Storyline · 1932–1974
Founded in Chapel Hill in 1932 as the start of a planned full-time state orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony folded for lack of money and was revived under Benjamin Swalin. Backers of Lamar Stringfield's plan formed the North Carolina Symphony Society in President Frank Porter Graham's office, and fifty-three musicians played its opening concert in Hill Music Hall under Stringfield. In 1934 a federal relief grant brought about forty musicians to Chapel Hill for summer concerts. After the orchestra folded, a 1939 meeting set out to revive it with Swalin as conductor. In 1946, after an expansion campaign let Swalin hire professional players, the Daily Tar Heel's critic called it the most capable musical organization then playing in the state. A 1966 Ford Foundation grant aimed to make it a full-time orchestra, and in 1974 its board voted to move it from Chapel Hill to Raleigh.
Early in 1932 backers of Lamar Stringfield's plan for a state orchestra formed the North Carolina Symphony Society at a meeting in President Frank Porter Graham's office, with Col. Joseph Hyde Pratt in the chair. At a luncheon meeting at the Carolina Inn on Monday, March 21, 1932, they elected Pratt president of the society and approved a drive to enlist 20,000 members at $1 each. On May 14, after five rehearsals, fifty-three musicians from fourteen towns played the society's opening concert in Hill Music Hall under Stringfield, with Beethoven's First Symphony on the program. It was planned as the first of a series leading to a full-time state orchestra.
In the summer of 1934 a $45,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Relief Administration brought about forty musicians to Chapel Hill, where they were quartered in University dormitories and gave Sunday concerts under Stringfield through the first summer term before touring the state. The orchestra later folded for lack of money, and on October 20, 1939 Pratt, still president of the society, led a meeting at the Graham Memorial that set out to revive it, with Benjamin Swalin of the UNC music faculty to conduct 50 to 65 players, about 25 of them from Chapel Hill.
On Saturday, April 15, 1944 the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra under Benjamin F. Swalin played a free afternoon concert for the children of Orange County in Memorial Hall, drawing a large crowd of pupils, some of whom walked over from the Carrboro school. On April 22, 1946 Swalin brought the orchestra to Memorial Hall after an expansion campaign had let him hire professional players for the first time, and the Daily Tar Heel's critic wrote that it had become the most capable musical organization then playing in the state. In 1962 the News recalled the Carolina Inn meeting as the start of what it called the nation's first state-supported orchestra. In July 1966 the Ford Foundation granted the symphony, still based in Chapel Hill, $750,000 in endowment to be matched within five years and $250,000 outright. On November 5, 1974 the North Carolina Symphony Society's executive board voted to move the orchestra from Chapel Hill, its home since 1932, to Raleigh by July 1, 1975, choosing Raleigh's offer over offers from Chapel Hill and Durham.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kenneth Joel Zogry's history of the Carolina Inn, the hotel that has stood beside the University of North Carolina campus since 1924. Six chapters run from the alumnus who built it, through the New Deal and Navy years of the 1930s and 1940s, postwar redecoration and Cold War politics, the changes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the challenges of the 1980s and 1990s. Published 1999 by the university, 149 pages with photographs, color illustrations and plans.
The Carolina Inn at Chapel Hill reopened after restoration in 1995, and the Herald-Sun of Durham marked it with an eight page illustrated supplement dated October 1 that year. Topics include the inn and the historic buildings of the town. It belongs with the other printed material generated by the 1995 reopening of the hotel.
An 11-page guide to the historic furnishings and photographs displayed at the Carolina Inn, the university-owned hotel at the edge of the Chapel Hill campus, issued by the inn in 2001. It includes a floor plan for locating the pieces. It concerns the buildings of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A half hour videocassette of the narrated slide show 'The Carolina Inn', presented when the inn reopened in October 1995 at an event hosted by the Chapel Hill Preservation Society. Bitty Holton, Linnie Green, Judy Kramer and Betty Cloutier narrate. Topics include John Sprunt Hill and the Hill family, whose name is attached to the inn's founding.
Side 1 of reel 21 in Jack Guy's folk music recordings, dated 1967 to 1972, capturing the Carolina Folk Festival at Chapel Hill. Bascom Lamar Lunsford introduces the acts, R. B. House sings Polly Wolly Doodle, and Lamar Stringfield, Tab Ward, Red Parham and the Oranim Group also take part.
Maxine M. Swalin's memoir, published by the author in 1996, ix and 145 pages with illustrations and portraits. Her account follows her from Waukee, Iowa, to Chapel Hill and describes her ties to the North Carolina Symphony and to Benjamin F. Swalin, 1901 to 1989, who led that orchestra for more than thirty years.
Two photographs of Dr. Benjamin Swalin dated 1942, one showing him conducting and one with two companions after a lecture he gave in Hill Hall. Part of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's UNC Faculty and Administration photographs.
Benjamin Swalin, director of the North Carolina Symphony, applauds a violin soloist while the orchestra sits behind them, at a concert at UNC-Chapel Hill. Hugh Morton photograph, probably from the 1940s.
Benjamin Swalin, director of the North Carolina Symphony, stands at right with a violinist and the orchestra at an unidentified event at UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1940s. Hugh Morton took the black-and-white sheet film negative.
Fifty-year history of PlayMakers Repertory Company, the professional theater founded in 1975 by Tom Haas with Arthur Housman on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. Chapters by Bobbi Owen, Cecelia Moore and Gregory Kable follow the company leader by leader: Haas, David Rotenberg and Gregory Boyd, Milly S. Barranger and David Hammond, Joseph Haj and Vivienne Benesch. Appendices list productions, Department of Dramatic Art faculty, MFA graduates and administrators since 1975. Published by the department in 2021, 168 pages, online edition.
John Cook's history of Merge Records, the independent label that Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance of Superchunk built in Chapel Hill. Chapters follow the label year by year from 1987 to 2009 and pause for profiles of Butterglory, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Magnetic Fields, Spoon, Lambchop and the Arcade Fire, ending on how it managed to stay small. Advance reading copy of the first edition, published in Chapel Hill in 2009, 289 pages with twelve pages of plates.
David Menconi's history of popular music in North Carolina, from the working-class roots of the state's traditions to the Chapel Hill and Carrboro rock scene of recent decades. Menconi, who covered music for the Raleigh News and Observer for nearly thirty years, builds the book on interviews and reporting, and Black musicians' contributions run through it. First issued in print by UNC Press in 2020; this is the online edition, 329 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2022).
A handbook to the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, published by the museum in 1983 for its twenty-fifth anniversary. It combines a catalog of the collection with a history of the museum, which opened in 1958. Includes a bibliography on pages xviii to xx. 170 pages with illustrations, 22 cm.
Memoir of Woody Durham, who called University of North Carolina football and basketball on the radio from 1971 until he retired in 2011, written with Adam Lucas. Four decades of Tar Heel games as heard from the broadcast booth. Subjects include radio broadcasters and sportscasters, North Carolina, biography.
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Brief biography of Frederick Henry Koch (1877-1944), founder of the Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina, by Samuel Selden and Mary Tom Sphangos, with notes by Jonathan Daniels and others. It reprints Koch's own essay 'Folk playmaking' on pages 59 to 68. Published by the University of North Carolina Library in 1954, viii and 92 pages with illustrations and a portrait.
Reviewed in Educational Theatre Journal (1956).
Gay Mahaffy Hertzman's 1971 catalogue of the collection of the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center, the university art museum in Chapel Hill now called the Ackland Art Museum, printed by Herzig Somerville. William Hayes Ackland (1855 to 1940) left the bequest that founded the museum.
Archibald Henderson's short history of the Carolina Playmakers, the University of North Carolina's theater company at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 104 pages. Written while the company was still in its first decades, it gives a contemporary view of how the Playmakers saw their own mission as a people's theatre.
Exhibit publication from the Orange County Historical Museum for its special exhibit on working life, shown in Hillsborough from March to December 2024 and concerned with the county's trades and industrial arts. Produced by the museum in 2024, it documents Orange County and Hillsborough history through the work people did.
Jennifer E. Miller's account of the Hillsborough Artists Cooperative and its Skylight Gallery across their first thirty years, 1990 to 2020. Topics include art in Hillsborough for that period and the history of both the cooperative and the gallery. Published in 2021, it records a local institution in the town's art scene that would otherwise leave little written trace.
Cecelia Moore's 2017 study of the Federal Theatre Project in the southern states, with the Carolina Playmakers at Chapel Hill among its subjects. Topics include theatre in North Carolina in the twentieth century and the relation of theatre to society.
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 North Carolina Symphony in Chapel Hill, 1932–1974.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/nc-symphony-chapel-hill-storyline-1932/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
