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Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District Boundary Increase and Additional Documentation, National Register nomination (OR1748).Open the sourceAll sources
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Entries
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1930s
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A Colonial Revival cottage with an attached garage is built on Country Club Road for Robert B. Voitle
The story-and-a-half weatherboarded cottage has an original garage on one side. The 2008 documentation redates it to about 1935 and makes it contributing; the 1989 district nomination had dated it 1955.
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William Van Sprinkle designs a brick Colonial Revival house on Pine Lane for Richmond and Marjorie Bond
Contractors Ellington & Sparrow built the five-part brick house, a story-and-a-half main block with lower wings joined by hyphens. It is the oldest house in the Laurel Hill boundary increase, and the nomination ranks it the best of the neighborhood's later Colonial Revival houses.
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Professor Urban T. Holmes builds a painted-brick Colonial Revival house on Pine Lane
The deck-on-hip house, with a basement garage set into the slope, was one of two Pine Lane houses built before the war. The nomination takes the two late-1930s houses as proof that Pine Lane was part of Coker's original plat.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1940s
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Classics professor J. P. Harland builds the first postwar house in Laurel Hill
His shingled Colonial Revival cottage on Laurel Hill Road has an attached garage wing turned to face the street. Earlier Laurel Hill houses kept their garages at the far end of the driveway, so the nomination reads the wing as a sign of the car's new place in the suburb.
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Laurel Hill Road is extended south beyond the 1927 plat
On the 1927 plat the road stopped at the south edge of 603 Laurel Hill Road. The extension carried it south toward the line later taken by the 15-501 Bypass and opened lots for postwar houses.
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Commerce dean Dudley D. Carroll builds a small brick house on Laurel Hill Road for an in-law
The one-story side-gabled house has a traditional form with a large transom and sidelights at the door. English professor Blyden Jackson later owned it.
- 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
- 1960s
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Political scientist Gordon Cleveland designs his own Colonial Revival house on Pine Lane
Ellington & Sparrow built the side-hall house for Gordon and Martha Cleveland on a sloping lot with a full basement.
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UNC football coach Jim Hickey builds a two-story Colonial Revival house on Iris Lane
The weatherboarded house has a pedimented entrance porch and a garage wing topped by a small cupola. Hickey lived there until 1977.
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William Van Sprinkle designs a long Contemporary Ranch on Buttons Road for Charles and Kay Bream
The six-bay house for the radiology professor mixes vertical wood and brick, with sliding windows and a carport set on the diagonal. Sprinkle, known for Colonial Revival work, here turned to a modern design.
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Architect Arthur Cogswell adds a flat-roofed art studio to the Voitle house on Country Club Road
The low modern studio at the rear has vertical wood siding and large fixed windows, a sharp contrast to the 1930s cottage in front of it.
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UNC head football coach Bill Dooley buys the Wood house on Fern Lane
Dooley bought the 1957 Ranch built for radiologist Ernest Wood and lived there until 1994.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
- 1990s
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Cornelia Spencer Love's Laurel Hill cottage is remodeled and enlarged with a modern two-story wing
The work replaced the shingles with wood siding and added a large glassy wing with a metal balcony. So little original fabric survives that the 2008 documentation reclassified the house as noncontributing.
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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 4, 2026.