Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
20 dated events match your filters.
Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District, National Register nomination (OR0303).Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–20.Back to highlights
- Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
-
Planner John Nolen delivers a campus plan for the university
Hired by the university's new buildings committees, John Nolen produced a campus plan in February 1919 that laid out fourteen new buildings, among them classrooms, a gymnasium and three dormitories. The university then engaged McKim, Mead and White and local architects to carry it out.
-
William C. Coker directs a university bureau for school grounds
Coker set up and ran the UNC Extension Division's Bureau of Design and Improvement of School Grounds, which sent plans and a field assistant to schools around the state; 33 towns were helped in 1920-21. In 1921 the bureau began advising on home and factory grounds as well.
-
William C. Coker's committee is put in charge of the care of the whole campus
After Coker drew his 'Plan A' for siting dormitories on the campus's east side, the grounds and buildings committee in December 1922 gave him and a subcommittee charge of the care and improvement of the entire campus, with its own budget. The nomination calls him in effect the university's first resident planner.
-
T. Felix Hickerson publishes Highway Curves and Earthworks
UNC civil engineering professor Thomas Felix Hickerson, who laid out the curving roads of Rocky Ridge Farm, first published his road design text in 1926. Later issued as Route Location and Design, it was used in engineering programs at some 83 colleges.
-
William C. Coker's Rocky Ridge lot deeds restrict the race of residents
In selling the lots of his Rocky Ridge Farm development, Coker wrote covenants into the deeds that set the number of buildings, the cost of houses and, in the early deeds, the race of the residents. These private restrictions governed the neighborhood before Chapel Hill had residential zoning.
People: William Chambers Coker
-
Black stonemasons build the stone walls of Rocky Ridge Farm
The curving walls of random-coursed stone that line Country Club Road, Laurel Hill Road and Laurel Hill Circle were built alongside the houses by local Black masons, among them James Blackwell and Jesse Jones.
-
Gustav Harrer builds a shingled house on Laurel Hill Road
The Harrer house, a two-story, L-shaped Colonial Revival dwelling with shingle siding, is one of the first houses of Rocky Ridge Farm's opening building period, 1928-30.
-
Drama professor Preston Farrar builds a house with an outdoor stage on Laurel Hill Road
UNC drama professor Preston Farrar built a two-story stucco house in the manner of an English cottage. It had indoor and outdoor stages for rehearsals and small productions, including a stone terrace used as a theatre, and a specimen garden.
-
Russell Gruman builds a Dutch Colonial house on Laurel Hill Circle
A gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial Revival house of rough brick and shingle, with a matching garage, went up for Russell Gruman at the close of the district's first building period.
-
Daniel Huston Buchanan builds a two-story house with a gallery on Laurel Hill Road
The Buchanan house, of stone and weatherboard with a two-story pedimented gallery, is one of the Colonial Revival houses of Rocky Ridge Farm's second building period, 1936-40.
-
Dudley Carroll builds a red brick house on Country Club Road
A red brick Colonial Revival house with an asymmetrical front and a fanlighted entry went up for Dudley Carroll in Rocky Ridge Farm's second building period.
-
Durham architects Hackney and Knott design Carl Pegg's house on Laurel Hill Road
A three-bay brick Colonial Revival house for Carl Pegg was designed by the Durham firm of Hackney and Knott in the district's second building period.
-
Architect Bradford Eddy designs James Clarence Andrews's house on Buttons Road
A two-story shingled Colonial Revival house for James Clarence Andrews was designed by Bradford Eddy, an architect who practiced outside North Carolina.
-
Harold W. Brown of the public health faculty builds a red brick house on Laurel Hill Road
Dr. Harold W. Brown, the parasitologist who joined the public health faculty in 1937 and was dean of the School of Public Health from 1941 to 1943, built a two-story red brick house that mixes Colonial Revival and Cotswold features. The Fletcher M. Greens bought it in 1943, when Brown left for Columbia.
-
Music department chair Glen Haydon builds a brick house on Laurel Hill Road
Glen Haydon, chair of the UNC music department, built a two-story brick and weatherboard Colonial Revival house with a stone retaining wall.
-
UNC Press editor William Couch builds a brick and stone house on Laurel Hill Road
William Couch, editor of the University of North Carolina Press and brother of botanist John N. Couch, built a two-story brick and stone Colonial Revival house with a two-story gallery, designed by William Sprinkle.
People: William Van Sprinkle
-
Architect Eugene Stroud designs physician John J. Wright's house on Laurel Hill Circle
A two-story, three-bay shingled Colonial Revival house was built for physician John J. Wright to a design by Eugene Stroud.
-
Dudley Cowden builds a galleried house with a specimen garden on Country Club Road
The Cowden house is a two-story frame Colonial Revival dwelling with a two-story stone west wing, a front gallery, a stone terrace, a stone garage and a formal specimen garden.
-
William Sprinkle designs Frances Gardham's house on Country Club Road
Frances Gardham's Colonial Revival house with vernacular details is one of three Rocky Ridge Farm houses the nomination credits to architect William Sprinkle.
People: William Van Sprinkle
- Civil rights era · 1945–1975
-
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)
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 4, 2026.
