Storyline · 1850–1982
Alexander Jackson Davis designed Smith Hall, built from 1850 to 1852 as the university's library and ballroom and named for Benjamin Smith. The Carolina Playmakers made it their theatre in 1925, and it reopened after a 1938 fire. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1974, and a federally funded restoration reopened it in January 1982.
The New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis designed Smith Hall, built from 1850 to 1852 for just over $10,300 as the university's library and ballroom. In 1852 the trustees named it for Benjamin Smith of Brunswick, trustee and former governor, whose gift of 20,000 acres of Tennessee land at the board's first meeting was the first donation to the university. The building was later used as a library and law school, and on November 23, 1925 the Carolina Playmakers dedicated their theatre in the remodeled hall, with talks by Frederick Koch and President Harry W. Chase and three new folk plays.
On August 13, 1938 a fire that started near the main switchboard on the stage ran up the curtain and through the loft. Chapel Hill firemen, cutting through the roof, kept it from the front offices, but the stage, its equipment, the seats and the interior walls were destroyed, a loss put at about $30,000. The University said it would rebuild the theatre that fall, housing the Playmakers in the old gymnasium meanwhile.The theatre reopened the week of January 9, 1939 with four experimental plays from Koch's playwriting course; the house was packed and hundreds were turned away.
The National Park Service listed the Playmakers Theatre (Smith Hall) in the National Register of Historic Places on June 24, 1971. In March 1974 Interior Secretary Rogers Morton named it one of 17 new National Historic Landmarks, and on October 12, before the University Day exercises, R.J. Rogers, the Park Service's regional landmark coordinator, presented Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor a bronze plaque and certificate; Vice Chancellor William F. Little told how the building began as a ballroom the students had sought for years. In the spring of 1981 work began on a restoration paid for by a U.S. Interior Department grant through the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service. It replaced the roof and the column bases, repaired the wheat and corn capitals, sealed the leaking basement and added a ramp to the restrooms for disabled patrons, and the theatre reopened with the Playmakers Repertory Company production of Angel Street on January 28, 1982.
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 1 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.
A 2005 study by Robin S. D. Chen tracing the principal library buildings of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1853 to 1984: Smith Hall, the Carnegie Library, the Louis Round Wilson Library and the Walter Royal Davis Library. Academic library architecture is the subject throughout, set against buildings elsewhere in the United States. 65 leaves.
A philatelic souvenir from the University of North Carolina bicentennial: a single printed sheet cut to hold the nineteen cent Playmakers Theatre postal card, which the Postal Service issued in its historic preservation series. The card was designed by Bob Timberlake and cancelled with a bicentennial postmark dated September 15, 1993. Playmakers Theatre itself stands on the university campus in Chapel Hill.
Program for the September 14, 1993 ceremony dedicating a United States Postal Service postal card picturing Playmakers Theatre at the University of North Carolina, together with a card bearing the first day of issue postmark from Chapel Hill. Designed by Bob Timberlake, the card marked the university's bicentennial in the Postal Service's Historic Preservation series. One folded sheet in color.
Program for the rededication of Playmakers Theatre at the University of North Carolina on the evening of September 11, 1982, after the restoration finished the year before. The title gives the building's dates: a national historic landmark put up in 1851 and remodeled in 1924. Six unnumbered pages with two illustrations and a portrait.
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.
Walter Spearman's account of the Carolina Playmakers, the theater company at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, across its first fifty years, as the subtitle puts it. The company was founded in 1918 under Frederick H. Koch. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1970, 178 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).
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.
Cecelia Moore on the Carolina Playmakers, the folk drama company Frederick H. Koch built at the University of North Carolina. The text is the talk she gave on April 8, 2014 in Wilson Library for the Gladys Hall Coates university history lecture series, printed by the university. Topics include the Playmakers, Koch and theatrical companies in Chapel Hill.
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. “Smith Hall becomes the Playmakers Theatre, 1850–1982.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/playmakers-theatre-building-storyline-1850/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
