Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
126 dated events match your filters.
M. Ruth Little, The Town and Gown Architecture of Chapel Hill, 1795-1975 (2004).Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–126.Back to highlights
Entries
Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
- 1790s
-
Old East is finished as a two-story dormitory of sixteen rooms
The university's first building was ready in 1795 as a two-story brick dormitory with sixteen rooms. Its plan is in effect two center-hall houses joined end to end, with a fireplace for every room, and it kept that height until a third story went on in 1822.
-
The university finishes a house for its president at Cameron Avenue and Columbia Street
A Federal side-hall house for the head of the university was completed in 1795 at the northeast corner of what are now Cameron Avenue and South Columbia Street. Each of its two bedrooms had a pair of built-in closets, uncommon at the time.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1810s
-
Professor Andrew Rhea buys the Hillsborough Street land where the log "Old Tavern" stands
In 1812 professor Andrew Rhea bought a tract a few blocks north of the campus, and he may have built the log house still standing at 419 Hillsborough Street as his own home. The house goes by the name Old Tavern, although nothing shows it was ever used as one.
-
Professor William Hooper builds a house on East Franklin Street
About 1814 William Hooper, professor of ancient languages, put up a plain two-story Federal house at 504 East Franklin Street, one block east of the campus, with brick chimneys at the gable ends and a center door under a transom. It is one of only two houses from the village of that decade still standing.
-
A student of 1818 recalls the village's two stores and Hilliard's tavern
Writing to Elisha Mitchell in 1853, William D. Moseley of the class of 1818 remembered about a dozen houses on the main street in his student years, with two stores, Trice's and Tom Taylor's, and Hilliard's tavern. Of the private buildings he named, only two houses on East Franklin Street survive.
-
Students James K. Polk and William Horn Battle board at the Tenney farmhouse
The one-story frame house at 381 Tenney Circle, a dwelling on John B. Tenney's farm northeast of the campus, was probably standing by 1818 and keeps much of its early interior. James K. Polk of the class of 1818 and William Horn Battle of the class of 1820 took room and board there and walked two miles to classes.
-
The Puckett house stands on East Franklin Street across from Hooper's
John Puckett, a former postmaster, bought the lot at 501 East Franklin Street from John Craig in 1817, and by early 1818 his widow lived in a two-story Federal house there; Denison Olmsted bought it from her about 1820 and remodeled it. Before the Civil War it was the home of mathematics professor James Phillips, whose family held Ben and Dilsey Craig in slavery; the Craigs lived in a brick kitchen in the back yard.
- 1820s
-
State architect William Nichols designs Old West and Gerrard Hall
In 1822 William Nichols, the English-born architect who was North Carolina's first state architect, drew Old West as a match for Old East and designed a new chapel, Gerrard Hall. Gerrard's south portico of four two-story Ionic columns made it the campus's first building in the Romantic Classical mode.
- 1830s
-
Robert Donaldson has A. J. Davis design a campus hall for the Philanthropic Society that is never built
In the 1830s alumnus Robert Donaldson, by then living in New York, hired Alexander Jackson Davis to design a hall for the Philanthropic Society on the campus. It was not built, but Donaldson kept up a correspondence with President Swain about gardens, architects and furnishings that led to Davis's later work at Chapel Hill.
- 1840s
-
Swain asks architect David Paton about coating the college buildings
In 1840 President David L. Swain wrote to David Paton, the Scottish architect then finishing the State Capitol in Raleigh, about covering the brick college buildings with a tinted mix of cement, lime and water. The coating began the stucco finish the campus buildings wore for the rest of the century.
-
Trustees tell Swain to ask Robert Donaldson about plans for society halls and a landscape gardener
In October 1843 the board directed President Swain to write to Robert Donaldson in New York about how best to get plans for new literary society halls and to find someone skilled in laying out the grounds, and at what price.
-
Swain authorizes Donaldson to bring architect A. J. Davis to the university
In a letter from Raleigh dated November 28, 1843, Swain told Donaldson he might invite Alexander Jackson Davis to Chapel Hill to make working drawings and specifications, with $100 for travel. The letter opened Davis's service as the university's architect and planner of its grounds.
-
Chapel Hill's Presbyterians and Methodists circulate subscription papers for church buildings
Swain's letter of November 1843 reported that the village Presbyterians and Methodists each had subscription papers going round to pay for churches, while the Episcopalians already had the brick walls of theirs standing. The Presbyterian church was finished in 1848 and the Methodist in 1853.
-
Alexander Jackson Davis makes his first visit to the university
Davis came to Chapel Hill in February 1844, and that year trustee John Motley Morehead met with him and Swain there about the design of a new hall, later Smith Hall. Davis stayed in touch with Swain and the trustees about campus work until the mid-1850s.
-
Nancy Hilliard adds a castellated annex to the Eagle Hotel for President Polk's visit
For President James K. Polk's visit to the 1847 commencement, Nancy Hilliard, who kept the Eagle Hotel, added a stuccoed two-story wing with a battlemented porch in a medieval manner. The annex stood on the site of today's Graham Memorial; Dabney Cosby likely built it, perhaps to his own design or one by A. J. Davis.
-
Free Black cabinetmaker Thomas Day supplies woodwork and furniture for the new society halls
Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Milton, North Carolina, supplied woodwork and furniture for the halls and libraries of the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies in A. J. Davis's north additions to Old East and Old West. Little names him, with the Virginia builder Dabney Cosby, among the craftsmen who carried out Davis's design.
- 1850s
-
Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones builds a Gothic Revival cottage on West Cameron Avenue
In the 1850s Dr. Jones, one of the village's two physicians before the war, built a board-and-batten cottage at 321 West Cameron with Gothic windows in its front gable, a bay window and a porch of arched latticework. It is the only Gothic Revival cottage known in Chapel Hill, probably based on a pattern book such as Downing's.
-
Warrenton builder Jacob Holt puts up an Italianate house for Mary Southerland on West Franklin Street
In the mid-1850s Mary Southerland engaged Jacob Holt, the Warrenton builder, for a house on West Franklin a little west of Columbia Street, done in his heavy Italianate style with sawn brackets, corner pilasters and arched windows. She had bought the lot from Dr. Johnston B. Jones in 1851. The house has been torn down; University Square now occupies the lot.
-
A. J. Davis returns to Chapel Hill with designs for new and enlarged college buildings
With the dormitories overflowing, Swain asked the faculty and trustees in 1855 for leave to build new residence halls, and the university turned again to Davis, who visited in the summer of 1856 and offered several designs. When the trustees acted in 1858 they hired William Percival instead.
-
Samuel Phillips builds a gable-and-wing house beside his law office
In 1856 Samuel Phillips built his family a two-story house at 407 East Franklin Street, beside his law office. With a projecting front wing and arched French doors and casements, it was the first house in the village to break from the box-like Federal and Greek Revival plan.
- 1860s
-
The brick Mason-Lloyd-Wiley House is built on West Cameron Avenue
About 1860 a two-story brick house with carefully laid walls and a sidelighted double entrance went up at 412 West Cameron Avenue, among the biggest houses on the west side of the university. Turner Bynum may have built it.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
-
A count of Chapel Hill finds 483 white and 454 Black residents
Four years after emancipation, Chapel Hill had 483 white and 454 Black residents, close to half and half. Freed families were making homes on the village's western side, on West Cameron Avenue, West Franklin Street and around Potter's Field west of Church Street.
-
An 1869 account finds Chapel Hill grown to about 1,000 people
By 1869 the village that had one store and one doctor in 1836 counted eight or ten stores, two drugstores, four churches and six schools, with about 1,000 people. The growth came mostly between the mid-1850s and the war, when new streets were opened and many houses built.
- 1870s
-
November Caldwell, once enslaved by President Joseph Caldwell, dies
November Caldwell (1791-1872), held in slavery by Joseph Caldwell, brought firewood to the students, who were fond of him for his humor. A memorial in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery on the campus honors him.
-
George T. Winston buys Benjamin Hedrick's house with its polygonal annex
Professor George T. Winston bought the former Hedrick house in 1879. In the 1880s or early 1890s he tied the old farmhouse and its many-sided annex together with a Queen Anne addition of porch, entrance hall and parlor, turning the house toward Franklin Street. It is now called the Horace Williams House after its later owner.
- 1880s
-
Two rear wings are added to Person Hall as chemistry laboratories
The university's only other building work of the late 1800s besides Memorial Hall was a pair of wings on the back of Person Hall, added in 1886 and 1892 to hold its first chemistry laboratories.
- 1890s
-
Merchant Henry "Hoot" Patterson turns a West Cameron Avenue I-house into a Queen Anne villa
In the 1890s Henry "Hoot" Patterson, whose general store was on East Franklin Street, bought the frame I-house at 403 West Cameron Avenue and turned it into a Queen Anne house with a rose window in a front gable, bracketed eaves, a bay window and an elaborate porch that wraps the corner.
-
St. Paul AME congregation builds its present church on Merritt Mill Road
St. Paul AME, the first all-Black congregation in Chapel Hill, put up the church that still stands in 1892, across Merritt Mill Road from the site of its first building near the old Quaker school.
-
Geology professor Collier Cobb builds a Queen Anne cottage on East Franklin Street
Collier Cobb built his house at 517 East Franklin Street in 1893 and enlarged it later that decade. With its pedimented front wing, Palladian window and curving porch, it is one of the first Queen Anne houses in Chapel Hill.
-
Dilsey Craig, enslaved in the household of professor James Phillips, dies
Dilsey Craig (1802-1894) and Ben Craig were enslaved by the family of mathematics professor James Phillips and lived in the brick kitchen behind 501 East Franklin Street. Dilsey remained with the family long after freedom, and a memorial marks her in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
-
Chemistry professor Charles Baskerville builds a Queen Anne house at 524 East Franklin Street
Charles Baskerville's house on East Franklin Street, going up in March 1896, hides two full stories behind a large polygonal entrance bay with a pyramid roof, trimmed with a turret, a balconied dormer and a gabled vent. Little calls it the most playful Queen Anne house in town. Baskerville bought the lot outright in 1905 and sold the house that year to chemist Charles Herty.
-
President Edwin Alderman gives South Building a stone doorway copied from Westover
During his presidency Edwin Alderman added a carved stone pedimented doorway to South Building, modeled on the one at Westover, the colonial James River mansion in Virginia. With the new well temple, it was an early step toward the Colonial Revival that later ruled campus building.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
-
Mill owner Isaac W. Pritchard builds a large frame house on Ransom Street
Isaac Pritchard, who ran one of the first textile mills near the Carrboro depot, built a spacious house at 400 Ransom Street combining a hipped roof and Palladian dormer with a Queen Anne entrance and wraparound porch. Most of his land later became part of the Westwood subdivision.
-
Chemist Charles H. Herty buys Charles Baskerville's new house
Charles Baskerville, who had built a house on the southwest corner of Boundary and Franklin streets in 1897, sold it in 1905 to the chemist Charles H. Herty, who joined the university faculty that year and was later known for a process that made newsprint from southern pine.
-
John O'Daniel builds a Queen Anne cottage on McCauley Street
John O'Daniel's Queen Anne cottage at 237 McCauley Street has a tall hip roof, a projecting wing with a bay, and a porch that wraps around to a gazebo at the corner.
-
Mathematician and historian Archibald Henderson builds his house on East Franklin Street
Archibald Henderson, who taught mathematics at UNC from 1898 to 1948 and later wrote a history of the campus buildings, built a large frame house at 721 East Franklin Street in 1905. It mixes Colonial Revival porch, entrance and widow's walk with leftover Queen Anne diamond-pane windows and bays.
-
Botanist William C. Coker builds his house at The Rocks
At The Rocks, his estate north of the village (now 609 North Street), botanist William Coker built a stuccoed two-story house raised on a high stone base, with wide eaves and a fieldstone wainscot. Little finds it the nearest thing in Chapel Hill to Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie houses; its architect is unknown.
- 1910s
-
Black-owned town lots in Chapel Hill nearly double in ten years
The African American community's real estate grew from 98 lots in 1910 to 170 in 1920. The same passage names Black-owned barber, shoe repair, restaurant, grocery and pressing businesses of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
-
Thomas W. Strowd builds a two-story house on McCauley Street
At 220 McCauley Street, on lots he bought from David McCauley in 1901, Thomas Strowd built about 1910 a big frame Queen Anne house, hip-roofed, with a scallop-trimmed two-story bay and a porch that wraps around it, part of the wave of such houses in west Chapel Hill after 1900.
-
Architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler publishes a review of the UNC campus
The New York critic compared the old Chapel Hill buildings with Harvard's, praised their open placement, dismissed the old Memorial Hall and found the new Beaux Arts buildings on McCorkle Place neither good nor bad. He counted it lucky that the university could afford only conventional architects.
-
Louis Round Wilson has a Craftsman house built on East Rosemary Street
Louis Round Wilson, the university librarian, had a large Craftsman-style house built at 607 East Rosemary Street in 1911, an early example of the Arts and Crafts mode in Chapel Hill.
-
A Colonial Revival house is built for businessman Junius Webb on Pittsboro Street
The two-story house at 302 Pittsboro Street, with a deep hip roof, hipped dormer and wraparound classical porch, was built for Junius Webb about 1913.
-
The first president's house is moved off the Swain Hall site and becomes a private home
When Swain Hall was built in 1913 at Cameron Avenue and South Columbia Street, the 1795 house built for the university's president was moved from the corner and reused as a private dwelling.
-
State Forester John S. Holmes builds a shingled house on Glenburnie Street
John Holmes's wood-shingled house at 204 Glenburnie Street, with bargeboards and diamond-pane sash, is the only example in Chapel Hill of the Shingle Style that McKim, Mead and White developed for Newport summer cottages.
-
Engineering professor T. Felix Hickerson builds a house on Battle Lane
T. Felix Hickerson, later author of a standard road-design textbook and the engineer who laid out Gimghoul and Laurel Hill, built a two-story weatherboarded house at 108 Battle Lane that pairs a classical entrance porch with a bay window and a sleeping porch.
-
President Edward K. Graham engages planner John Nolen to study the campus
Urged by a faculty grounds committee of W. C. Coker, George Howe and Collier Cobb, formed in 1913, and after the trustees endorsed a full campus plan in spring 1916, Graham brought in the national planner John Nolen. Between 1917 and 1919 Nolen studied the campus and recommended building out the land south of South Building, the direction the 1920s expansion took.
-
The Forest Theatre, an outdoor amphitheatre, is built at the edge of Battle Park
The university's open-air theatre on the western edge of Battle Park dates from 1919. It now carries the name of drama professor Frederick Koch.
-
The university hires Aberthaw and McKim, Mead and White for its expansion
For the postwar building program the university engaged the Aberthaw firm in 1919 to survey the campus and rework its plan, and by May 1920 it had retained the New York firm of McKim, Mead and White, led by William Kendall, as consulting architects for red brick Colonial Revival buildings. Local supervision came later, under Thomas C. Atwood from 1921, with H. P. Alan Montgomery and, from 1922, Arthur C. Nash.
- 1920s
-
Anatomy professor Wesley George builds a Colonial Revival cottage in Gimghoul
George Watts Carr of Durham designed Wesley George's small front-gabled, shingled house with an entrance portico at 208 Glandon Drive, a sign of the Colonial Revival taking over the Gimghoul neighborhood after its first Craftsman houses.
-
Carpenter Luther Hargrave builds a bungalow on Lindsay Street for his daughter's family
In the African American section of Northside west of Church Street, carpenter Luther Hargrave built a side-gabled bungalow with a large front dormer at 308 Lindsay Street in 1920 for his daughter and her husband.
-
Contractor Brodie Thompson builds his own house on Henderson Street
Brodie Thompson, the town's leading builder of the 1920s and 1930s and contractor for many fraternity houses and village homes, built a Colonial Revival house for himself at 214 Henderson Street.
-
Steele Dormitory, the first building of the new south quadrangle, goes up
Designed by Raleigh architect J. A. Salter and built just south of Smith Hall, Steele was the first building on what became Polk Place and the best-equipped dormitory the campus had yet seen.
-
The General Assembly grants almost $1.5 million for new university buildings
After a 1920 campaign by the university to expand its crowded plant, where about 1,000 students packed old dormitories and classrooms, the legislature voted close to $1.5 million for buildings in 1921 and 1922.
-
Murphey, Saunders and Manning halls are designed in the university's building office
On the east side of the new south quadrangle, H. P. Alan Montgomery, architect in the university's building office under Thomas C. Atwood, laid out a smaller court of classroom buildings, with McKim, Mead and White as consulting architects: Murphey Hall for languages and literature, Saunders Hall (now Carolina Hall) for history and social science, and Manning Hall, with an Ionic portico and cupola, for the law school.
-
Chapel Hill Baptists build a Neoclassical church at Franklin and Columbia streets
Leaving their church a few blocks west, the Baptists built a tan brick and stone church with an Ionic portico on a raised basement at the corner of West Franklin and South Columbia streets, facing the campus. Frank Milburn designed it, probably his last Chapel Hill job.
-
Brodie Thompson builds a house for historian Henry McGilbert Wagstaff
For Henry and Mary Wagstaff, Thompson built a two-story frame house at 206 North Boundary Street with a fanlit entrance, a porch with turned balusters, a high hipped roof and a long side porch toward Rosemary Street.
-
Five fraternity houses by Brodie Thompson form the Big Fraternity Court
Alumni gifts paid for the Big Fraternity Court on the first block of South Columbia Street: five Colonial Revival houses built by Brodie Thompson and set around a shared court, in the manner of the new campus quadrangles. A smaller court stands around the corner on Cameron Avenue.
-
Chapel Hill Methodists complete a Georgian Revival church by James Gamble Rogers
Replacing their older sanctuary at 150 East Franklin Street, the Methodists finished a red brick church with white trim designed by New York architect James Gamble Rogers. It was accepted from the contractors on April 12, 1926, first used for the District Conference on May 27-28, and held its first Sunday service on May 30. Its tall steeple rises above the nearby campus and business district.
-
Brodie Thompson builds a brick Colonial Revival house for banker Milton Hogan
At 104 North Boundary Street, Thompson built a two-story brick house for Milton and Carrie Hogan with a Doric-columned entrance, modillion cornice and one-story side porches.
-
William C. Coker plats the Laurel Hill subdivision
On his land southeast of the campus, Coker had T. Felix Hickerson lay out Laurel Hill Road along a ridge beside the golf course, with short cul-de-sacs and large lots. Coker approved every house plan and seems to have sent builders to Atwood and Nash; seven houses were built before the 1929 crash.
-
Botanist Henry Roland Totten builds a Tudor Revival house on Laurel Hill Road
Botanist Henry Roland Totten, a protege of W. C. Coker, and his wife built a stuccoed Tudor Revival house at 110 Laurel Hill Road, with one wing in stone. Plans were drawn in June 1928, the excavation was finished by early August, and the house was finished about 1929.
-
Botanist John Couch builds an Elizabethan Revival house on Ridge Road
Botanist John Couch, a colleague of Coker, built a dormered two-story frame house at 5 Ridge Road in Laurel Hill, its front wing lit by a broad bay window. The 1989 nomination credits the design to the Durham architect George Watts Carr.
-
Latin professor George Howe builds a Tudor Revival house on Buttons Road
George Howe's stuccoed house at 2 Buttons Road in Laurel Hill takes its medieval character from a steep hipped roof, dormers, front wings and casement windows.
-
W. C. Coker buys Dr. Jones's Gothic cottage, which becomes the Chi Psi fraternity house
In 1928 W. C. Coker bought the property at 321 West Cameron Avenue, and the 1850s Gothic cottage of Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones became the Chi Psi fraternity's house.
-
Chi Psi announces a Norman-style house for West Cameron Avenue
Chi Psi announced plans for a $50,000 Norman-style stone house by the university architects Atwood and Nash on the old McCauley place on Cameron Avenue. The design broke with the campus's Colonial theme: steep slate roof, casement windows with stone trim, an arched entrance and a stone terrace. The old McCauley house, the chapter's home, burned on Christmas night 1929, and in November 1930 the chapter was still without a new house.
-
Cornelia Spencer Love designs and builds her own house in Laurel Hill
Cornelia Spencer Love, granddaughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, planned her own one-story frame house in Laurel Hill; the architect Arthur Nash contributed the flared roof ends and a little porch.
-
The Beta Theta Pi fraternity house is completed on South Columbia Street
The Beta Theta Pi house at 114 South Columbia Street, apart from the fraternity courts, is a brick house laid in Flemish bond with a slate roof and dormers, a Doric portico across the front and wings on each side, set back on a wide lawn.
-
The Gothic cottage serving as the Chi Psi house burns
Dr. Jones's board-and-batten cottage at 321 West Cameron Avenue burned in 1929, a year after it became the Chi Psi fraternity house. The fraternity's Tudor Revival house now stands on the site.
- 1930s
-
A new Memorial Hall with a Doric portico replaces the Victorian auditorium
In January 1930 the university decided to raze Old Memorial Hall and build a larger auditorium to plans by Atwood and Nash. The new Colonial Revival hall, with three entrances under a monumental Doric portico facing Cameron Avenue, stood by early 1931, one of three buildings the university completed in the early Depression under Frank Porter Graham.
-
Chapel Hill builds a new town hall with WPA help
The Works Progress Administration paid about half the cost of the town hall at 100 West Rosemary Street, on the site of the town's first town hall; it went into use in late March 1939. University architects Atwood and Weeks designed the two-story brick building in a Williamsburg-inspired Colonial style with a hipped slate roof, cupola and swan's-neck pediment.
-
Architect William Van Sprinkle designs a brick house on Gimghoul Road for Benjamin Edkins
The two-story brick Colonial Revival house with a one-story side wing at 739 Gimghoul Road was built for salesman Benjamin Edkins and his wife to a design by Durham architect William Van Sprinkle.
-
Lenoir Hall is built as the new campus dining hall
Atwood and Weeks designed Lenoir Hall, a red brick dining hall with large windows near Wilson Library, completed in 1939.
- 1940s
-
Louis Graves starts a newspaper campaign to give Franklin Street a Williamsburg look
Feeling the business district looked shabby beside the new campus, Chapel Hill Weekly editor Louis Graves began praising Colonial Williamsburg's shops in editorials. Joseph Hyde Pratt, John M. Booker, W. D. Carmichael Jr., Collier Cobb and George Watts Hill backed the plan, and architect Archie Davis gave the planning commission watercolors showing owners how to remodel.
-
The Carolina Inn completes the first of its rear additions
The Carolina Inn, which Arthur Nash designed for John Sprunt Hill, gained a rear addition in 1940, the first of three (later ones in 1970 and 1995) that tracked the university's growth.
-
The WPA rebuilds the Forest Theatre in stone
Works Progress Administration crews remade the amphitheatre in local stone: a screen wall along Country Club Road, curved seating following the hillside, towers for lights and sound, and a rough stone stage. The present structure dates from this rebuilding.
-
University controller William D. Carmichael Jr. builds a large brick house in Laurel Hill
William Carmichael and his wife had one of the biggest Colonial Revival houses in town built at 106 Laurel Hill Circle, a red brick house with a classical entrance and flanking wings.
-
William Van Sprinkle designs a Colonial Revival house for Horace Crockford on Country Club Road
For professor Horace D. Crockford and his wife, William Van Sprinkle designed a modest two-story Colonial Revival house of brick and weatherboard at 305 Country Club Road, with a garage wing and a cupola, as building in Laurel Hill picked up again at the end of the 1930s.
-
The Carolina Theatre is built on East Franklin Street to a Williamsburg design by Archie Davis
The new two-story brick theatre at 108 East Franklin Street, with a steep roof, dormers and brick pediments and arches, was the one building in the 100 block of East Franklin to follow the Williamsburg plan.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
-
A row of Colonial-style stores fills the 300 and 400 blocks of West Franklin Street
As downtown pushed west after the war, an unbroken row of Williamsburg-inspired shops went up along West Franklin Street, many designed by Archie Davis.
-
Carolina Coach Company builds a Williamsburg-style bus station on West Franklin Street
The bus station at 311 West Franklin Street had a pedimented portico, a cupola with a weathervane and other Colonial details.
-
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.
-
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.
- 1950s
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
- 1960s
-
Architect Arthur Cogswell designs his own house on Marilyn Lane
Cogswell's 1960 house at 5 Marilyn Lane sits on two levels in a slope, planned on George Matsumoto's four-foot grid and sided in vertical pine, with a short bridge from the drive to the door and a living room under a row of small glass-ended gables. It won an award from the North Carolina chapter of the AIA.
-
Don Stewart designs a Japanese-influenced house for Robert and Ruth Mace
Around 1960 Stewart's work turned toward Asian models, as in the one-level house he drew for physicist Robert Mace and his wife Ruth at 222 Hillcrest Circle, off East Franklin Street. Its wide roof overhang and the screen beside the entrance have a Japanese cast, and a tall porch shades the south side.
-
Don Stewart designs the Bowers-Nelson House in Morgan Creek Hills
Built about 1960 at 903 Coker Drive, this small house on a sloping lot is Stewart's most direct borrowing from Japanese houses. Its post-and-beam frame is exposed outside and was first painted in bright colors, and paper shoji screens slide on tracks to divide the rooms.
-
Edward and Elizabeth Waugh publish The South Builds
Architect Edward Waugh and his wife Elizabeth published The South Builds with the University of North Carolina Press in 1960, a survey of new Southern architecture that favored modern buildings suited to the region's climate.
-
Henry Roland Totten develops the first sections of Coker Hills
Coker College hired UNC botanist Henry Roland Totten, a colleague of the late W. C. Coker, to develop its Estes Drive land, and the first sections of Coker Hills went up along Elliott and Clayton roads in 1960 and 1961. The rest of the neighborhood was built out through 1972.
-
The Glendale subdivision is developed north of Battle Park
During the 1960s the Glendale subdivision was built on the hilly ground north of Battle Park, with houses by Cogswell/Hausler and other modernist firms.
-
Arthur Cogswell opens his own architecture firm in Chapel Hill
Arthur Cogswell, a UNC graduate of 1952 who trained in architecture at State College and spent the late 1950s in Don Stewart's office, opened his own Chapel Hill practice in 1962, designing flat-roofed, cantilevered houses in the spare manner he learned from George Matsumoto.
-
Four high-rise dormitories go up on UNC's south campus
Between 1962 and 1967 the firm of Graves and Toy built Craig, Ehringhaus, Morrison and Hinton James, steel-framed residence towers faced in brick and grouped around Chase Hall at the south edge of campus. Open metal balconies on the back serve as hallways to the student suites.
-
Robert Burns and Brian Shawcroft design a house for Robert Work on Hillcrest Circle
Robert Burns and Brian Shawcroft designed the 1962 house at 214 Hillcrest Circle for the chemist Robert Work and his wife: two levels stepped into the hillside, a glazed rear wall, an elevated deck and a central open stair. It won a national Homes for Better Living award and a state AIA award.
-
Arthur Cogswell designs a barrel-vaulted concrete house for David Hill
In 1963 Cogswell built a concrete house with a barrel-vaulted roof at 205 Wood Circle in Coker Hills for Duke engineering professor David Hill, an example of the period's trials of new building materials.
-
Peg Owens takes over Lake Forest and names it Lake Forest Estates
Peg Owens bought part of the Lake Forest subdivision in 1963 and carried on its development. She also acquired the land west of Eastwood Lake along today's North Shore Drive, laid out its streets and built many of its first houses between 1965 and 1968, and gave the whole area the name Lake Forest Estates.
-
Arthur Cogswell designs the Koch House on Clayton Road
In 1964 Cogswell designed a one-story, flat-roofed house for botany professor Arthur Koch at 401 Clayton Road in Coker Hills: a floor plate projecting from a block base, with glass walls opening to a deck over a pond. It received a North Carolina AIA award.
-
Chase Hall, the campus's first modernist building, goes up on south campus
Chase Hall, a dining hall designed by Milton Small and Associates of Raleigh and built in 1965, is a glass and steel International Style building that appears to hover over a recessed concrete base. The book calls it the first modernist building erected on the campus; Small had studied under Mies van der Rohe.
-
Don Stewart's Carmichael Auditorium is completed as the state's largest single-span building
Stewart designed Carmichael Auditorium, finished in 1965, with a roof carried on steel beams held by steel tie rods anchored in the ground. The book says it was the largest single-span building in North Carolina when it was built.
-
Stewart and Anderson build a new office on Estes Drive as Webb stays in the old Methodist church
In the mid-1960s Don Stewart and Bob Anderson bought a lot on Estes Drive and built a new office for the firm, while James Webb returned to the old Methodist church on Rosemary Street, the firm's former office, where he worked until he retired.
-
Arthur Cogswell designs a pyramid-roofed house for Marion Townend
At 411 Clayton Road in Coker Hills, Cogswell designed a house in 1966 for Marion Townend under a tall pyramidal roof. A skylight at the peak lights the central living room and the rooms around it, whose light shifts as the sun moves.
-
Don Stewart designs the Chapel Hill Public Library building on East Franklin Street
Around 1965 library committee head Mrs. Richmond P. Bond asked Stewart about a traditional design; he said he was not a traditional architect and suggested Durham's William Van Sprinkle, but the committee kept Stewart and his modern plan. The 1966 building uses sloping native stone walls and stained wood to fit among the older faculty houses on East Franklin Street.
-
Arthur Cogswell and Werner Hausler form Cogswell/Hausler Architects
In 1967 Cogswell went into partnership with Werner Hausler, an East German-born architect he had met at State College. In its early years the firm worked mostly on houses, designing many in Coker Hills, Lake Forest, Morgan Creek Hills and Glendale, and it lasted until Hausler retired in 1990.
-
The new Davie Hall becomes the first modernist building on the main campus
Designed by Holloway-Reeves with Brian Shawcroft of Raleigh and built in 1967, Davie Hall is an unornamented tan brick and concrete International Style building. It stands in sharp contrast to the Federal and Greek Revival buildings of the old campus nearby.
-
Don Stewart designs a house on stilts over Booker Creek for his partner Bob Anderson
Stewart's 1968 house for Bob Anderson at 601 Brookview Drive in Lake Shore Hills sets a steep-gabled living pavilion on stilts over rocky Booker Creek, linked by a raised kitchen bridge to a bedroom wing on the hillside above.
-
Don Stewart designs the Chapel Hill Professional Village
Stewart's 1968 office complex of one and two stories rests on heavy stone supports, with covered parking and planting built into the design and a bridge through its middle that echoes Frank Lloyd Wright.
-
The Student Union and Student Stores open beside the undergraduate library around the Pit
In 1968 the Frank Porter Graham Student Union and the Josephus Daniels Student Stores opened on South Road with the new R. B. House Undergraduate Library. The two-story concrete and glass buildings frame a sunken brick court, the Pit, and moved the center of student life there.
-
UNC's new law school building is finished on South Road
A new building for the UNC School of Law was completed across South Road in 1968, part of the decade's boom of modernist construction along that street.
-
Cogswell/Hausler design Arthur Cogswell's second house on Elliott Road
The firm's 1969 house for Arthur Cogswell at 308 Elliott Road is a flat-roofed steel-frame building, plain and white outside, whose glass-walled rooms wrap around a terrace with a heated pool. It won a North Carolina AIA award.
- 1970s
-
Cogswell/Hausler design Ridgefield Townhouses, subsidized housing off South Estes Drive
The firm's 1970 Ridgefield Townhouses, on a secluded tract at the end of South Estes Drive, are two-story brick and frame apartments built on a small budget but made to look like middle-class housing, set in courtyards around a community building and playground. The 44-unit neighborhood joined the town's public housing after Craig-Gomains and Lindsay Street (1967) and North Columbia Street (1968).
-
Cogswell/Hausler design a new sanctuary for the Community Church on Purefoy Road
In 1970 the firm added a two-story International Style sanctuary with stained siding and large south windows to the Community Church at 106 Purefoy Road, tied to the congregation's plain brick building of 1957 by George Matsumoto through a glass link. The integrated, nondenominational church had been founded in 1953 by the Rev. Charlie Jones and members who left Chapel Hill Presbyterian with him.
-
A ten-story chemistry laboratory tower is added to Venable Hall
In 1971 the university added a ten-story laboratory tower for chemistry to Venable Hall, one of the modernist buildings of its 1960s and early 1970s building boom along South Road.
-
Don Stewart designs the State Employees Credit Union office on Pittsboro Street
Stewart's 1971 credit union building on Pittsboro Street uses stone walls and roof planes that seem to float above them, a mild form of modernism.
-
The Flower Ladies move off the main sidewalk to NCNB Plaza
In 1971 the Flower Ladies moved their stands from the Franklin Street sidewalk into the NCNB Plaza passage and the alley next to the Intimate Bookshop.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
-
Brick Odum Village apartments replace Victory Village married-student housing
The surplus military frame units that the university had set up on Manning Drive after the war as Victory Village lasted until about 1977, when brick married-student apartments called Odum Village took their place.
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.
