Storyline · 1975–1988
In 1975 UNC's trustees chose the Union parking lot, the old Emerson Field, as the site of a new central library, and in 1976 the Board of Governors put $22.6 million from the sale of the campus utilities toward it. Site work began in October 1979, and the Walter Royal Davis Library opened on February 17, 1984. The trustees named the building for Walter R. Davis in 1981, and the general collection moved from Wilson Library in January and February 1984. Governor Jim Martin dedicated Davis Library in 1985, and in 1986 engineers found its east floor settling. Wilson Library, under renovation from 1984, reopened in 1987 as the home of UNC's special collections.
On October 10, 1975 the UNC Board of Trustees approved plans for a 438,000-square-foot central library on the Union parking lot, the site of the old Emerson Field baseball stadium, to hold the central research collection, library administration and more than 3,400 reader stations, with completion set for 1981. Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor backed the site, while Student Body President Bill Bates objected that it would take North Campus parking. In the summer of 1976 the trustees approved a plan to spend the University's share of the sale of its utilities on the new library, the renovation of Wilson Library and three more floors on the Health Sciences Library, and on October 8 the Board of Governors assigned the proceeds to those projects, $22.6 million of it to the central library. The same day it approved $600,000 to move the Chase Cafeteria food service to the first floor, the plan that displaced Upendo Lounge. On October 8, 1979 the University closed the dirt parking lot beside the Carolina Union for good and turned it over to the contractors, moving about 500 permit holders to other lots, and bulldozers were moving earth there the next day. On August 21, 1981, meeting at Kill Devil Hills, the trustees voted to name the library then under construction for Walter R. Davis, the former trustees chairman and new Board of Governors member who had led its funding through the sale of the University utilities. On September 29 work stopped when a section of a rented crane buckled and fell onto part of the building while lowering another crane from the roof; no one was hurt, and the job superintendent called the damage to the building superficial. Afro-American Studies had asked in 1981 for a reading room in the new building for journals, manuscripts and tapes on Africans and African Americans; in the spring of 1983 University Librarian James F. Govan said no academic unit would get a room for its subject. By mid-September 1983 University officials had legally accepted the building from its contractor, T.A. Loving Co. of Goldsboro, after weeks of delay over 34 aluminum window frames damaged by a cleaning solution, which the contractor agreed to replace by January 13; a $400-a-day late penalty was still unsettled. At the University Day convocation on October 12 the library celebrated the acquisition of its three millionth volume, part of a collection of 300 rare books printed by the Estienne family and given by the John Wesley and Anna Hodgin Hanes Foundation for the Study of the Origin and Development of the Book. On January 12, 1984 Apollo Moving Specialists of Minnesota, under a $240,000 contract, began carrying the general collection, about 50 miles of shelving, from Wilson Library to the new building, and February 2 was Wilson's last day of general service. Only the Rare Book Collection, the North Carolina Collection, the manuscripts and Southern Historical Collection and the map and photographic departments stayed open in Wilson, with about 200,000 lesser-used books paged from Davis. The Walter Royal Davis Library, named for the trustee and benefactor, opened on February 17, 1984.
Renovation of Wilson Library began in April 1984, shortly after Davis opened, to install new air conditioning, upgrade the electrical and plumbing systems and refurbish the main rooms. On April 27, 1985, before about 500 people, Governor Jim Martin dedicated the Walter Royal Davis Library and unveiled a bronze bust of Davis. Vice President George Bush had been booked for April 26 but canceled, and a faculty Books-Not-Bombs committee led by Nell Painter and Leon Fink, which had planned a silent protest against his selection, called its protest off. By December the library, the only North Carolina entry among 94 projects, had received the Louis I. Kahn Citation in American School and University magazine's architectural portfolio, whose judges praised its handling of an enormous building on a tight site. By April 1986 a structural engineer had found that the earth fill under the building's east side had settled, cracking floors and toilets, and the architects, Boney Architects of Wilmington, planned to remove part of the floor to find the cause. On August 17, 1987, closed three years for a $5.5 million renovation, Wilson Library reopened as the home of the manuscripts collections (the Southern Historical and Southern Folklife collections and the University Archives), the Maps Collection, the Rare Book Collection and the North Carolina Collection. In the winter of 1988–1989 the University removed the abstract steel and concrete sculpture in front of Davis Library, a student's honors thesis put up in 1985, after the buildings and grounds committee voted for its removal; officials said it had rusted and been vandalized.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 2 with a known location.
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 with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Louis Round Wilson's 40-page review of the University of North Carolina library, subtitled on the cover a review of its past and a look at its future. Wilson had directed the library for three decades before leaving for Chicago, and the university's main library carries his name. Published by the University of North Carolina Library in Chapel Hill in 1960, with illustrations.
Judith M. Panitch's illustrated account of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library between 1992 and 2004, published by the library in 2004. It is a history of the academic library, and the notes point out its references to the Aldo P. Magi collection of Thomas Wolfe material. 50 pages with color illustrations in an oblong format.
Edward G. Holley's twelfth Hanes Lecture, given in Wilson Library on 11 April 1995, on how the library, philanthropy and publishing helped the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill become a major American university. Printed by the Hanes Foundation, 28 pages.
Exhibition booklet from the Rare Book Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published in 1996, recording the benefactors whose gifts built the collection and the items they gave. The cover reads Selections from the Rare Book Collection, and Henry Pearson, 1914 to 2006, is among the people it covers. 32 pages with illustrations.
Game in progress at Emerson Field, the University of North Carolina athletic ground, in 1917. One photograph from the UNC Campus binder of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Emerson Field, the University of North Carolina's football field in Chapel Hill, on a 1916 Albertype Co. postcard. The view takes in a goal post and the bleachers.
Emerson Stadium at UNC in 1916, with a game underway on Emerson Field. A single photograph from the UNC Campus binder, Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Ned Cline's biography of Walter Royal Davis, 1920 to 2008, the North Carolina businessman who made his fortune in the Texas petroleum trade and became a philanthropist and benefactor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its library. Privately printed for Jo Ann Davis in Chapel Hill in 2009, 297 pages with sixteen pages of plates, some illustrations in color.
A sixteen page illustrated booklet from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill library marking the Walter Royal Davis Library in 1985. Subjects include both the building and Walter Royal Davis himself, who lived from 1920 to 2008. The library stands on the Chapel Hill campus in Orange County.
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor of UNC-Chapel Hill stands before the sundial at Morehead Planetarium in June 1973, on a color slide by Hugh Morton.
A single folded sheet printed by the Friends of the Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a program on December 9, 1992, honoring James F. Govan and marking the library's four millionth volume. Three illustrated pages.
Ninety nine linear feet from the Office of the University Librarian at Chapel Hill, roughly 76,800 items dated 1894 and then 1904 to 2008, University Archives 40047. Topics include academic libraries in North Carolina, library buildings, catalogs, and automation, along with the history of higher education. Louis Round Wilson, Charles E. Rush, Jerrold Orne, and James F. Govan are named, as are the Davis Library and the House Undergraduate Library.
Adam Lucas marks one hundred years of basketball at the University of North Carolina in this illustrated history, published by UNC Press in 2010 in association with the athletics department. Chapters follow the program from the game's arrival on campus and the 'White Phantoms' of the Southern Conference through the founding of the ACC, the 1957 season, Dean Smith's changes to the game and the title seasons of 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009, closing with a century of statistics. 289 pages.
Rick Jackson's true crime history of Chapel Hill, published by The History Press in 2023, in 28 short chapters. Cases include the Efland bank robbery, the execution of John Henry Breeze, the unsolved murder of Suellen Evans, the killing at the Internationalist Bookstore and the death of Eve Carson.
The Duke and North Carolina basketball rivalry written together by Johnny Moore and Art Chansky, the latter a sports reporter who has followed it since his student days at UNC. The book opens with the 2014 season and moves through recruiting battles old and new, 'Black and Blue Sunday', 'Blood and Roses', and chapters on the rivalry's heroes, leaders and teachers, with a foreword by Jay Bilas and a photo gallery. Published by Triumph Books in 2014, 289 pages.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
Steven J. Tepper's chronicle of how the University of North Carolina marked its bicentennial in 1993 and 1994. An appendix reprints the University Day speeches of October 12, 1993, given by Paul Hardin, James B. Hunt Jr., C.D. Spangler, William C. Friday, Charles Kuralt and President Bill Clinton, plus bicentennial addresses by Li Lu, Francis S. Collins and Richard J. Richardson. Published by the university in Chapel Hill, 1998; 284 pages.
Art Chansky's 2016 account of Dean Smith, Charlie Scott and the years that changed Chapel Hill as a Southern college town. Scott was the first Black scholarship player in the Carolina basketball program. Topics include civil rights, racism in sports and the university's twentieth-century history.
Biography of William C. Friday, president of the University of North Carolina system, by historian William A. Link, published by UNC Press in 1995 with the subtitle power, purpose, and American higher education. It covers Friday's career and the history of the university at Chapel Hill and statewide. Part of the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection.
William D. Snider's history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1992. It runs 370 pages with illustrations, a bibliography and an index.
Reviewed in History of Education Quarterly (1993), The Journal of Southern History (1993).
Twelve essays by novelist Daphne Athas (1923-2020) on the Chapel Hill she knew across the twentieth century. Subjects include Carrboro as 'the Paris of the Piedmont', philosopher Horace Williams, Betty Smith writing in Chapel Hill, Junius Scales, Ab Abernethy and the Intimate Bookshop, Richard Wright's visit, and a set of Chapel Hill murders. Published 2010, 243 pages with illustrations.
Scott Fowler gathers recollections from Carolina basketball players, decade by decade from the 1950s to the 2000s, organized around Roy Williams and the question in the title. Contributors include Lennie Rosenbluth, Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, Charlie Scott, Phil Ford, James Worthy, Brad Daugherty, Eric Montross, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Raymond Felton and Sean May, each entry giving position and playing years. Published 2010 by Triumph Books of Chicago, 270 pages, here as an e-book.
Archibald Henderson's history of the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, its buildings and grounds from the founding in the 1790s onward. Henderson, a professor of mathematics and a prolific historian of the university, wrote it in the years around the university's sesquicentennial. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 412 pages with illustrations and bibliographical footnotes.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1949), South Atlantic Quarterly (1950).
Charles Phillips Russell's biography of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825-1908), the Chapel Hill writer remembered for ringing the bell of South Building when the university reopened in 1875 after its closure during Reconstruction. It doubles as a history of Chapel Hill and the university. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 293 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1949).
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Building Davis Library and renewing Wilson Library, 1975–1988.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/davis-library-storyline-1975/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
