Local figure
Archie Royal Davis (1907–1980), a Durham architect, became architect for the University of North Carolina in 1940 and designed Colonial Revival store buildings on Chapel Hill's Franklin Street, painting watercolors to persuade owners to rebuild in that style. In 1948 he became architect for the Orange County schools.
Orange County Indexed has not yet linked an indexed work directly to Archie Royal Davis. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about Archie Royal Davis’ life and work.
Dated events connected with this person: sixteen of 32, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 32 dated events in the chronology →
After more than ninety years with the Nash family, the house passed in 1921 to lawyer Alexander H. Graham, later lieutenant governor and a grandson of Governor William A. Graham. The Grahams sold it on August 20, 1935, to Dr. H. W. Moore, who had it restored with architect Archie Royal Davis.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Subject: Hasell-Nash House
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.
People: Joseph Hyde Pratt · William D. Carmichael Jr. · George Watts Hill · Archie Royal Davis
Subject: The Chapel Hill Weekly
Dr. H. W. Moore restored the Federal-style Hasell-Nash House on West Queen Street with the help of architect Archie Royal Davis, who extended the rear of the two side wings around 1943.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Subject: Hasell-Nash House
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.
People: Archie Royal Davis
When state school planners faulted H. Raymond Weeks's design in April 1950, the board sent him to W. F. Credle and Edward Waugh of the Division of Schoolhouse Planning, but Weeks would not rework it on short notice. By May the job had gone to Archie Royal Davis, who was also designing Lincoln High School in Chapel Hill; the board approved his preliminary plans in June.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Subject: Cedar Grove schools
To lower costs, the county board struck the six-classroom north wing, the kitchen, floor tile, clocks, bells, sidewalks and other items from Davis's design. The gymnasium was to serve as a multipurpose room partitioned into four classrooms until money for more space could be found.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Subject: Cedar Grove schools
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
H. F. Mitchell Construction Company was low bidder for two buildings at Central High, a twelve-classroom addition and a gymtorium seating about 1,200, designed by Archie Royal Davis. The whole project came to $266,094, and the gymtorium was nearly finished in February 1958.
People: Archie Royal Davis
After the main building of Central High School burned in 1958, Archie Royal Davis designed a new school building and a gymnasium for the site; the gymnasium was finished in late 1958.
People: Archie Royal Davis
The night the old Central High building burned, the county board set aside $214,892 for a new 18-classroom building designed by Archie Royal Davis's firm. Construction went on through 1958.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Three years after it opened, the county enlarged Cameron Park School with a second section of building, raised under Superintendent G. Paul Carr to plans by the architect Archie Royal Davis.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Subject: Cameron Park School
Lonnie Thompson, Arthur Wells, Carter White, Wayne Compton and Oscar Beasley of the school's advisory committee asked the board for a two-classroom addition. The board agreed to consider it and in August approved Archie Royal Davis's plans with a $20,000 limit.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Subject: Cedar Grove schools
Owner Mrs. Erle G. Hill restored the Federal house on West Margaret Lane with architect Archie Royal Davis, replacing the roof, dormers, front portico, shutters and siding and returning the rooms to their first plan. By 1963 it was shown on Hillsborough's spring pilgrimage.
People: Archie Royal Davis
The county's new Agricultural Building, designed by Archie Davis, passed final inspection and the county's agricultural offices moved in. A dedication and open house were set for April 1.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Ten years after the first building went up, the county added about 18,700 square feet to Central Elementary under Superintendent George F. Williams, bringing the school to roughly 44,600 square feet.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 7 with a known location.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
These works give background on The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945, the wider story this person is part of (38 works in all). Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Anne R. Keene's history of the Cloudbusters, the baseball team of the Navy Pre-Flight School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill during the Second World War, on which Ted Williams played in 1943. The chapters move from a batboy's trunk of keepsakes through the pre-flight training program to the players' lives after the war, and Keene's own family is part of the story. Published by Sports Publishing in New York in 2018, 340 pages with sixteen pages of plates.
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Stanley Woodward's illustrated article from Look magazine of October 20, 1942, on football as training for combat, detached from the issue. It centers on the men training at the Navy Pre-Flight School in Chapel Hill, whose team was called the Cloud Busters. Pages 62 to 67, chiefly illustrations and portraits, published by Look in Des Moines.
Carey Henry Keefe traces the friendship and football careers of Paul Bryant, Carney Laslie and Frank Moseley, coaches whose paths crossed at the Navy Pre-Flight School the service ran in Chapel Hill during the Second World War. The book also concerns Wallace Wade and the history of college sports in the United States. Published in 2022, 382 pages with illustrations, and recipes are included.
Six items gathered in a portfolio in 2004 as research materials on the United States Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the wartime program that trained naval aviation cadets on the university campus. Topics include the school, the Navy, and the University of North Carolina during the Second World War. The portfolio measures 39 centimeters.
William L. Pendergraph compiled a list of the students who passed through the University of North Carolina's training programs for the Navy during the Second World War, including the V-12 college training unit and the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. Directory in form and unpaged, published in 1993.
Joe Hyams tells the story of George Bush's Navy service in the Second World War, from his childhood and youth through his time as a young carrier pilot. The book makes scattered references to Bush's training at the naval air station in Chapel Hill, which is the Orange County connection. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1991, 178 pages with illustrations.
Mary Layne Baker's 1980 study of how the university and the town of Chapel Hill received the United States Navy Pre-Flight School that opened there during the Second World War. It treats the relations between community and college alongside the wartime history of the university itself. A typescript of 133 leaves with illustrations and a map, closing with a bibliography.
A single printed sheet issued by the Department of the Navy in 1946, carrying a mark of commendation and signed in a manuscript hand by James Forrestal. The commendation concerns the Navy V-12 Program, the Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina in the Second World War. One sheet, 36 by 28 centimeters.
Programs like this one came from the athletic associations of the five Navy pre-flight schools. This issue covers Camp Davis against North Carolina Pre-Flight at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill on October 16, 1943. Fifty-two pages carry portraits of commanders, coaching notes, line-ups and statistics, along with sections on the Georgia, Del Monte, Iowa and St. Mary's schools.
Football program for the game between the cadets of Camp Lejeune and those of the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, set for November 13, 1943, at Kenan Stadium. Sixty-three pages with portraits of commanders, notes on the two coaching staffs, line-ups and statistics, plus pages on the Georgia, Del Monte, Iowa and St. Mary's pre-flight schools.
A wartime magazine romance by Elizabeth Troy, set in Chapel Hill during the years when the United States Navy Pre-Flight School was operating on the university campus. An editorial note on page 30 says the magazine sent Troy to North Carolina to observe the school before writing. The story runs across seven pages of the 1943 issue with a color illustration.
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