New East

In the chronology

1. 1858 to 1861 New East and New West are built to William Percival's design To house more students, the university built two dormitories with classrooms and debating society halls on either side of Old East and Old West, to designs by the English architect William Percival, with Thomas Coates as contractor. Work began in June 1858, and the faculty announced on July 31, 1861 that the buildings were ready to occupy. NCpedia: Percival, William · Also: Battle, History of the University, vol. I, pp. 659-660, 724, 827
2. late March 1875 A storm unroofs the university's New East building A late-March storm tore the tin roof from the center of New East, over the library and the Philanthropic Society's hall, and felled one of the campus oaks. Andrew Mickle and villagers nailed down a temporary covering, and Paul C. Cameron, chairman of the repairs committee, came to Chapel Hill and arranged to reroof all the university buildings, giving the woodwork to carpenter Foster Utley. People: Paul C. Cameron, Andrew Mickle Hillsborough Recorder, March 31, 1875, p. 3
3. August 31, 1886 The Charleston earthquake shakes Chapel Hill The earthquake that wrecked Charleston rattled windows and moved bottles on the shelves of the chemical laboratory at Chapel Hill without doing damage. Some students in the New East Building fled outdoors. Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 365
4. 1906 The new chemistry building is completed and Person Hall goes to medicine The university spent $45,000 of the state grant on a chemistry building that held three times as many students as the old one. The rest refitted Person Hall, the old chemistry building, for the Medical Department and New East for biology. People: Charles H. Herty Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 658
5. Spring 1915 Student engineers wire the first campus telephone network The electrical engineering laboratory rebuilt used telephones salvaged from a Durham textile mill to link the Alumni Building offices of the president, business manager, treasurer and registrar. Student engineers also put a radio antenna on New East to receive baseball scores. Howard E. Covington Jr., Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase (2018), p. 107
6. 1926 to March 1928 Arthur C. Nash renovates New East and New West The two 1858-61 buildings were reworked under Nash, part of a series of renovations that left only the brick shells of the early campus buildings. The work came later than 1925: New East was gutted by August 1926 and rebuilt for the geology department, with the Philanthropic Society's hall on the top floor, and was finished by April 1927; geology moved in that May. The trustees' building committee approved New West's interior reconstruction in April 1927 and the trustees set $90,000 for it that June; work began in the fall and was finished in March 1928, for the psychology department. NC State Historic Preservation Office: Arthur C. and Mary S. A. Nash House, National Register nomination (OR2289), p. 17 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, June 4, 1926, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, August 20, 1926, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, September 24, 1926, p. 3; Chapel Hill Weekly, April 1, 1927, p. 2; Chapel Hill Weekly, May 13, 1927, p. 4; Chapel Hill Weekly, March 11, 1927, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, April 22, 1927, p. 4; Chapel Hill Weekly, June 10, 1927, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, December 2, 1927, p. 5; Chapel Hill Weekly, March 16, 1928, p. 6
7. by September 24, 1926 The University sinks a pier to bedrock under the New East for a seismograph By late September 1926 workmen had dug a well 26 and a half feet to solid rock under the east end of the New East building, then being rebuilt for the geology department, and set on it a column of steel I-beams in concrete to carry a seismograph. Collier Cobb, professor of geology, expected to install an Omori instrument made by Bausch and Lomb, though no appropriation yet covered its cost. People: Collier Cobb The Chapel Hill Weekly, September 24, 1926, p. 1
8. 1964 The planning department moves into New East Parker won space on the first two floors of New East, vacated when the geology department moved to Mitchell Hall, and the Department of City and Regional Planning left the Alumni Building for it in 1964. In 1966 he secured an $82,000 National Science Foundation grant toward renovating the building. UNC Department of City and Regional Planning: Edward J. Kaiser and Karla Rosenberg, The School That Jack Built (2013), p. 69

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