Chronology

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.

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.

People: Gladys Hall Coates · John B. Webb · James M. Webb

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.

People: Isaac Montrose Taylor · George Matsumoto

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.

People: John B. Webb · James M. Webb

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.

Carl Snavely leaves UNC after three losing seasons

Disputes over the size of the recruiting budget and Snavely's difficulty moving from the single wing to the split T weakened the program. After losing seasons in 1950, 1951 and 1952 he left UNC with a record there of 59 wins, 35 losses and 5 ties.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People: W. Reece Berryhill

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

People: James M. Webb

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

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.

People: Joseph Hyde Pratt

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.

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

The Webb brothers design a house on Whitehead Circle for Alex and Betty McMahon

James M. Webb and John B. Webb Associates designed the J. Alex and Betty W. McMahon House at 419 Whitehead Circle, a long house with flat roofs at different heights, a privacy wall and small windows toward the street, and large windows opening to the woods behind.

People: John B. Webb

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.

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

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.

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.

Subject: North Carolina Botanical Garden

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.

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.

Subject: Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

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.

People: W. Robert (William Robert) Mann

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.

People: O. Max Gardner · W. Kerr Scott

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.

People: Robert B (Robert Bingham) Downs · Charles E. (Charles Everett) Rush

Subject: UNC Libraries · Memorial Hall

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.

Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill

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.

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.

People: J. Kenneth Lee

Subject: UNC School of Law

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.

People: S. A. Nathan

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.

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.

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.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

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.

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.

People: Gordon Gray · Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

Part of Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro · 55 events

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.

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.

People: Bruce Strowd

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.

Community Church of Chapel Hill forms

An interracial congregation organized with Charles M. Jones as minister.

People: Charles M. Jones · Joe Straley

Subject: Community Church of Chapel Hill

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.

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.

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.

People: William C. Friday · William D. Carmichael Jr.

Subject: WUNC radio and television

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.

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

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.

Subject: WUNC radio and television

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.

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.

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.

People: John B. Webb · James M. Webb

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.

Subject: Forest Theatre

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.

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.

People: C. Hugh Holman

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.

People: W. Reece Berryhill

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital) · UNC School of Medicine

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.

People: Hubert Robinson · Wilson Swain Caldwell

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.

People: Gordon Gray · E. A. (Edward Armond) Brecht

Subject: UNC School of Pharmacy · Morehead Planetarium

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.

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.

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.

Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill

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.

People: George Matsumoto

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.

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.

People: James M. Webb

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.

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.

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.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

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.

People: Roberta C. Andrews

Subject: Bolin Brook Farm (Troy and Roberta Andrews House)

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.

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.

Subject: Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

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.

Subject: The Chapel Hill Weekly

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.

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.

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

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.

The Pinetum at Rocky Ridge Farm is deeded to the university's botanical garden

A protected stand of Coker's remaining forest along Meeting of the Waters Creek on the west edge of the development, known as the Pinetum, was deeded in 1954 to the UNC botanical garden for its care.

Subject: North Carolina Botanical Garden · Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

The University tears down the Crystal Palace on East Franklin Street for planetarium parking

The University had bought the old building known as the Crystal Palace in 1945. In 1954 it razed it and turned the lot into parking for Morehead Planetarium, with a large sundial in a rose garden at the center.

The university awards William Picard Jacocks an honorary doctor of laws

The University of North Carolina, where Jacocks had graduated in 1904, gave him an honorary doctor of laws degree while he was living in Chapel Hill in retirement.

Chapel Hill American Legion post gives an iron lung to N.C. Memorial Hospital

The Chapel Hill post of the American Legion presented an iron lung, bought for about $1,600, to North Carolina Memorial Hospital, with Congressman Carl T. Durham making the presentation. Hospital director Robert R. Cadmus said the hospital had treated 90 polio patients, two from Orange County, in its first 18 months; it was the hospital's second iron lung.

Part of North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the medical center, from 1952 · 24 events

People: Carl T. Durham

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

Sophie Livas is installed as Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star chapter in Chapel Hill

Sophie Livas was installed as Worthy Matron of University Chapter 264, Order of the Eastern Star, succeeding Elizabeth Montgomery.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro churches name a committee to help schools desegregate peacefully

Two weeks after the Brown decision, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Ministerial Association set up a steering committee to study how the churches could help bring a peaceful transition to non-segregated schools. Its members were the Rev. Charles Jones, Mrs. Harold Walters, George Esser Jr., the Rev. T. P. Duhart and Mrs. J. Snipes.

Part of School desegregation in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1959–1967 · 24 events

People: Charles M. Jones

The Pride of Orange Elks lodge clears ground for its hall on South Merritt Mill Road

The Black Elks lodge, Pride of Orange No. 276, cleared the lot and planned to start its $15,000 two-story hall in June, with members doing most of the work. The lodge hall was to be upstairs and the youth group's rooms below; until then the thirty-member lodge rented rooms over the West Franklin Street Grocery.

Albert Coates and James C. N. Paul prepare the Institute's report on the Brown decision for Governor Umstead

At Governor William B. Umstead's request, Coates wrote a history of the state's separate schools and Paul, who had clerked for Chief Justice Fred Vinson, examined the ruling and the plans for getting around it, concluding that segregated schools could not be kept. When Umstead named Thomas J. Pearsall's advisory committee on August 11, 1954, the report was the first paper its members received, and Coates then ran a shortened version in Popular Government.

People: Thomas J. (Thomas Jenkins) Pearsall · William B. Umstead

Subject: Institute of Government

The Marathon Restaurant leaves its East Franklin Street building

The Marathon, a sandwich shop and restaurant in the building later numbered 115 East Franklin Street since the 1930s, gave up the building in the week before June 4, 1954. The College Cafe's owners had bought it from the J. T. Durham estate.

Subject: College Cafe

A windstorm damages the Frozen Kustard drive-in across from Brady's on the Durham road

An evening thunderstorm with winds put at 80 miles an hour struck the Durham road east of Chapel Hill. It tore two signs off the Frozen Kustard drive-in, damaged its roof and knocked down its phone booth; the wind blew Brady McLennan back through his restaurant door.

The College Cafe moves across Franklin Street into the former Marathon building

Max Yarbrough and Jesse West moved their College Cafe from the Robbins building across Franklin Street into the former Marathon Restaurant, which they had bought and rebuilt. It reopened next door to Rose's store with new equipment and seats for 40.

Subject: College Cafe

The University tears down Archer House to make room for the Ackland Art Museum

Demolition of the 47-year-old Archer House on South Columbia Street began in August 1954 and was still under way in late September. Its lot and the Roberson lot next door became the site of the Ackland museum.

Subject: Archer House

Two forgotten graves in a Noble Street backyard come to light

A neighbor noticed two weathered, unlettered tombstones under oak trees in the backyard of 108 Noble Street, and the News Leader could not learn whose graves they were. Alice Noble recalled the land as the old Castlebury place and a log cabin that once stood nearby.

People: Alice Noble

Harry Macklin comes back to Chapel Hill to reopen Harry's Grill in the old Campus Cafe

Harry Macklin, who had run Harry's Grill until 1944, bought the Campus Cafe two doors from the post office and reopened it as a new Harry's Grill and delicatessen. The town board granted him a beer and wine permit.

Bayard Wootten sells her Chapel Hill studio and returns to New Bern

Bayard Wootten sold the Wootten-Moulton Studio to her longtime manager T. C. Moore, who kept it running, and left Chapel Hill for her old home town of New Bern.

Howard W. Odum dies in Chapel Hill

Odum died in Chapel Hill on November 8, 1954, while still at work on several books, after 34 years on the UNC faculty.

Chapel Hill aldermen elect Oliver K. Cornwell mayor

After Mayor Edwin S. Lanier won the Democratic nomination for county commissioner, the Board of Aldermen chose one of its own members, Oliver K. Cornwell, as mayor and elected Rogers Wade to his seat.

Community Church starts an integrated preschool

The congregation’s preschool admitted children across racial lines.

Subject: Community Church of Chapel Hill

Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard move the former Strowd dealership to 1710 East Franklin Street

The partners left the downtown building at 100 West Franklin Street in 1955 for a new site on East Franklin Street toward Durham. The old building was later remodeled for several businesses.

Daniel Okun chairs UNC's Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering

Okun, who joined the UNC public health faculty in 1952, headed the department from 1955 to 1973, and it grew from three to 25 faculty members.

Subject: UNC School of Public Health

Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar edit the Daily Tar Heel

UNC students Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar were listed together as editors of the Daily Tar Heel in the spring and fall of 1955.

Subject: The Daily Tar Heel

Edward O. Diggs becomes UNC's first Black medical graduate

Edward O. Diggs graduated from the UNC School of Medicine in 1955, the first African American to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree from the university. James Slade, the school's second Black student, had enrolled in 1953.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

Fumiko Seki lives in Chapel Hill and records the town's color line

Fumiko Seki came to Chapel Hill when her husband received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study at UNC. As a mother, wife and student she watched how residents kept the color line and met Black students, and she later described the town in her memoir Chaperu hiru monogatari.

George Esser launches the Institute's course in municipal management

Assistant director George Esser started a ten-week course in municipal management, taught over a series of three-day weekends, that came to be expected of anyone hoping to run a North Carolina city. It was part of a shift at the Institute from teaching the letter of the law toward public administration and policy.

Subject: Institute of Government

J. Carlyle Sitterson becomes dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at UNC

Sitterson, who had begun teaching history at UNC in 1935 while completing his doctorate, became dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in 1955. He was appointed vice-chancellor in 1965.

James A. Taylor builds a shingled Colonial Ranch on Fern Lane from magazine blueprints

The plans were American Home magazine's House No. 33, published in 1954, and the original blueprints still stay with the house. It has a small-paned bay window and an attached garage entered from the side.

Joe and Peggy Galloway build a Contemporary brick Ranch on Pine Lane

The house sits on a daylight basement with bands of casement windows. Joe Galloway ran placement for the UNC School of Business; Peggy Galloway taught in the public schools.

First Salk polio vaccinations given to Orange County first and second graders

Local physicians working under the county health department gave the first round of Salk polio vaccine to more than 1,150 Orange County first and second graders. The work began on Monday, April 18, 1955 with about 500 Chapel Hill area children and finished on April 21 with the Hillsboro, Efland and Aycock schools.

People: O. David Garvin

A. D. Yates's Yates Motor Company takes over the Caston Motor Company's Dodge-Plymouth business

The Caston Motor Company, Dodge and Plymouth dealer at 419 West Franklin Street since 1946, gave way to the Yates Motor Company at the same address and telephone number in late May 1955. By October A. D. Yates was named as owner of the firm.

Hilliard Caldwell leads the Chapel Hill chapter of the New Farmers of America

The Lincoln High School paper reported a prosperous 1954 to 1955 year for the chapter under Caldwell, its president, and printed his own account of the chapter's work.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

Orange County first and second graders get their second Salk shots

The district health department gave second Salk vaccine doses to children who had their first shot in the spring: in Chapel Hill on July 21 and 22 for pupils of the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Glenwood, Northside, White Cross and Little Red Schoolhouse schools, and in Hillsboro on July 27, with school buses sent to county schools. Turnout at Hillsboro was low, with only 65 children by 11 a.m.

Part of Public health in rural Orange County · 26 events

The Chapel Hill Memorial Fund has a bronze tablet made for the town's World War II dead

Trustees of the Chapel Hill Memorial Fund had a bronze tablet cast with the names of 26 men of the Chapel Hill community who died in the armed services in World War II, to stand on a stone base in front of Chapel Hill High School. The fund, raised by public gifts in 1946, also endowed a memorial book collection in the school library.

People: Collier Cobb, Jr

Chapel Hill school board pledges to comply with Brown "to the best of our ability"

Under chairman Carl Smith, the Chapel Hill school board unanimously resolved to comply with the Supreme Court's integration ruling to the best of its ability while operating its schools under the state's school laws, keeping existing assignment practices for 1955-56.

Part of School desegregation in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1959–1967 · 24 events

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Hilliard Caldwell writes the Negro Community news column for the Chapel Hill News Leader

Caldwell was named as correspondent at the head of the column, which carried news of Black Chapel Hill and asked Lincoln High School graduates to send in their college addresses for the next week's issue.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · The Chapel Hill News

Moses C. Burt Jr. is one of the first three Black students admitted to UNC law as first-year students

Moses C. Burt Jr., son of Orange County farm agent Moses Burt and Ridge Road principal Alethea Burt, entered the UNC School of Law in fall 1955 as one of the first three African American students admitted straight into its first-year class. Three other Black students who enrolled that fall transferred from other programs.

Subject: UNC School of Law

Aldermen rezone part of the Porthole lot so the restaurant can expand

Over the objections of University officials, the Chapel Hill aldermen rezoned 6,400 square feet of the Porthole restaurant's lot from residential to business use so that owner M. M. Timmons could enlarge the restaurant. It had been a nonconforming use on land zoned residential near the campus.

Don Stewart becomes James Webb's partner in City Planning and Architecture Associates

Don Stewart, an Ohio native, worked for James Webb while studying planning at UNC. Once licensed in 1956 he became Webb's partner, and the practice was renamed City Planning and Architecture Associates; Stewart brought Frank Lloyd Wright's organic ideas to its Chapel Hill houses.

People: Don Stewart · James M. Webb

Don Stewart designs the Kai Jurgenson House on Whitehead Circle

Stewart's 1956 house for Kai Jurgenson at 410 Whitehead Circle, one of his early works, blends Bay area regional modernism with the restrained domestic style of Walter Gropius's Harvard circle. The book notes that it won an award.

People: Don Stewart

Francis Vandeveer Kughler paints history murals for the Knapp Building auditorium

At Margaret Knapp's wish the Institute's new building received fourteen large murals by New York painter Francis Vandeveer Kughler, a commission put at $100,000, showing scenes from North Carolina history with living North Carolinians painted in period dress. Kughler began early in 1956, working part of the time in Person Hall on the campus, and all the panels were hung in the auditorium by the fall of 1960.

Subject: Institute of Government

Jim Tatum returns to Chapel Hill as head football coach

Tatum came back to UNC in 1956 at a substantial cut in salary and reorganized and expanded the university's Educational Foundation, the source of its athletic grants-in-aid. He had the only losing season of his career that year, 2-7-1, and followed it with 6-4 records in 1957 and 1958.

McGuire's undefeated Tar Heels play their home games at Woollen Gym

McGuire's 1956-57 team won 32 straight games and the national championship, beating Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in triple overtime as 12-point underdogs. Only eight of those wins came at home in Woollen Gym, where a hole was drilled in the wall for a television camera lens.

Subject: Woollen Gymnasium

Milton Julian's Matsumoto-designed house on Ledge Lane is finished

The modernist house George Matsumoto designed for clothier Milton Julian and his family, which neighbors had gone to court to stop, stood finished by November 1956, when it was one of ten homes on the School Art Guild's tour of Chapel Hill homes.

People: George Matsumoto

Morehead gives the sundial in front of the planetarium

In 1956 Morehead funded the sundial set in front of the planetarium building in Chapel Hill.

Subject: Morehead Planetarium

Poe and Mangum move their DeSoto-Plymouth dealership out of a West Franklin Street filling station

After World War II A. H. Poe and Marvin Mangum sold DeSotos and Plymouths from a 1930s Pure Oil station at 110 West Franklin Street, built in the company's half-timbered cottage design. They added service bays and a showroom before vacating it in 1956.

The Institute of Government's East Franklin building becomes Consolidated University offices

After William Friday moved into the President's House in 1956, the University moved the Institute of Government out of its Franklin Street building and used it for the Consolidated University's offices. Those offices went back to campus between 1969 and 1973, and the building passed to other University programs.

Subject: Institute of Government

The Joseph Palmer Knapp Building opens for the Institute of Government

The Institute of Government got a new building in Chapel Hill, paid for by the Knapp Foundation and a legislative appropriation and named for Joseph Palmer Knapp, who had died in 1951. His widow, Margaret Rutledge Knapp, saw that the family foundation funded it.

Subject: Institute of Government

The Susan Graham memorial fountain is moved from Franklin Street to the edge of Coker Arboretum

The 1922 memorial fountain was taken from the Franklin Street curb near the Methodist church and set up at the edge of Coker Arboretum near Morehead Planetarium.

Subject: Coker Arboretum

The Webb brothers design core-plan houses for the Highland Woods cooperative

Highland Woods, south of Memorial Hospital, was organized as a cooperative subdivision by a group of young faculty families, and in 1956 James and John Webb designed its houses around two cores, one for the living areas and kitchen and one for the bedrooms. The book likens it to Six Moon Hill, a Massachusetts cooperative laid out by Walter Gropius's Architects Collaborative in 1948.

People: John B. Webb · James M. Webb

William Friday becomes acting president of the Consolidated University

Named acting president at 35 while the trustees searched for Gordon Gray's successor, Friday began his duties on March 1, 1956. The board approved him as president on October 26, 1956, and at his first news conference he named moving the administrative offices from South Building on the Chapel Hill campus to the old Institute of Government building on Franklin Street as a first goal.

People: Gordon Gray

Subject: South Building · Institute of Government

The Tempo Room, a basement beer and sandwich lounge, opens on East Franklin Street

The Tempo Room opened at noon in the basement space next to Town and Campus that had held the Baby Shop, selling beer and sandwiches in a room designed by Hank Gifford for about 75 people. J. D. Wright ran it.

Dr. Sidney and Christine Chipman move into their new house on Dogwood Drive

Dr. Sidney S. Chipman, who headed UNC's Department of Maternal and Child Health, and his wife Christine moved into a new house at 515 Dogwood Drive in May 1956. Archie Davis of Durham drew the plan and Parker and Elliot of Chapel Hill built it.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Les Petites Musicales stages The Magic Flute in Hill Hall

An abridged English Magic Flute in Hill Hall used the University Glee Club under Joel Carter, who also sang Papageno, with the former Metropolitan Opera bass Norman Cordon as Sarastro.

Subject: Hill Hall

Gooch's Café serves its last meal and becomes Green's Cafe

Gooch's Café, a Chapel Hill fixture for more than half a century and owned since the 1940s by Clarence Simmons, served its last meal under that name. The next morning Charles T. Green of Durham took it over as Green's Cafe.

Subject: Gooch’s Café

A Webb-designed house is built for Bob and Josie Stipe in Highland Woods

The Stipe House at 1022 Highland Woods, built in 1957, sets a post-and-beam frame living floor over a masonry lower level on a lot that slopes sideways to the street, with the kitchen at the front open to the living room. The book uses it as its model modernist house and says it cost about $10 a square foot, against $12 to $15 for a traditional house.

People: John B. Webb · James M. Webb

Daniel H. Pollitt joins the UNC law faculty

Pollitt came to the UNC School of Law in 1957 as an associate professor of constitutional and labor law, after resigning from the University of Arkansas rather than sign an oath disavowing membership in the NAACP.

Subject: UNC School of Law

Dr. Ernest Wood, the first radiologist at UNC's hospital, builds a brick Ranch on Fern Lane

The five-bay Ranch has a recessed garage wing and a front cross-gable.

Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife build a Webb and Stewart house on Morgan Creek Road

A split-level modern house designed by James Webb and Don Stewart was built for Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife in Morgan Creek Hills. It was on the School Art Guild tour of homes in the fall of 1958.

People: Don Stewart · James M. Webb

Football coach Jim Tatum and his wife Edna build a house on Laurel Hill Road

The house pairs a two-story colonial block with a split-level stone living-room wing and a bowed window, probably from mail-order plans. Tatum had come back to coach UNC the year before.

James L. Godfrey serves as dean of the faculty

Godfrey held the post of dean of the faculty from 1957 to 1965, one of the titles that preceded the office of provost at Chapel Hill.

Jim Webb designs a Contemporary Ranch on Pine Lane as a retirement home for Fred and Josephine Weedon

Ellington & Sparrow built the open-plan house on a slope with an exposed basement at the back. The Weedons' daughter Josie and her husband, preservationist Bob Stipe, later lived there for many years.

People: James M. Webb

Mortgage Insurance Company opens the first section of Lake Forest

On former Coker land north of Coker Hills, the area along the south side of Eastwood Lake was developed in 1957 by the Mortgage Insurance Company. This first section later came to be called Old Lake Forest.

O. B. Hardison Jr. teaches in the English department

Hardison, a Renaissance specialist with UNC bachelor's and master's degrees, joined the English department in 1957 and edited Studies in Philology. He left in 1969 to direct the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Pediatrician Judson Van Wyk builds a house in the Highland Woods cooperative

Dr. Judson J. Van Wyk, a pediatrician and a member of the faculty cooperative that bought the Highland Woods tract, planned in December 1956 to start building on his lot there. By September 1957 the town had issued permits for nine Highland Woods houses designed by architect James M. Webb.

People: James M. Webb

The trustees make the Institute's professional staff professors of public law and government

Chancellor William B. Aycock won trustee approval for the Institute's assistant directors to hold the rank of professor of public law and government. The rank carried academic tenure, which strengthened the Institute's place in the University and made recruiting easier.

People: William B. Aycock

Subject: Institute of Government

Thomas Philip Lloyd sells the Carolina Pharmacy to Helen Duguid

Duguid kept the East Franklin drugstore going only a short time before Campus Laundry and Cleaners replaced it.

University Baptist Church acquires the McDade House lot next to its church

University Baptist Church voted to buy John Scott Trotter's properties beside its church at Franklin and Columbia streets for $250,000, among them the Cafe Mouza building, which was the old brick McDade House, and the Hill House. The church's later expansion plans on the lot led to the house's removal in 1997.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Waverly Branch and his wife build a Williamsburg-style house on Laurel Hill Road

The story-and-a-half house has beaded siding, a slate roof, end chimneys and a pedimented entrance porch in imitation of colonial Williamsburg. Branch was active in UNC affairs, and his wife was for many years the chancellor's secretary.

Howell's The Kenan Professorships is named one of the best Southern books of

The Kenan Professorships, written by UNC English professor A. C. Howell and published by the University Press with illustrations by William Meade Prince and Adrian Lamb, was chosen for design among 25 best Southern books of 1956.

People: William Meade Prince

Sophie Livas sells the Carolina Coffee Shop to Donald Belton

Sophie Livas, who had run the Carolina Coffee Shop since her husband George's death in 1956, sold it to Donald Belton, who took over on February 1, 1957.

Frances Hargraves teaches Chapel Hill's new special education classes at Northside School

The Chapel Hill schools had begun special education classes, one at Chapel Hill Elementary School and one taught by Frances Hargraves at Northside School. The Junior Service League paid a $200 scholarship for her training.

Subject: Northside School · Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Roland Giduz and Adelaide Walters are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen

In a heavy turnout that also re-elected Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell and approved a $500,000 bond issue, voters re-elected aldermen Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager and chose two new members, Adelaide Walters and Roland Giduz. As low man among the winners, Giduz drew a two-year term.

People: Paul W. Wager · Hubert Robinson · Oliver K. Cornwell · Adelaide Walters

Hubert Robinson is named Man of the Year

After Robinson was re-elected alderman with the highest vote on the ticket, a group of Black citizens representing churches, fraternal organizations and civic clubs named him Man of the Year and gave a reception in his honor at the Lincoln High School gymtorium on June 11.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

Jerrold Orne is appointed University Librarian

Chancellor Robert B. House announced Orne's appointment as university librarian, effective August 1, with the approval of President William C. Friday and the trustees. Orne came from the Air University library at Maxwell Air Force Base and succeeded Andrew H. Horn.

People: William C. Friday · Andrew H. (Andrew Harlis) Horn · R. B. House

Subject: UNC Libraries

William B. Aycock serves as chancellor of UNC at Chapel Hill

Aycock, on the law faculty at Chapel Hill since 1948, was chief administrator of the university there from July 1, 1957 until August 1964. His records cover desegregation, the state's speaker ban law and the Dixie Classic betting scandal.

Lincoln High prepares to open with sixteen teachers and about four hundred pupils

In the Chapel Hill News Leader's back to school report, Principal C. A. McDougle said Lincoln High School would have sixteen teachers and that enrollment would probably reach 400, against 381 on the first day of the previous year. Two of the teachers were new that year.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

Watts Restaurant holds its grand opening on the Pittsboro highway south of Chapel Hill

The new Watts Restaurant, a concrete-block building a mile south of town on the Pittsboro highway with counter, booths and private dining rooms, advertised its gala opening in mid-August 1957 after first advertising as Chapel Hill's newest restaurant in early July.

Wes and Nancy Thompson hold a grand opening of the South 501 Restaurant under their ownership

Under the new ownership and management of Wes and Nancy Thompson, the South 501 Restaurant on the Durham highway bypass, across from the Valley Drive-In, announced its grand opening, with steaks, curb service and a tap room.

J. K. Ellis reopens his East Franklin Street grill as the Village Cafeteria

After a summer of renovation, J. K. Ellis reopened his Village Grill as the Village Cafeteria, the last step in turning the old four-lane bowling alley he had bought in the mid-1940s into a full restaurant.

The first televised ACC regular season game is played at Woollen Gym

Television producer C. D. Chesley brought his cameras into Woollen Gym for Carolina's fourteenth meeting with Clemson, the first regular season ACC game ever televised. McGuire's team won 79-55.

Subject: Woollen Gymnasium

Chapel Hill Elementary pupils play carols with professional musicians at the school Christmas program

At the Chapel Hill Elementary School Christmas programs on December 17, 1957, directed musically by Adeline McCall, supervisor of music in the Chapel Hill schools, children playing psalteries, violins and bells accompanied the carols with two harpists, violinist Dorothy Alden and flutist Dorothy Hickok. The programs also staged the play Alias Santa Claus.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Charlie Mason's motor court on West Rosemary Street was lodging Black travelers

Charlie Mason's family ran Mason Grocery and the Mason Motel, which was advertising in Chapel Hill by December 1957. As Mason's Motor Court at 603 West Rosemary Street, with the Starlite Supper Club, it took Black guests, including well-known Black performers in town for concerts, when other Chapel Hill hotels would not.

Anne Firor Scott moves to Chapel Hill and takes a temporary history post at UNC

Anne Firor Scott and her husband Andrew Scott moved to Chapel Hill in 1958, when he joined UNC's political science department and she took a temporary position in history. They lived in the Highland Woods neighborhood for 47 years.

Cornelia Spencer Love serves as a founding trustee of the Chapel Hill Public Library

Love was a trustee of the public library from its start in 1958 until 1970 and secretary of its board of directors. The library began in a small house in downtown Chapel Hill.

Subject: Chapel Hill Public Library

Engineer Bob Anderson joins City Planning and Architecture Associates

Engineer Bob Anderson joined the Webb and Stewart firm in 1958 and later became Stewart's partner.

People: Don Stewart · James M. Webb

Fire destroys the Presbyterian church on East Franklin Street

The University Presbyterian Church burned in 1958. The congregation built a larger church on the same site three years later.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

George Brown Tindall joins the UNC history faculty

Tindall, who took his graduate degrees at UNC, returned in 1958 as an associate professor of history and taught until he retired as Kenan professor emeritus in 1990.

George Matsumoto draws plans for a Chapel Hill house for Cecile and Bryce DeWitt

Matsumoto's papers hold sketches, preliminary drawings and fourteen sheets of working drawings for a residence in Chapel Hill for Cecile and Bryce DeWitt.

Joe Page becomes sole owner of Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery

Page, a clerk in the East Franklin stationery store before the war, bought Herbert Ledbetter's share in 1947 and the rest of the business when Pickard died in 1958.

Kemp Nye opens Kemp's Phonograph Records on East Franklin Street

Nye, who had worked for Milton Abernethy, opened a record shop in the store the Smiths' bookshop had just left.

The Donald Stewart House is built on Severin Street

A 1958 house at 408 Severin Street in Chapel Hill, known as the Donald Stewart House, is listed among Don Stewart's works. It was sold in 1970.

The Intimate Bookshop moves into the old Berman Department Store on East Franklin Street

After Sam Berman's death, Paul and Isabel Smith moved their bookshop into the store his department store had used, the 119 East Franklin building it kept for forty years.

People: Paul Smith (Intimate Bookshop) · Isabel Smith

Subject: The Intimate Bookshop

William S. Powell becomes curator of the North Carolina Collection

Powell, who had joined the university library's North Carolina Collection in 1951, was named its curator after Mary Lindsay Thornton retired.

People: Mary Lindsay Thornton

Subject: UNC Libraries

The University's telephone system plans to double its East Rosemary Street exchange

The University-owned Chapel Hill telephone system announced a $300,000 addition that would double the size of its exchange building on East Rosemary Street, along with better party-line service. Bids for the addition were opened in March.

Doris and James Field begin plans for the Timbercrest subdivision

Doris Gates Field and James MacDonald Field started planning Timbercrest, a subdivision on a thirty-seven-acre tract northeast of Chapel Hill, in February 1958, and kept five and a half acres of it for their own Modernist house.

Carrboro voters approve merging their school district with the Chapel Hill unit

On August 5, 1958 the Carrboro school district voted 713 to 303 to merge with the Chapel Hill city school unit and levy a 15-cent school tax, after a spring vote had failed. The county board sold the old Carrboro School to R. B. Todd for $30,000 in September 1959.

Subject: Carrboro Elementary School · Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Binkley Baptist Church organizes

Fifty-six charter members established the congregation, initially worshiping on campus.

Ruth Faison Shaw brings her finger-painting case histories to the University

The Chapel Hill News Leader reported that Shaw, recently of Chapel Hill, was giving the University more than a thousand case histories on personality diagnosis through finger painting and was working as its consultant in therapy.

The Chapel Hill Choral Club sings Bach's Christmas Oratorio

The Chapel Hill Choral Club, directed by Joel Carter, performed the first three parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Hill Hall as part of the Tuesday Evening Series.

Subject: Hill Hall

Carrboro's schools join the Chapel Hill city unit

The merger Carrboro voters approved in August 1958 took effect with the 1959-60 school year, taking 462 pupils out of the Orange County system; in 1958-59 Carrboro Elementary had stayed under the county board while high school pupils and Black elementary pupils could attend Chapel Hill schools free.

Subject: Carrboro Elementary School · Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Chapel Hill's city directory lists sixteen bricklayers, twelve in Black neighborhoods

The 1959 Hill's Chapel Hill directory named sixteen bricklayers, twelve of them living in Northside and other historically Black neighborhoods. By 1962 the list had grown to eighteen, including John, Handy and Leo Campbell.

People: John Wesley Campbell

Community Church dedicates its first building

The building housed worship, classes, and offices.

Subject: Community Church of Chapel Hill

English professor Hugh Holman and his wife Verna build a Cape Cod house on Pine Lane

The story-and-a-half side-gabled house has two dormers and a small side wing.

Institute of Government staff draft a new state law on municipal annexation

Assistant directors Philip Green Jr., George Esser and Jake Wicker wrote a new North Carolina annexation law for a state study commission. The law, which stayed unchanged for more than forty years and became a model elsewhere, let the state's cities grow without being ringed by small incorporated suburbs.

People: George H. Esser Jr.

Subject: Institute of Government

Robert Rosenbacher opens The Hub, a men's clothing store, on East Franklin Street

The Hub took the store Charles Shields had just closed after 36 years of running his Home Owned Grocery there. It stayed 37 years, closing in 1996.

Robert Seymour becomes the first pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church

Robert Seymour came to Chapel Hill in 1959 as the first minister of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, organized the year before. He led it until 1988.

Part of Binkley Baptist and the Community Church of Chapel Hill · 13 events

Samuel Selden leaves the Playmakers and Harry E. Davis takes over the Department of Dramatic Art

Selden left Chapel Hill in 1959 to chair the Department of Theatre Arts at UCLA, and Harry E. Davis became chairman of the Department of Dramatic Art.

Subject: Carolina Playmakers

The Institute's dormitory lodges sixteen thousand overnight guests in a year

Sixteen thousand people stayed overnight in the Knapp Building's dormitory during the 1959-60 academic year, and attendance at Institute events and instruction had grown about tenfold since the building opened in 1956.

Subject: Institute of Government

The Masonic Hall on West Franklin Street is torn down for a department store parking lot

The Masonic Hall at Church Street was razed and its ground paved as a parking lot for the Belk-Leggett store next door.

The Oh Boy Drive-In opens at West Rosemary and Church streets

The Oh Boy Drive-In, run by the Boy family of Durham, was nearing completion at the corner of West Rosemary and Church streets in early July 1959. It was hiring in early August and serving cars by late August.

The law faculty and the Institute staff vote against merging the Institute into the law school

When Albert Coates pressed again to fold the Institute of Government into the UNC law school, both the law faculty and the Institute's own staff voted the idea down. Assistant director John Sanders warned that the Institute's service work would be subordinated to the law school and its identity lost.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government · UNC School of Law

University Methodist Church adds a Sunday school wing

The congregation built an education wing on the east side of its brick church at 150 East Franklin Street in 1959.

Subject: University United Methodist Church

A state audit reports irregularities in the Institute of Government's accounts

State Auditor Henry Bridges reported a gap of $5,064.32 in the Institute's books, caused by careless record keeping and slow deposit of room fees and book sales, not by missing money. Coates took the blame and paid $5,100 at once; he was repaid once he documented the spending, but staff who had not been warned in advance were angry.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

The University tears down the Abernethy house on South Columbia Street for Ackland grounds and parking

UNC bought the house from the widow of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, long the director of the University Infirmary, and tore it down to extend the Ackland Art Center grounds and make a gravel lot of about 60 faculty parking spaces. The house dated from 1905 and had housed many students.

People: Eric A. Abernethy

Subject: Ackland Art Museum

Chapel Hill Public Library shows Bayard Wootten photographs after her death

Weeks after Bayard Wootten died in New Bern, the Chapel Hill Public Library displayed her 1930s photographs of western North Carolina, made to illustrate two UNC Press books, Backwoods America and Cabins in the Laurel.

Subject: Chapel Hill Public Library

Sandy McClamroch is elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen

McClamroch, one of five candidates for three seats, was elected on May 5, 1959 with F. E. Strowd and Roland Giduz, and was sworn in with Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell the following Monday night. Campaigning, he had called for coordinating town and university planning and for bringing the university's payments for town services above the table.

People: Oliver K. Cornwell · Roland Giduz

Mayor Cornwell presses the state to widen the highways into Chapel Hill

Sworn in for a new term with aldermen F. E. Strowd and Sandy McClamroch, Mayor Cornwell wrote to the state's director of highways urging four-lane roads toward Durham and Raleigh and calling U.S. 15-501 and N.C. 54 major entrances to the university.

Chapel Hill's ABC liquor store opens in Eastgate Shopping Center

The county ABC system's Chapel Hill store opened in Eastgate Shopping Center and sold between $2,000 and $3,000 of liquor a day in its first two days, about half again the daily average at the Hillsboro store, which had opened April 10.

Stanley Vickers's parents apply for his transfer from Northside Elementary to Carrboro Elementary

After ten-year-old Stanley Boya Vickers finished fifth grade at Northside Elementary School in June 1959, his parents, Thomas Lee and Lattice Vickers, filed a written application to have him reassigned to Carrboro Elementary School, which was much nearer their home. The school board denied it on August 3, 1959.

Subject: Northside School · Carrboro Elementary School

Jim Tatum dies at Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill

Tatum apparently contracted an overwhelming viral infection while visiting Canada with the coaches Peahead Walker and Frank Howard, and died one week after entering Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He was buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.

People: Peahead Walker

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital) · Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Chapel Hill school board refuses Stanley Vickers a transfer to all-white Carrboro Elementary and adopts a first-grade proximity policy

The Chapel Hill City Board of Education denied ten-year-old Stanley Vickers a transfer from all-Black Northside Elementary to the nearer all-white Carrboro Elementary School, and at the same meeting adopted a policy of limited integration at the first-grade level starting with the 1960-61 year. UNC law dean Henry Brandis, who had twice moved to approve the transfer, resigned from the board in protest and called the action both morally and legally indefensible.

People: Stanley Vickers · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools · Carrboro Elementary School · Northside School