UNC expansion and neighborhood change

In the chronology

Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 29 dated events in the chronology →

1. 1886 The university begins leasing its Franklin Street land to faculty for houses Because a federal court had ruled about 600 acres around the campus inalienable, the trustees leased a Franklin Street parcel to James Lee Love for fifty years, followed by leases to Charles Baskerville and Francis K. Ball. Later, on legal advice, such lots were sold outright to faculty members. People: Charles Baskerville, James Lee LoveDocumenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 366
2. 1919 Sallie Hemphill, later Sallie Markham Michie, buys the house at 121 South Columbia Street Sallie Michie bought the two-story house next to what became the Ackland Art Museum in 1919 and kept it for 73 years, refusing for decades to sell it to the University.The Daily Tar Heel, October 27, 1992, p. 1
3. December 1940 UNC receives the Horace Williams tract by bequest The core of what became the Carolina North tract, north of Estes Drive and west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, came to the university as a bequest from Professor Horace Williams, who died in late December 1940. His will, filed for probate at Hillsborough in the first days of January 1941, left the University his entire property, nearly all of it real estate including about 1,000 acres of farm land, with the income to go to fellowships; the land for the airport named for him, about 400 acres by his executor's count, had already been given in his lifetime. The university later bought adjoining land, and parts of the site were used as an airport, landfill, town operations center and animal shelter. People: Henry Horace WilliamsUNC Board of Trustees: Development Agreement between UNC-Chapel Hill and the Town of Chapel Hill (Carolina North), June 2009 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, January 3, 1941, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, January 3, 1941, p. 3; Chapel Hill Weekly, December 20, 1940, p. 1
4. 1946 Victory Village is built to house married veterans at UNC As returning veterans pushed enrollment to about 6,800, the federal government put up the prefabricated metal houses of Victory Village on 65 acres of UNC's south campus in 1946. About 350 student families lived there, and the last units were torn down in the early 1970s for the expansion of UNC Hospitals. People: Terry Sanford, William C. Friday, William B. AycockSearch the index · UNC A to Z: Victory Village
5. 1954 The University tears down the Crystal Palace on East Franklin Street for planetarium parking The University had bought the old building known as the Crystal Palace in 1945. In 1954 it razed it and turned the lot into parking for Morehead Planetarium, with a large sundial in a rose garden at the center.Search the index · Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 303
6. August to September 1954 The University tears down Archer House to make room for the Ackland Art Museum Demolition of the 47-year-old Archer House on South Columbia Street began in August 1954 and was still under way in late September. Its lot and the Roberson lot next door became the site of the Ackland museum.Search the index · The Chapel Hill Weekly, August 13, 1954, p. 1 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, September 24, 1954, p. 12
7. February 1959 The University tears down the Abernethy house on South Columbia Street for Ackland grounds and parking UNC bought the house from the widow of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, long the director of the University Infirmary, and tore it down to extend the Ackland Art Center grounds and make a gravel lot of about 60 faculty parking spaces. The house dated from 1905 and had housed many students. People: Eric A. AbernethyThe Daily Tar Heel, February 3, 1959, p. 1
8. November 11, 1960 The university's attorney finds the trustees never deeded the cemetery to the town In a letter of November 11, 1960 to J. A. Branch of the university business office, university attorney J. A. Williams reported no sign that the trustees had ever conveyed title to the cemetery land to Chapel Hill.NC State Historic Preservation Office: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, National Register nomination (OR0496), p. 19
9. 1969 A third Granville Towers dormitory goes up near Cameron Avenue A third Granville dormitory and a parking area were being built in 1969, replacing a patch of rural-looking land a few blocks from downtown.Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Development Alternatives (1969), scan p. 40
10. 1970s Northside and Pine Knolls residents resist federal urban renewal When Northside and Pine Knolls were targeted for urban renewal, residents confronted HUD and avoided the wholesale clearance seen in Durham's Hayti, winning home improvements and new construction instead.Marian Cheek Jackson Center: Our Neighborhoods (history of Northside)
11. 1980–2010 Northside's Black population falls by about 40 percent Between 1980 and 2010 Northside's Black population fell by roughly 40 percent as investors bought homes and converted or replaced them as student rentals; over the same period the share of university workers living 10 or more miles away rose above 60 percent.UNC-Chapel Hill: Supporting the Northside Neighborhood Initiative
12. 1982 The university drops a plan to take over the cemetery and extend it into the east grove In 1982 the university proposed taking control of the cemetery from the town and extending it into the wooded grove on its east side for about 185 new graves, citing poor upkeep. Opposition in the neighborhoods east of the campus led it to abandon the plan.NC State Historic Preservation Office: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, National Register nomination (OR0496), p. 20