Storyline · 1970–1992
In 1971 the Chapel Hill Historical Society fought Delta Upsilon's plan to raze the Dey House for a new fraternity house, and in 1972 the aldermen approved the plan on condition that the house be offered to anyone who would move it. The Chapel Hill Historic District entered the National Register in 1971, the society published a landmarks guide in 1973, and in 1976 the aldermen took up a historic district ordinance. From 1978 the Historic District Commission twice refused the University a certificate for a UNC Press building in the Battle Park neighborhood, and in 1979 the houses on the site came down after the legislature exempted the University from local historic district rules. In 1980 the trustees leased a house near the press site to the Preservation Society to repair, and the Town Council refused to rezone a historic district lot for a sorority house; in 1984 it refused to allow larger bed and breakfast inns in the district. In December 1990 fire gutted the press building, Brooks Hall, and in 1992 the Press began rebuilding it on the same site with sprinklers and fire walls.
In April 1970 the Chapel Hill Historical Society's preservation committee was making drawings and histories of more than 30 historic places in town. In September 1971 eleven speakers, most of them society members, opposed Delta Upsilon fraternity's plan to replace four houses at Rosemary and Hillsborough streets with one new building, which meant razing the former home of Professor W. M. Dey, believed built between 1870 and 1875. In December the Planning Board voted 4 to 3 to relax parking rules where needed to save a defined historic site, and that month the Chapel Hill Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. On June 12, 1972 the aldermen, with Mayor Howard Lee breaking a tie, granted the fraternity its permit, requiring it to offer the Martin-Dey House free to anyone who would move it and letting it tear the house down otherwise. In 1973 the society published a booklet on 42 of the town's buildings and landmarks, and in February 1974 the aldermen accepted gifts from it, the Preservation Society and the Community Appearance Commission to pay for a study of historic conservation in the older neighborhoods. In July 1975, over neighbors' complaints about fraternity noise, the aldermen sent back to the Planning Board Delta Upsilon's request to change its 1972 permit for a dining and meeting building, patio and parking lot behind its Rosemary Street house, a plan that would have kept the Dey and Bain houses the 1972 plan had marked for removal. On September 15 they unanimously allowed a two-story addition behind the house, with the patio and meeting room turned toward it and nine conditions, among them a screening wall and sound-deadening materials. In October they voted 5 to 1 against zoning amendments that would have barred new fraternity and sorority houses around East Rosemary Street and limited the growth of three existing ones; Planning Director Mike Jennings had advised waiting for a comprehensive town plan, and Alderman Alice Welsh, the only vote for the change, said large old houses would otherwise be lost. In January 1976 the aldermen took up ordinances for a 131-acre Historic Conservation District with a commission to approve exterior changes and delay demolitions; after more hearings they approved the conservation ordinance in concept that October. In a November 9 letter the State Division of Archives and History approved the ordinance, which would create a district along East Rosemary, East Franklin, Hillsborough, Boundary and North streets and a nine-member Historic District Commission to review exterior changes; the state asked that the commission get at least 45 days to act, where the aldermen had set 30. On November 22 the aldermen voted 5 to 3 to let Delta Delta Delta sorority turn three houses at 407 East Franklin Street into a residence for 45 members, with a dining addition and a 25-car lot, and Rosemary Street neighbors who feared traffic and a changed neighborhood said they would sue. A 1979 account says the aldermen established the Historic District Commission in January 1977.
On February 10, 1978 the UNC Board of Governors approved a building for the University of North Carolina Press, to cost $600,000 from grants and trust funds. Its site, a 1.3-acre lot at Boundary Street and Hooper Lane in the Battle Park neighborhood where three rented houses stood, lay in the historic district. More than 50 residents protested at an August 17 meeting with Vice Chancellor John L. Temple, and on September 8 the trustees refused to reconsider, chairman Thomas W. Lambeth saying the press belonged near the campus. On a petition from the Chapel Hill Preservation Society the aldermen voted 7 to 1 on September 11 to extend the building's environmental review until the University answered the society's questions about traffic, streams, noise and the neighborhood. Temple replied that the building would be residential in design, add little traffic and not lower nearby property values, and that the three houses had little historic value. On October 26 the Historic District Commission voted 7 to 2 to deny UNC a certificate of appropriateness, finding the building too massive for its surroundings, and on October 30 the aldermen held a hearing on the commission's request to rezone the site, with land in the 400 block of East Franklin Street and on Hillsborough Street, to low-density residential use; UNC's planning director called the change unfair.
In early January 1979, relying on a deputy attorney general's opinion that it did not need the certificate, the University announced it would take bids for the building. On January 22 the aldermen put off deciding whether to sue after UNC agreed to negotiate with the commission, whose chairman, Joe Herzenberg, said its integrity was the principle at stake. On February 8 the commission changed its rules so it could reconsider a denied application whose facts or plans had substantially changed, and on February 22 it refused the redesigned building 5 to 4, Herzenberg saying the new roof, windows and landscaping did not cure its size. On March 13 the aldermen declined to rezone the press site, though at the commission's request they rezoned the Spencer House, the Hickerson House and the UNC president's house on East Franklin Street from University to residential use, and on March 22 the commission split 5 to 5 on a motion to rescind its denial, so the denial stood. About two weeks after the General Assembly passed a bill exempting the 16 UNC campuses from local historic district rules, the three vacant houses on the site were being torn down for the press building by June 7, 1979. Between 1979 and 1983 Delta Delta Delta bought the East Franklin Street house its owners had held since 1947.
On March 21, 1980 the trustees approved the Chapel Hill Preservation Society's plan for a University-owned house at 620 Park Place, across from the press building site, which had been slated for demolition in July 1979: the society agreed to make about $38,000 to $40,000 in repairs and lease the house from the University for $1 a year. At a Town Council hearing on September 15, historic district residents opposed Zeta Tau Alpha's request to rezone a one-acre lot at 402 Hillsborough Street from R-10 to R-10a so the sorority could build a house there, calling it spot zoning in a single-family neighborhood; the University endorsed the change, and the Preservation Society's president objected to the $250,000 price. The Planning Board advised against the change, and on November 10 the council denied it unanimously, its members calling it spot zoning that would put high-density student housing in a historic district zoned for single-family homes; the sororities then asked the University to help find land for a sorority court. On October 8, 1984 the council voted 6 to 3 against a change to the development ordinance that would have allowed bed and breakfast inns as special uses in the historic district, turning down a request for a five-unit inn on East Franklin Street. Council member Nancy Preston said inns of more than two units were a commercial venture that would harm the district; Mayor Joseph Nassif and council members Marilyn Boulton and Jonathan Howes voted against her motion.
On the evening of December 5, 1990 a three-alarm fire burned about 80 percent of Brooks Hall, the home of the University of North Carolina Press at South Boundary Street and Hooper Lane, destroying the upper floor, equipment and the Press's file copies of every book it had published since 1922. The fire chief put the first damage estimate at $500,000, and town and University officials questioned the 1980 building's manual alarm and its lack of sprinklers and smoke detectors. In mid-February 1991 the Press's board of governors decided to rebuild on the same site; facilities planning director Gordon Rutherford expected construction to start that fall at $800,000 to $1 million, mostly covered by the State Fire Fund, and the Press to be back in 18 to 20 months, and meanwhile it worked from the Block Building at 410 Airport Road. On May 19, 1992 about 30 Press staff gathered at the ruins to mark the start of the reconstruction by Bordeaux Construction of Durham. The rebuilding, about $900,000 paid by the Press and the State Property Fire Insurance Fund, kept the original design but added a sprinkler system, fire walls and about 2,000 square feet to the 10,700-square-foot building, with completion expected in about ten months.
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 them all.
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.
A handbook of guidelines for Chapel Hill's historic district, compiled by Elizabeth Staples for the town's Historic District Commission and dated July 1979, with funding noted from the Chapel Hill Preservation Society. Guidelines of this kind set out what owners may do to buildings inside a district.
A hand drawn guide to the Chapel Hill historic district, published in 1976 by the town's Bicentennial Commission with the Chapel Hill Preservation Society and researched by the Chapel Hill Historical Society. Selected streets are mapped, with the historic houses and buildings along them shown and described. One folded sheet of two unnumbered pages with illustrations, 21 x 63 cm.
Color-coded 1999 map of Chapel Hill's historic districts, marking the Cameron-McCauley, Gimghoul and Franklin-Rosemary districts along with the UNC campus.
Chapel Hill map from 1999 marking the town's historic districts in pink, among them Franklin-Rosemary, Gimghoul and Cameron-McCauley.
Lisa Giencke's 2010 conservation report on Battle Park, the university's natural area in Chapel Hill managed with the North Carolina Botanical Garden, with contributions from Alan Weakley, Peter White, Stephen Keith, Dave Vandermast and Elinor Benami. It deals with botany, natural areas and nature conservation, with partial funding from an Institute of Museum and Library Sciences grant.
A 2010 trail guide to Battle Park, the 93 acre Piedmont woodland at Chapel Hill, published by the North Carolina Botanical Garden of the University of North Carolina. The folded sheet carries a map of more than two and a half miles of pedestrian trails together with notes on the park's history. Four unnumbered pages with a color illustration, 22 x 36 cm.
An earlier edition of the North Carolina Botanical Garden's guide to Battle Park in Chapel Hill, printed in 2006, when the trail network was described as more than two miles through 93 acres of forest. The folded sheet gives a trail map with color illustrations and historical notes on the park. Five unnumbered pages, 22 x 36 cm folded to 22 x 9 cm.
Battle Park in Chapel Hill mapped for walkers in 2004, with relief shown by contours on a single sheet of 20 by 34 centimeters. Attributed to the North Carolina Botanical Garden. It guides visitors along the park's footpaths and records the state of the trail network at that date.
Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
Howard N. Lee (born 1934) tells his own story, from a farm childhood in Lithonia, Georgia, through college, army service in Korea at Camp Casey and the move from Savannah that planted him in Chapel Hill, to his election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and his later run for Congress and years in the state legislature. Published by Cotton Patch Press of Chapel Hill in 2008, 199 pages with plates.
Edwin Caldwell, Jr. reviews a life in Chapel Hill politics in a three-hour Southern Oral History Program interview recorded March 2, 2001, by Oliver White. A skilled organizer, Caldwell worked in the campaign that made Howard Lee the town's first Black mayor in 1969, ran for office more than once without winning, and became a local political power. The conversation also covers race relations, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board and the Church of Reconciliation. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
Interview recorded June 21, 2000 with Rebecca Clark (1915-2009), a Black Chapel Hill resident, for the Southern Oral History Program at UNC. Clark, educated in Chapel Hill's segregated schools, describes working life under segregation and the economic discrimination she met in it. Topics also include Lincoln High School, school integration, and Howard Lee, elected mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969. Interview K-0536 in collection #4007.
Howard N. Lee's account of his own career, published in 2021 by the North Caroliniana Society with the society award given to him that year, together with tributes from Angela Lee, Valerie Foushee and others. Lee became mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969, the town's first Black mayor.
Lucile Noell Dula's guidebook to Hillsborough and its historic buildings, published by Pelican in 1989. It pairs a tour of the town with notes on its history, in 128 illustrated pages with a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Robert Watson Winston's biography of Henry Horace Williams (1858-1940), who taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina for half a century, subtitled gadfly of Chapel Hill. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1942, 309 pages with frontispiece and portraits; this copy is autographed. Topics include educators in Chapel Hill and the university's history.
Reviewed in Social Forces (1943).
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.
Maurice M. Bursey's biography of Francis Preston Venable (1856 to 1934), chemist and president of the University of North Carolina, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1989. It also covers the history of the university's chemistry department. Illustrated, 111 pages, with bibliographies.
Reviewed in Isis (1992).
Architectural and historical inventory of Carrboro by Claudia Roberts Brown, published in 1983 by the Carrboro Appearance Commission and the town. The 48-page survey, with illustrations and maps, documents the town's historic buildings and their conservation.
John V. Allcott's history of the architecture of the University of North Carolina campus across two centuries, from the first buildings of the 1790s to the 1980s, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1986. A 108-page illustrated survey with a bibliography. Allcott taught art history at the university.
A history of the buildings on the University of North Carolina campus by John V. Allcott and JJ Bauer, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2019. It follows campus construction from the 1790s forward: the plans behind each building campaign, the architects, and the university figures who pushed projects through. 132 pages with photographs, maps and plans.
Jill Ridky-Blackburn's history of Coker Hills, a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2016. Chapters describe the land before the subdivision, the Coker who gave it its name, how the neighborhood began, the architects, builders and houses that shaped it, its legacy, memories of growing up there and the residents' later advocacy. Subjects include historic buildings in Chapel Hill. 242 pages with illustrations, portraits and a map.
Sarah Brandes Madry's history of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, treating both its architecture and the ideas attached to it. It takes in drinking fountains and water use in Chapel Hill and the university's history, with a chapter on Edwin Anderson Alderman, the president under whom the well took its present form in 1897, and one on water at the university. Published by iUniverse in 2003, 399 pages with illustrations.
Allen Alexander Lloyd's history of Hillsborough from the town's founding in 1754 to 1966, published by the author in Hillsborough in 1966. 306 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits, dedicated to the best interest of our town. Topics include Hillsborough's history and biography, its historic buildings and Orange County history.
Brian Burns's collection of lesser-known episodes from Chapel Hill's past, published by The History Press of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2023. Topics include the town's history, its buildings and structures, and the history of civil rights in Chapel Hill. 158 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Kemp P. Battle's University Day address of 1883, delivered as president of the University of North Carolina on the day marking the laying of the Old East cornerstone. Battle goes building by building through the Chapel Hill campus, telling how each was named and why it stands where it does. Fifteen pages. Electronic edition issued 2005 by the UNC University Library for Documenting the American South.
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. “The Dey House, the historic district and the Press building, 1970–1992.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/dey-house-historic-district-storyline-1970/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
