Libraries, museums and media
The Chapel Hill Public Library, the town's first public library, opened on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House on West Franklin Street. It later moved to a modern building by Don Stewart at 523 East Franklin Street, which became the town museum, and in 1994 to Pritchard Park.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
People named in events about this site, ordered by number of mentions. Each example links to an entry with a source citation.
Books, articles, records, and images about Chapel Hill Public Library. Each has been reviewed for relevance; materials held at OCPL appear first.
Program for the dedication of the Chapel Hill Public Library on Sunday, May 22, 1994, at two in the afternoon. Four unnumbered pages with illustrations, issued by the library. The subject is the library itself, so the item is best understood as ephemera from the day, printed for the people who attended.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A 1994 Chapel Hill News piece on the new home of the Chapel Hill Public Library and the path that led to it, issued as a folded sheet of four unnumbered pages with illustrations and a plan. Topics include the library, its Friends group and Quakers, and nothing further is recorded about the text.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A seventy-nine minute videocassette of a lecture on the mission, programs and issues of the contemporary public library, recorded for the course LIBS 243 on January 19, 1987. Topics include public library administration and children's libraries in Chapel Hill along with the Chapel Hill Public Library.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Program for the twentieth anniversary celebration of the Chapel Hill Public Library, held Sunday, December 10, 1978, at two in the afternoon. A folded sheet of four unnumbered pages with an illustration, it carries a brief history of the library on pages two and three. Topics include public libraries in Chapel Hill in the twentieth century.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Invitation and program for the formal opening of the Chapel Hill Public Library on Sunday, April 21, 1968, at two in the afternoon, printed by the library as a single folded sheet of four unnumbered pages measuring twenty-five centimeters. Topics include the library and public libraries in Chapel Hill.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Campaign leaflet from the Friends of the Chapel Hill Public Library urging voters to approve town bonds of no more than one hundred fifty thousand dollars for a public library at the July 6 election of 1965. A single folded sheet of four unnumbered pages. Topics include the library and public libraries in Chapel Hill.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Jane Cutler Bahnsen's short account of the Chapel Hill Public Library, printed in the summer 1963 issue of Southeastern Librarian, volume 13, number 2, and kept as an offprint numbered 97 to 100. The Southeastern Library Association published the journal from Atlanta. Topics include the library itself and public libraries in Chapel Hill.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A library science master's paper on the Chapel Hill Public Library's temporary move to University Mall while its building was renovated, drawing on a patron survey and interviews with librarians.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A library science master's paper describing the Children's Department at Chapel Hill Public Library as it was in 2000, with design suggestions for the room then and after a planned expansion.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Planning drawing by CPAA Architects of Chapel Hill, dated November 1978, laying out improvements to the Chapel Hill Public Library.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Remodeling plan for the lower floor of the Chapel Hill Public Library, an updated drawing by City Planning and Architectural Associates of Chapel Hill dated February 1974.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
June 1966 ceiling plan for the first floor of the Chapel Hill Public Library, drawn by City Planning and Architectural Associates of Chapel Hill.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Structural drawing from June 1966 for the Chapel Hill Public Library by City Planning and Architectural Associates, showing the bottom chord framing plan, a roof truss detail and the column schedule.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
In June 1966 City Planning and Architectural Associates of Chapel Hill drew this framing plan for the first floor of the Chapel Hill Public Library.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Architectural drawing of the foundation plan for the Chapel Hill Public Library, made in June 1966 by the Chapel Hill firm City Planning and Architectural Associates.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Main floor plan of the Chapel Hill Public Library, drawn in June 1966 by City Planning and Architectural Associates, a Chapel Hill firm.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Reflected ceiling plan of the Chapel Hill Public Library, part of the June 1966 set of architectural drawings from City Planning and Architectural Associates.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Roof framing plan for the top chord of the Chapel Hill Public Library, dated June 1966 and prepared by City Planning and Architectural Associates of Chapel Hill.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Wall sections for the Chapel Hill Public Library, an architectural drawing dated June 1966 by City Planning and Architectural Associates of Chapel Hill.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
An architecture study, published in Korea, of the Chapel Hill Public Library building as an urban cultural space, read through the idea of heterotopia.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Four photographs of the Chapel Hill Public Library dated 1988, including front views of the old library building, a close view of its walkway and the bookmobile with its staff. One front view comes from a book by Thomas Scism. Chapel Hill Historical Society, Prints and Photographs Collection.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Material taken from scrapbooks that the Friends of the Chapel Hill Public Library kept from 1978 to 1990, now in two document boxes. Collection CHHS.2019.002 of the Chapel Hill Historical Society.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Chapel Hill Public Library in newspaper clippings, photocopied articles, promotional material, and a report with notes. From box 14 of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Vertical File Collection, town government series. Undated.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Ellen-Fairbanks Diggs Bodman's 46-page handbook on running a library book sale, drawn from the sale of the Friends of the Chapel Hill Public Library, which published it in 1983 with illustrations. Written for others organizing such sales, it also shows how the Chapel Hill Friends ran theirs in the early 1980s.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
Cookbook put out by the Chapel Hill Public Library in December 1982, its mock antique title covering a collection of recipes. A collection of recipes from Chapel Hill.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
Serial list of the periodicals the Chapel Hill Public Library kept on its shelves, issued by the library itself in volumes of twenty-eight centimeters. It shows what magazines and journals local readers could expect to find.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
Newsletter of the Friends of the Chapel Hill Public Library, published by the Friends in Chapel Hill in volumes with illustrations, the latest issue consulted dating from May and June of 2010. Topics include the library and libraries in Chapel Hill, and a run of issues gives a continuous view of what the support group was doing.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
Not about Chapel Hill Public Library alone: the architectural surveys that cover its town or the county, and maps drawn while it stood. Several of the surveys can be read free online at NC Digital Collections.
Margaret Ruth Little-Stokes's survey of Chapel Hill's town and campus buildings from 1795 to 1975, published by the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill in 2006. Chapters run from the first campus buildings through David Swain's romantic campus to midcentury modernism, followed by area surveys of the campus, east and west Chapel Hill, downtown, Northside and the suburbs.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
M. Ruth Little's 2004 architectural history of Chapel Hill and the university campus from 1795 to 1975, written for the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill. A 99-page survey with a bibliography.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
M. B. Gatza's final report of the 1992 Chapel Hill historic sites survey for the town Planning Department, with contributions by Beverly C. Kawalec and Catherine Bishir. It covers historic buildings and districts in Chapel Hill in 80 pages.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Kelly A. Lally's October 1992 final report on the architectural survey of Chapel Hill township, including Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Besides the report and a bibliography, most of its 56 pages form an annotated index of the historic buildings surveyed.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Bernard Lee Bryant's compilation of who occupied each structure on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill at five-year intervals from 1793 to 1998, issued by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1999 as a photocopy of his original computer printout on cotton paper. 191 leaves.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Street and property map of Chapel Hill and the surrounding country, revised to 1 January 1933 and printed in the town. Topics include streets, real property and the historical geography of Chapel Hill along with maps of the University of North Carolina in its 1793 to 1962 period. A useful sheet for tracing lot lines and street names as they stood at the start of the 1930s.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.
These books don’t necessarily mention Chapel Hill Public Library, but they cover where it stands, its kind of building and the land, family and burial records behind it, and they are where a search for a place like this usually goes next. All are at OCPL, most in the Wall Collection.
Steven Stolpen's pictorial history of Chapel Hill, one of the Donning Company's photographic town histories, published in Norfolk, Virginia in 1978. Photographs and portraits carry the story of the town and the university, including references to Thomas Wolfe's years as a student at Carolina. 156 pages with illustrations.
Elizabeth Shreve Ryan's combined histories and tour guides for Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the three towns of Orange County, with the University of North Carolina treated alongside Chapel Hill. Each town gets a narrative history and a tour of its streets and buildings. Published by Chapel Hill Press in 2004, 369 pages with illustrations and maps.
Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern's field guide to the historic buildings of the North Carolina Piedmont, arranged county by county from Wake and Franklin in the east to Mecklenburg and Gaston in the west. The Orange County section takes in Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro along with the rural county, with entries on individual buildings and maps for finding them. Published 2003, 596 pages with illustrations and maps.
A pocket-sized guide to the historic buildings and landmarks of Chapel Hill, prepared by the Chapel Hill Historical Society and printed by Creative Printers in 1973. Forty pages with illustrations and maps, 14 by 22 cm. Topics include architecture, historic buildings and historic districts in Chapel Hill, and the guide is useful for a walking tour of the older parts of town.
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
Storyline about this site, with a page of its own:
Sources cited in this site’s history, National Register documents, and places to get research help. Research guide: Investigate a school or community institution.
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