Storyline · 1990–1994
Between 1990 and 1992 Franklin Street lost the Carolina Blue and White movie house, Baskin-Robbins, Top of the Hill and University Printery, while The Parlor, Aunt Louise's Bookshop for Children and Mediterranean Deli opened and the old Fowler's grocery became a shopping center. A February 1991 fire gutted the Scott Building at Franklin and Henderson streets and left Hector's in a lawsuit with its landlord. In 1992 the council approved a new building for the Top of the Hill corner. In 1993 and 1994 The Intimate Bookshop reopened in a rebuilt store after a 1992 arson fire, the Hector's building was restored for a cafe and an arcade, west-end merchants organized against crime, and a new Top of the Hill building filled the corner of Franklin and Columbia streets.
By August 27, 1990 The Parlor, a billiards pub, had opened at 205 East Franklin Street in the building Burger King had left. In September a UNC professor of library science who taught children's literature opened Aunt Louise's Bookshop for Children at 431 West Franklin Street, named for the aunt whose money paid for it. On September 20 the Carolina Blue and White, one of Franklin Street's oldest movie houses, showed its last films; Cineplex-Odeon had sold it in June to a Fayetteville developer who planned several stores and a nightclub in the building. By late October Lyon Stores, which had bought the lease of Fowler's Food Store from the Fowler family in 1976, was advertising the grocery at 306 West Franklin Street for sale.
On February 16, 1991 a fire that started in the basement of the Continental Cafe, closed for renovation, burned for about four hours and gutted the restaurant and the second-floor offices of the 1930s Scott Building at East Franklin and Henderson streets. Hector's, Manire's Goldsmiths, Sadlack's Heroes and Deli, Linda's Bar and Grill and other tenants took water and smoke damage; Fire Chief Daniel Jones traced the fire to an electrical short in a light switch under a stairwell. In July Linda's Bar and Grill took over its neighbor Sadlack's under an employment agreement, and both places were renovated. On August 8 the owner of Hector's, closed since the fire, sued the landlord, Paliouras Enterprises, for $3.5 million, charging that it had tried to lease the space to another restaurant and had not repaired the building as quickly as possible; Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens urged the two sides to settle. By September 17 the old Fowler's building had reopened as a shopping center after a renovation of about $2 million by West Side Limited Partnership. On October 28 the owner of Linda's dismissed the couple who had founded Sadlack's in 1977 and renamed it Linda's Upstairs. That week the Baskin-Robbins on East Franklin Street closed after 18 years, its franchise owner citing the old building's condition, its lack of seating and restrooms and competition from the newer Ben and Jerry's a block west.
On January 3, 1992 Chapel Hill Tae Kwon Do Inc. opened in the old Fowler's building. On January 14 the Town Council unanimously approved a special-use permit for Riddle Commercial Properties to replace the Top of the Hill convenience store and gas station at Franklin and Columbia streets with a three-story building for offices, shops and a restaurant, waiving parking, floor-area and height limits; Mayor Ken Broun called it an anchor for downtown revitalization. By March The Original Ornament, selling beads and jewelry-making supplies, had opened where Baskin-Robbins had been. Top of the Hill, which had stood at the corner for 86 years, ended regular hours on May 16. In June Joseph Riddle, the Fayetteville developer, bought the site, and in July workers tore down the one-story brick filling station, built between 1949 and 1960, that had become the convenience store; by early 1993 work had stalled while soil contaminated with benzene from the station's leaking tanks was tested. That year Milton Julian moved Milton's Clothing Cupboard, founded in 1948, from 163 East Franklin Street to Northgate Mall in Durham, blaming competing malls, scarce free parking and high rents. By May University Printery had left Amber Alley, after 98 years on Franklin Street, for Carr Mill Mall in Carrboro; a co-owner said delivery trucks had no room to park and the Rosemary Street parking deck's construction had cut off the rear access. That month a family from the West Bank opened Mediterranean Deli at 418 West Franklin Street. On September 10 the Historic District Commission approved a design, asked for by Paliouras Enterprises, restoring the fire-gutted building at 201 East Franklin Street to its original appearance, while the owners and Hector's were still in their lawsuit and it was not settled that Hector's would return. On the evening of September 20 a fire gutted The Intimate Bookshop at 119 East Franklin Street; investigators found it had been set, one of two arson fires at Chapel Hill businesses that night, and the fire department put the damage at up to $1 million. On November 4 the owner of the Intimate Bookshop presented the Planners' Forum with a plan to close the 100 block of East Franklin Street to through traffic, at a cost he put at about $2 million, repaid by parking meters.
On January 14, 1993 Colonial Drug Company, a fixture since the 1950s, closed on West Franklin Street, and in March the family-owned Mast General Store, whose first store opened at Valle Crucis in 1883, opened a store on West Franklin Street. Pizza Inn held its grand opening on August 31 at 205 East Franklin Street, in the space The Parlor had left at the end of June in the building where Hector's had burned. In September Paliouras Enterprises, the building's owner, said Hector's would not be coming back; the building was being restored with the Chapel Hill Historical Society's advice. That month Tijuana Fats closed on West Rosemary Street after 24 years, its former general manager blaming crime on the west end of downtown, and after a weekend of six gun incidents and three street assaults downtown, merchants formed a West Franklin-West Rosemary Merchants Association to press for police protection; Police Chief Ralph Pendergraph promised plainclothes and foot patrols. On September 17 The Intimate Bookshop's owners held a topping-out ceremony for the rebuilt store, which kept only the old side walls and added a third floor, and on November 10 it reopened with 7,000 square feet for books alone, about the size of the whole old store. Mia, a women's clothing shop, opened on November 20 in the space Small World Travel had left. On November 27 the Barrel of Fun arcade, on Franklin Street since 1981, closed when the building's owner declined to renew its lease, and on November 30 Colonel Chutney's closed on West Rosemary Street, its owners leasing the property for a restaurant and bar, Pantana Bob's.
Judges Coffee Roastery opened in the former arcade on February 9, 1994. On February 28 workers took down the wooden sidewalk barricade from the former Hector's building after almost two years. In March Dunkin' Donuts left 153 East Franklin Street to Yogurt Oasis and the Hardback Cafe and Bookstore closed, and on March 28 the Mast General Store closed after 13 months, its managers saying Chapel Hill had not given it the tourist trade its mountain stores relied on. On June 14 Paliouras Enterprises announced that CaffeTrio, a dessert and coffee cafe, would take the main floor Hector's had occupied and Nick's Arcade the lower level, saying the Historic District Commission had required the outside to be rebuilt in its 1924 style and that a lawsuit by Hector's former owner had delayed the reopening. Emilberry's, a bulk candy store, opened on September 3 in the former Baum Diamonds space. On October 17 First Union's downtown branch became the first tenant of the three-story Top of the Hill building of Riddle Commercial Properties, begun in June 1993 on the long-vacant corner of East Franklin and Columbia streets.
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 3 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.
An announcement issued as the first number of The Bookshop Times on November 10, 1993, marking the reopening of the Intimate Bookshop on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. The Intimate was an independent bookstore on the town's main commercial street.
Hearings of 1953 before the Senate subcommittee that investigated the Internal Security Act, printed by the Government Printing Office. The sessions took up underground printing and illegal propaganda, and part of the testimony concerns the Intimate Bookshop in Chapel Hill, with Milton A. and Minna A. Abernethy and Paul Crouch among the witnesses.
Photographs of the Intimate Bookshop on East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Milton Abernethy, its founder and owner, stands outside the shop; other views show the storefront in 1978 and at an unknown date, and later owners Wallace and Brenda Kuralt pose in front of it.
Browsing the shelves of the Intimate Bookshop in Chapel Hill, 1952: a group of university students among the books. From the student life pictures in the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Margaret A. Thomas wrote this 1979 report on the rehabilitation of Carr Mill in Carrboro for the Technical Preservation Services Division of the Interior Department's Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service. It presents the mill as a rehabilitation project under the Tax Reform Act of 1976, with attention to federal aid for historic sites and the restoration of historic buildings. 32 illustrated pages.
A short booklet on Carr Mill, the former Carrboro mill remodeled as a shopping village, issued around 1977. A note beneath the title names the owner, a limited partnership called Carr-Mill, the leasing agent Southern Real Estate of Charlotte, the architects Miller/Steever/Finch of Charlotte, and the contractor Wooten-Brawley of Statesville. Five unnumbered pages with illustrations, a map and a plan.
Photographs following the Carrboro mill site from about 1900 to the 1970s: the Carrboro Mill in the early 1900s, a group portrait of Durham Hosiery Company workers at Carr Mill, the Carr Mill Mall later built on the site, and the sign for Elmo's Diner there. Some of the pictures are by Jerry Cotten.
Organizational records of Friends of Old Carrboro, Inc., roughly 2,600 items in 4.5 linear feet spanning circa 1970s to 2000, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 70171. Topics include historic preservation and architectural conservation in Carrboro, city planning, zoning and traffic calming, with names including Claudia Roberts Brown and Jay Bryan and sites such as Carr Mill and Weaver Street Market. Materials in English.
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.
Edward G. Danziger's memoir of love and cooking, published by J. F. Blair in 1967. Danziger (1893 to 1972) ran Danziger's Old World Restaurant in Chapel Hill, and the book tells his life as a restaurateur in the town.
William M. Rohe's history of Research Triangle Park and the region around it, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011. Topics include regional planning and the economic and social conditions of the Research Triangle Park region, one corner of which is Chapel Hill and the university. 298 pages with illustrations and maps.
Herbert G. Gutman's 1976 history of African American families from 1750 to 1925, published by Pantheon Books in New York, 664 pages with 38 leaves of plates. Its Orange County connection is the Bennehan and Cameron family plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh: the book discusses the people enslaved by Richard Bennehan (1743-1825) and the Camerons, and follows family ties among them under slavery and after emancipation. Subjects include African American families and enslaved persons in Orange County.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1977), The William and Mary Quarterly (1977), The American Historical Review (1977), Journal of American History (1977), The History Teacher (1977), Political Science Quarterly (1977), Journal of Black Psychology (1978), Journal of Social History (1978), Civil War history (1978), Signs (1978).
Orvin Lee Shiflett's biography of William Terry Couch, 1901 to 1988, the editor who built up UNC Press at Chapel Hill over four decades in publishing, with a subtitle that calls his career a lightning rod for controversy. Chapters treat culture in the South, a case history in book publishing, objectivity and social science and 'The Sainted Book Burners'. It bears on scholarly publishing and university presses in the twentieth century. McFarland, 2015, 268 pages with illustrations.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
Albert N. Link's history of the Research Triangle Park, the research park founded to draw on the universities at Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, published in 2002 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina in 278 pages with illustrations. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in North Carolina and the history of the park itself.
Charles X. Larrabee's history of the Research Triangle Institute over its first thirty one years, published in 1991. Topics include research institutes and research parks in North Carolina and the history of Research Triangle Park, the research district that lies between Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.
Alex Sayf Cummings's 2020 book on the knowledge economy of the Research Triangle, technology research and the history of Research Triangle Park. Chapel Hill and its university form one corner of the Triangle.
A tour guidebook prepared for the 2016 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference in Durham, leading visitors through buildings in Orange and Caswell counties. It takes in the architecture of the bright leaf tobacco economy and the work of Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Caswell County who worked in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Account of student protest in 1960s Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 with illustrations. It draws together the civil rights movement and segregation in the town, discrimination in restaurants, academic freedom and university autonomy, protest against the Vietnam War, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Student Movement on campus.
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
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. “Franklin Street’s changing storefronts, 1990–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/franklin-storefronts-storyline-1990/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
