Chronology

Search and filters

Entries

1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. about 1843
   Construction or physical change · East Franklin Street, beside 407 East Franklin, Chapel Hill Samuel Phillips builds a law office with a Tudor entrance porch on East Franklin Street

   About 1843 Samuel Phillips, a lawyer who taught at the university, put up a small law office on East Franklin Street; by 1847 a boys' preparatory school was meeting in it. Its stepped-gable Tudor porch matches the Eagle Hotel annex built for Polk's 1847 visit. Dabney Cosby probably built it, and the design may be his or A. J. Davis's.

3. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

4. 1907
   Construction or physical change · 704 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Geologist Joseph Hyde Pratt builds a Colonial Revival house on East Franklin Street

   Joseph Hyde Pratt, UNC professor of economic geology and later state geologist, builds a two-story Colonial Revival house set well back on a large lot on East Franklin Street. Pratt also built several other houses on that part of the street.

5. 1908
   Construction or physical change · 115 Battle Lane, Chapel Hill A house is built on Battle Lane for English professor Edward Kidder Graham and his wife Susan

   English professor Edward Kidder Graham, later president of the university, and his wife Susan Williams Moses Graham build a shingled two-story house at 115 Battle Lane that mixes Colonial Revival and Craftsman details.

6. 1915-1927
   Construction or physical change · Cobb Terrace, Chapel Hill Collier Cobb develops Cobb Terrace, Chapel Hill's earliest planned development

   On uneven land at the north end of Henderson Street, geology professor Collier Cobb brought in earth to partly level the site, designed a terraced development and built eleven houses, several of them Aladdin kit houses, as affordable rental housing for young professors. The houses went up between 1915 and 1927 and stayed rentals until Cobb's death in 1934.

7. 1922
   Chapel Hill Brodie Thompson oversees the building of the Ben Warren house on Hillsborough Street

   Julius A. "Ben" Warren, the university's treasurer, and his wife Pattie Spurgeon Warren built a large two-story frame house at 301 Hillsborough Street on four acres he had bought in 1917, under the supervision of local builder Brodie Thompson.

8. 1925
   Construction or physical change · 602 East Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill Brodie Thompson builds a house on East Rosemary Street for George and Sarah Pickard

   Contractor Brodie Thompson builds a two-story, five-bay Colonial Revival house for George and Sarah Pickard at the southeast corner of East Rosemary and North Boundary streets.

9. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

10. 1949
    Chapel Hill 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.

11. 1952
    Property or economic transaction · 704 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill 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.

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.