University buildings and grounds
Graham Memorial is the building on Franklin Street named for Edward Kidder Graham, paid for by a fund drive students opened in 1919 and raised on the site of the burned University Inn. Completed in 1931, it served as the student union for 27 years before passing to the Department of Dramatic Arts.
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 Graham Memorial. Each has been reviewed for relevance; materials held at OCPL appear first.
A guide for students to Graham Memorial, the union building at the University of North Carolina, issued in 1974 by the union's board of directors in volumes of 19 centimeters with illustrations. It is a periodical about student unions in Chapel Hill. It sets out what the building offered undergraduates in the mid 1970s.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A serial publication of the board of directors of Graham Memorial, the student union at the University of North Carolina, issued in volumes of 19 centimeters with illustrations. The 1966 issue is signed at the end by Mayne Albright as director. Topics include student unions in Chapel Hill and the buildings of the university.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A single sheet folded to three unnumbered pages with one illustration, issued by the University of North Carolina and dated January 29, 1932, on the Graham Memorial Student Union at Chapel Hill. Topics include student unions in the town and the buildings of the university. Brief as it is, the leaflet marks a date in the building's early life.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Printed material on the Graham Memorial Building at the University of North Carolina, issued at Chapel Hill in 1924. Topics include college buildings, memorials and university planning in the town. One of several pieces surviving from the years when the student building was under discussion on the campus.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A special 1924 issue of the Tar Heel, the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina, making the case for the Graham Memorial Building to be put up as a student center. Published at Chapel Hill, it is campaign material rather than a description of a finished building.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A 1919 printing from the Graham Memorial campaign at the University of North Carolina, issued at Chapel Hill. Topics include college buildings, memorials and university planning, placing the piece with early proposals for a memorial building on the campus.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Silent Sam, the Confederate monument, stands before Graham Memorial on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in this Hugh Morton negative from about 1942, probably made on infrared film. A cropped print appeared in the 1942 and 1943 Yackety Yack yearbooks.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Graham Memorial, a building on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, photographed by Hugh Morton around the early 1940s on black-and-white sheet film.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Remarks by Louis Round Wilson at the dedication of Graham Memorial, the student center built at the University of North Carolina in memory of Edward Kidder Graham, printed in the February 1932 Alumni Review at Chapel Hill by the General Alumni Association. Topics include student unions in Chapel Hill, the buildings of the university and monuments to Graham.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Louis Round Wilson's typescript of remarks presenting Graham Memorial, the student union at Chapel Hill named for Edward Kidder Graham, 1876 to 1918. A manuscript hand supplies the caption title and the date January 29, 1932. Topics include college buildings, monuments and student unions at the University of North Carolina. In the North Carolina Collection at UNC.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Carolina Union records covering 1931 to 2014, roughly 29,600 items in 42 linear feet, in the University Archives at UNC, collection 40128. Subjects include student activities and festivals including the Carolina Symposium, Jubilee, Springfest and Chapel Thrill, along with the Graham Memorial Student Union and the history of student life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Materials in English.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Four undated photographs of Graham Memorial on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill: the front of the building, a view from the west, cars parked behind it and a fallen tree lying out front. Part of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection, CHHS.002.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Credited to the photographer Bayard Morgan Wootten (1875-1959), this card shows Graham Memorial at the University of North Carolina, published by Gray and Thompson Advertising of Chapel Hill. It concerns postcards of educational facilities on the Chapel Hill campus.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Sutton's of Chapel Hill issued this postcard of Graham Memorial at the University of North Carolina. Topics include educational facilities, universities and colleges, Chapel Hill and Orange County. The card belongs to the North Carolina postcard series contributed by UNC at Chapel Hill.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
The printed schedule for Jubilee, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill spring weekend of concerts and films run on April 28 to 30, 1967, by the Graham Memorial Activities Board. It lists the musical events and movies on offer and names the organizers. It concerns campus social life and customs of the twentieth century.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
Announcement card for an evening with Otelia Connor, printed on heavy yellow stock by the Graham Memorial Activities Board at Chapel Hill in 1963. The notice gives a rescheduled date of Thursday, March 7 at eight in the evening in Howell Hall. Subjects include Otelia Carrington Cunningham Connor, 1892 to 1969, and student social life and customs at the university.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
Not about Graham Memorial 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.
Cornelia Spencer Love's recollections of Chapel Hill as a village, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1976 with drawings by John V. Allcott. Love lived from 1892 to 1981, and the book covers Chapel Hill biography, the town's social life and customs, and the faculty of the university before 1962. viii and 87 pages with illustrations.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Pen-and-ink manuscript map of Chapel Hill dated 1852, with a table of measurements, showing the University campus, the village around it, street widths and layout, and the town limits. Later notes attributed to Kemp P. Battle give the longitude and latitude of landmarks as measured from atop New East Hall in 1880.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Sanborn Map Company fire insurance map of Chapel Hill, June 1925, on eleven sheets, with Carrboro also drawn. Sanborn maps recorded the outline, construction and use of each building for fire insurers, so the set shows both towns block by block in the mid 1920s.
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 Graham Memorial, 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.
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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