Hill the year before, broke ground for a building to seat 150.
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Rock Hill Baptist, renamed First Baptist, holds its first services on North Roberson Street
The Black Baptist congregation organized in 1865 had worshipped for decades as Rock Hill Baptist Church on the south side of West Franklin Street. Under its pastor, the Rev. J. R. Manley, it raised $10,001 in the first months of 1952 and began a colonial-style brick church on North Roberson Street between Franklin and Rosemary streets. The first services in the $100,000 building were held on Sunday, September 27, 1953, opening three weeks of dedication services; with the move the congregation took the name First Baptist Church. By early 1954 the old Franklin Street lot stood vacant.
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Milton Julian wins the right to build his modernist house on Ledge Lane
When W. C. Coker's chosen architect, Walter D. Toy, refused to approve the plans for clothier Milton Julian's house on Ledge Lane, designed by George Matsumoto of the State College School of Design, Milton and Virginia Julian sued on September 30, 1953; Coker's executors, his widow and neighbors Cornelius and Beulah Cathey opposed them. The North Carolina Supreme Court held on June 4, 1954 that the approval clause was personal to Coker and ended at his death in June 1953, and the International Style house was finished by November 1956.
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The Planning Board approves Muirhead's street layout around Glen Lennox
The Chapel Hill Planning Board approved new streets on the fringes of Glen Lennox, including Ayr Street, which Muirhead named, extending the colony's central road across the highway so children could reach the new Glenwood School more safely.
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A Modernist split-level with a butterfly roof is built on Fern Lane for Thomas H. Darden
The post-and-beam house has clerestory windows, vertical wood siding and a flat-roofed carport. Oral tradition credits the design to Jim Webb.
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A weatherboarded Cape Cod house is built on the new Fern Lane for Eleanor R. Rowe and Philip P. Green Jr.
The five-bay house has a center chimney and a side wing joined by a hyphen, possibly a converted garage. It was one of the first houses on the newly platted street.
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Chapel Hill's aldermen adopt an ordinance setting separate sections for Black burials in the new town cemetery
The ordinance for the new Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery on the Durham road reserved some sections for Black burials and others for other races, as the old cemetery had done. The Rev. Charles Jones of the Community Church called it illiberal in a September sermon, and the citizens' committee had urged the town to rid itself of the new Black cemetery north of town.
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First four-year class graduates from the UNC School of Medicine
In 1954 the UNC School of Medicine graduated its first class of students to complete all four years of medical training. The university's new dental and nursing schools graduated their first classes the same year.
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Franc Sidler meets Troy and Robin Andrews on their farm and sketches a house for it
In the summer of 1954 the Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a guest of anthropologists renting a small house on the Andrews farm, met Troy and Robin Andrews there and drew a floor plan for a house they might build later. The sketch grew into the house finished on the farm in 1967.
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George Watts Carr designs a Cape Cod house on Country Club Road for religion professor Bernard Boyd
The large story-and-a-half house for Bernard and Thelma Boyd has shake siding and three gabled dormers. Carr, a lifelong advocate of the Colonial Revival, had designed Laurel Hill houses since the late 1920s.
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Iris Lane and Fern Lane are platted, extending Laurel Hill onto the Coker estate
After William C. Coker died in 1953, Laurel Hill spread into adjoining land of his estate. The new plat laid out two streets at the south end of the neighborhood, and most of their houses went up before 1960.
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Louis Graves sells the Chapel Hill Weekly
After 31 years as its editor and owner, Louis Graves sold the Chapel Hill Weekly in 1954 to the Chapel Hill Publishing Company. He stayed on as contributing editor through 1960.
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Robert Rhinehart sells the Hill Bakery to Thell Jernigan, who renames it Thell's Bakery
Rhinehart, who had bought the East Franklin bakery in 1943 from Mrs. William Brumfield Neal, sold it to Jernigan, and the new owner put his own name on it. Thell's Bakery stayed in business into the mid-1980s.
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St. Paul's A.M.E. adds an annex with a meeting hall and kitchen
The annex was built at the northwest corner of the church.
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The Belk-Leggett-Horton department store opens on West Franklin Street
The department store opened next to the Masonic Hall. A few years later the hall was razed for its parking lot, and the store had closed by the early 1980s, when Southern Bell moved into its 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 2, 2026.
