Storyline · 1940–1942
Durham attorney J. L. Morehead urged Chapel Hill to make its Franklin Street business block as handsome as the campus, pointing to the business street of Colonial Williamsburg. Louis Graves's Chapel Hill Weekly reported the plan favorably in March 1940, and later accounts credit his paper with the campaign. In 1941 a Town Meeting committee under John M. Booker asked the aldermen for a Town Planning Commission and a consulting architect to pass on building designs. By November the commission was at work, and architect Archie Davis gave owners watercolors showing how to remodel. One building in its block followed the plan: the new Carolina Theatre, with a Colonial front from Davis's sketches, which opened on October 15, 1942.
Durham attorney J. L. Morehead, for years the town government's attorney and financial adviser, urged the town to make the Franklin Street business block as handsome as the campus and residential streets, pointing to the business street of Colonial Williamsburg. Louis Graves's Chapel Hill Weekly reported his plan favorably on March 22, 1940, and later accounts credit Graves's paper with the campaign. John M. Booker, George Watts Hill and others backed it. On April 4, 1941 a Town Meeting named a committee under Booker to study the look of the business section. Its report, taken up on April 21, asked the aldermen to appoint a five-member Town Planning Commission and to have a consulting architect pass on the designs of new and remodeled buildings. By November 1941 the commission was at work with H. G. Baity as chairman, and architect Archie Davis gave it watercolors showing owners how to remodel. By November 28 it had approved Davis's sketches for a Colonial front on the new Carolina Theatre, and the chain building it agreed to follow them at the urging of its local manager, E. Carrington Smith. The two-story brick theatre at 108 East Franklin Street was the one building in its block to follow the Williamsburg plan. It opened with dedication ceremonies on October 15, 1942.
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.
The Chapel Hill Historical Society's index to the Chapel Hill Weekly newspaper, the first volume covering March 1923 through February 1928, with entries for the names and events the paper reported. Published in 1992 with errata tipped in.
Index to the newspaper column Roland Giduz wrote for the Chapel Hill Weekly and the Chapel Hill Newspaper, printed on paper in June 1996 from his own card file by the North Carolina Collection. One unpaged volume.
Arthur Ruhl's 1927 New York Herald Tribune piece about the Chapel Hill Weekly and its editor Louis Graves, 1883 to 1965.
Louis Graves (1883-1965) and Mildred Moses Graves left roughly 7,700 items in eleven linear feet, a single 1814 document and then a run from 1876 to 1992, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4010. Graves edited the Chapel Hill Weekly, and topics include North Carolina newspapers and their editors alongside family photographs, travel diaries and the social life of the Graves and Moses families.
Account ledger of Patterson's General Store in Chapel Hill for 1910 to 1911, recording what customers owed. Accounts run from townspeople and the university Athletic Association to figures such as Kemp Plummer Battle, Edward Kidder Graham, Collier Cobb, Horace Williams and Louis Round Wilson, and firms including the Bank of Chapel Hill, Odell Hardware, Standard Oil and the Southern Railway. Part of North Carolina Memory.
Circular no. 58 of the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey, issued from Chapel Hill on 10 September 1910 by State Geologist Joseph Hyde Pratt. It announces the second annual Southern Appalachian Good Roads Convention in Knoxville, Tennessee, on 6 and 7 October 1910. From Duke's Broadsides and Ephemera Collection.
Personal papers of Mary Bayley Pratt, who died in 1929, dated 1856 and then 1899 to 1929. One hundred and sixty items in half a linear foot, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 3888. The papers concern members of the Bayley family, Joseph Hyde Pratt and women's social life and customs in Chapel Hill.
Joseph Hyde Pratt seated outdoors in an undated photograph, one of the Chapel Hill portraits in the Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Letters of 1959 to Duke vice president Paul M. Gross from William M. Whyburn of the University of North Carolina and others, on the Governor's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Energy. Included are a draft act on ionizing radiation, radiation machines, radioactive materials and atomic energy, and papers on a Southern interstate nuclear effort. Luther Hodges, Dean W. Colvard and J. W. Roy Norton are among those named. 36 images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Paul M. Gross, vice president of Duke University, exchanged these letters from 1956 to 1958 about a North Carolina Atomic Energy Commission. With them are a report to the Governor's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Energy and proposed state legislation on radioactive materials. Governor Luther Hodges and William D. Carmichael Jr. of the University of North Carolina are among the names involved. 34 images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Group on a tennis court, probably in Chapel Hill, in the early 1950s. From left: Charlie 'Choo Choo' Justice, the UNC football star, with Orville Campbell, Bob Cox and William D. Carmichael Jr. Hugh Morton photograph on black-and-white sheet film.
About 1,860 photographs made by Francis Lavergne Johnson (1901-1971) between 1948 and 1971, 1.8 linear feet in the North Carolina Collection at UNC. Johnson photographed university faculty and employees, and subjects include William Aycock, Katherine Kennedy Carmichael, Albert Coates, Paul Green, Charlie Justice, Josephina Niggli and Louis Round Wilson among those who worked at Chapel Hill in those years.
Thomas E. Ross's geographic study of American Indians in North Carolina. It examines Native peoples' history, cultural assimilation, and social and economic conditions across the state, with statistics. Published by Karo Hollow Press in 1999, eleven preliminary pages and 242 pages with illustrations and maps.
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
Stewart E. Dunaway worked through Hillsborough, N.C., lot by lot, giving each town lot a synopsis of its history, a plat showing where it sits and transcripts of the deeds he could locate for it. The second issue runs to 720 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2015 addendum to his history of Hillsborough's town lots, adding deed records arranged by lot number and further town history, with the expansion of the 1890s covered for the first time. Self-published in North Carolina as version 1.0, 446 pages with illustrations, facsimiles and maps. Topics include deeds, court records, land titles and real property in Hillsborough.
Stewart E. Dunaway's abstracts of civil suits over land heard in the Hillsborough District Superior Court between 1778 and 1806. The district covered Orange, Wake, Granville, Caswell, Person, Chatham and Randolph counties, and the papers concern boundaries, ownership and disputed tracts. Published through Lulu in 2011, 337 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
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.
Stewart E. Dunaway's two-volume edition of the Orange County land entry book, the register in which settlers first claimed vacant land from the state before a grant was surveyed and issued. Volume one covers the first thousand entries, all made in 1778; volume two runs from 1779 to 1795. Each entry is reproduced from the original in the State Archives with an abstract of its contents. Self-published through Lulu in a second version dated 2010, two volumes at 28 cm with facsimiles and maps.
Edward J. Kaiser's history of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1945 to 2012, published by the department in 2013. The title nods to John A. Parker, 1909 to 2001, who figures in the book. One hundred eighty-six pages with illustrations and portraits at 28 cm.
Mark Chilton's short history of transportation planning in the North Carolina Piedmont, drawing lessons from earlier projects. Subjects include the Cape Fear Navigation Company and river navigation, and the railroads of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, including the State University Railroad Company whose spur brought trains to the two towns. Chilton was mayor of Carrboro when the book appeared. Published by Hand Made Books, Carrboro, 2012, 92 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Stewart E. Dunaway's four-volume set of ejectment cases from Orange County, reproducing the original documents and maps from the North Carolina State Archives with partial transcriptions. The volumes cover 1778 to 1814, 1817 to 1832, 1833 to 1849 and 1850 to 1902. Ejectment suits contested title and possession of land, and the cases include surveys and plats. Self-published in 2010.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
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.
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. “Williamsburging Franklin Street, 1940–1942.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/williamsburging-franklin-street-storyline-1940/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
