University buildings and grounds
Memorial Hall is UNC's large auditorium on Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill. The first hall, a Queen Anne building by Samuel Sloan dedicated in 1885 to honor President David L. Swain and the university's Confederate dead, was torn down as unsafe in 1930 and replaced by a Colonial Revival hall with a Doric portico, dedicated in 1931.
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 Memorial Hall. Each has been reviewed for relevance; materials held at OCPL appear first.
Scott Madry's recollections of the student tech crew at Memorial Hall, the University of North Carolina's auditorium in Chapel Hill, presented under the banner of the Carolina Union, the campus student union. Published in Chapel Hill in 2021.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Catharine Carter photographed the rebuilding of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina between 2002 and 2005, and twelve of the images were issued in 2005 as limited edition lithographic prints, numbered and signed by her, in a portfolio with text and illustrations.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Patrick S. Wooten's 1992 guide to the memorial tablets in Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, identifying the people commemorated there. Subjects include university biography, alumni and Confederate rosters, so the volume doubles as a name list for anyone tracing individuals honored on the walls. One volume in various foliations with illustrations.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Robert W. Winston's 1939 address on Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina and the memorial tablets set in its walls, given when tablets honoring Colonel Robert Bingham, Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham and Senator Matt W. Ransom were accepted. Printed at Chapel Hill, it records how those tablets came to be placed in the hall.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Engineering reports on the condition of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina, gathered and printed at Chapel Hill in 1929. The contributors were T. C. Atwood of Atwood and Nash, the university architects and engineers, Sherwood Brockwell of the State Insurance Department, and John H. Gregory of Johns Hopkins University as consulting engineer.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Transcribed inscriptions from Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina, printed in Chapel Hill in 1894. The text takes in a roll of the university's Confederate dead and a list of the donors of the lands on which the university and the village of Chapel Hill stand. Family historians and campus researchers use it for names and dates.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Plaques from Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina, recorded as a flat object rather than a printed text. The title dates them about 1880 while the listed date is about 1895.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Swain Memorial Hall on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, photographed about 1903. Designed by the Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan, the hall opened in 1885 to seat the larger commencement crowds of a growing student body and was torn down in 1930.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Proceedings of the ceremony that opened Memorial Hall on the Chapel Hill campus on Wednesday, June 3, 1885. Paul C. Cameron, chairman of the building committee, gave the principal address, printed on pages 5 to 20, and Governor Scales accepted the building on pages 20 to 24. Printed at Raleigh by E. M. Uzzell, 30 pages.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Working papers gathered for a planning meeting on 20 April 2002 about how to mark the ceremonial closing of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina. One unpaginated volume with illustrations, published by the university in Chapel Hill. Includes an appended list of performances given in Memorial Hall from 1931 to 2001.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
About 145 photographs of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, made by Patrick S. Wooten in 1992 and part of the North Carolina Collection at UNC. The images document the building, including its connection to university history and Confederate rosters.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Color slide by Hugh Morton of Memorial Hall on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, taken 22 April 1987, with the columns of the hall in view.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A historical sketch of Memorial Hall on the Chapel Hill campus and of the memorial tablets inside it, typed around 1932 and surviving as a photocopy. Subjects include college buildings in Chapel Hill and the history of the University of North Carolina. In UNC's North Carolina Collection.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A. A. Kluttz of Chapel Hill published this 1916 postcard of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina, printed in Germany as number 13679, with a dirt road in the foreground. The sender's chatty message asks what the folks at home do for fun and calls Chapel Hill about the prettiest place the writer has seen.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina on a black and white postcard from 1916, with the publisher given as the Holliday Studio and R. W. Foister. The writer, signing C.E.S., declines an invitation to Prof. W. F. Snoddy of Buies Creek because final examinations were approaching.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Photographic postcard of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina, sent in 1907. The writer notes on the front that University Day would be held in the hall the next day, and on the back promises a reply to a letter, signing only E.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A transcription of the names on the memorial tablets in Memorial Hall at Chapel Hill, made in 1897 with a manuscript title page and some leaves supplied in typescript. It also carries the roll of Confederate dead of the University of North Carolina and a list of the donors of the lands on which the university and the village of Chapel Hill stand.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Old Memorial Hall at UNC around 1890, in three pieces: a print of the building covered in ivy, its negative, and a wider view with trees and lawn. 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.
Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill on an undated R. W. Foister postcard. The caption dates the hall to 1889 and dedicates it to President David L. Swain, the university's trustees, faculty, alumni and benefactors, and above all to alumni who died in the Civil War.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Memorial Hall at UNC in two undated photographs, one taken during the building's demolition and one of its plaque dedicated to Confederate soldiers. 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.
Not about Memorial Hall 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.
Henry Dennis Carter's reconstruction, drawn as a blueprint in 1934, of Chapel Hill as it stood between 1875 and 1885, showing the buildings of the village. A note on the map says the information came from old residents who gave it to Mary L. Thornton.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Dating from 1888 and attributed to Hunter Lee Harris, a map of Chapel Hill and its vicinity, reproduced as a photocopy measuring 22 by 37 centimeters. Harris died in 1893, which brackets the drawing to the late nineteenth century. An early depiction of the streets of the village and the land around it.
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 Memorial Hall, 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.
Storylines about this site, each 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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