Storyline · 1895–1901
The University's hundredth anniversary in June 1895 brought both a look back at its history and a new building. Alfred Moore Waddell gave the oration, printed that year as The Ante-Bellum University, and Stephen B. Weeks spoke on the University in the Civil War. At the centennial banquet alumni and classes pledged gifts toward an Alumni Hall, led by Julian S. Carr. With about $7,000 of the $20,000 in pledges in hand, the trustees began its foundation in 1897, to a design by Frank Pierce Milburn modeled on the Boston Public Library. Its cornerstone was laid with Masonic ceremony in 1898, and the Alumni Building was finished in 1901 with fourteen lecture rooms and the University's administrative offices.
On June 5, 1895 the University marked a hundred years since it opened. At the morning exercises Alfred Moore Waddell, a Hillsborough native who had studied there from 1850 to 1853, gave the oration, printed in Wilmington that year as The Ante-Bellum University, and Adolphus H. Eller also reviewed the University's earlier history. That evening in Memorial Hall, after Henry A. London, Stephen B. Weeks gave a long prepared address, 'The University of North Carolina in the Civil War.' At the centennial banquet alumni and classes pledged gifts toward an Alumni Hall, led by Julian S. Carr with $3,000 and Thomas M. Holt with $1,000. In the summer of 1897, with about $7,000 of the $20,000 in pledges in hand, the trustees began the foundation and basement of a building for the president's, registrar's and bursar's offices and the physics and electrical engineering departments, designed by the Charlotte architect Frank Pierce Milburn and modeled on the Boston Public Library. In 1898 Chapel Hill's University Lodge No. 408 took part in the Masonic laying of its cornerstone. The Alumni Building was finished in 1901 with fourteen lecture rooms and the University's administrative offices, and Venable put its cost at $36,000.
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.
Alumni Hall is put forward in this report as a grand memorial of the university centennial, printed at Chapel Hill about 1895. DigitalNC's North Carolina Yearbooks collection includes the report.
North Carolina ECHO project photograph of 25 July 2002 taking the front of the Alumni Building at a slight angle. The Chapel Hill building houses the university's Research Laboratories of Archaeology.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Carol M. Highsmith photographed the Alumni Building on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill on 15 November 2017. Color digital photograph from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.
Real photo postcard of the Alumni Building on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, about 1918 to 1930. Someone has written 'Our office' in ink beside the building.
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.
Letters and papers of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, the Chapel Hill writer and historian and daughter of professor James Phillips, 1857 to 1905. Most of the correspondence, from 1859 to 1895, concerns the university and life in the village, with letters exchanged with Swain, Kemp P. Battle and George T. Winston, successive heads of the university, and with Mrs. Swain and W. C. Kerr. State Archives of North Carolina, PC.7.
Diaries and papers of John Hill Wheeler of Hertford County, historian, legislator, state treasurer from 1843 to 1845 and minister to Nicaragua from 1854 to 1857. The diaries, a broken run from 1854 to 1882, follow his social and political life in Washington, D.C. University commencements at Chapel Hill and his work on North Carolina history also come up. State Archives of North Carolina, MfP.51.
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. “The University's centennial and the Alumni Building, 1895–1901.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/unc-centennial-storyline-1895/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
