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The Circus Room and The Circus Parade
by Charly Mann
Chapel Hill was once a truly enchanted magical place where reality far exceeded any fantasy a young boy like myself might imagine. I could walk a half a mile through the dense forest near my home and be at Gimghoul Castle, an isolated stone castle which never showed any signs of habitation, and offered the most magnificent views of Durham and Raleigh I could imagine. Next to the castle was a blood stained rock where a love duel was fought more than a century earlier. On the campus in the Morehead Planetarium there was large room that housed John Motley Morehead's magnificent working model train layout. Less than a block away in the basement of Graham Memorial was the largest collection of dolls I have ever seen from around the world in more than a half a dozen floor to ceiling glass cabinets. There was also a huge haunted mansion that lay in the woods near where Manning Drive and the Dean Smith Center are today. The most spectacular thing in Chapel Hill for a young boy was The Circus Room which was a small snack bar at the back of the Monogram Club. That building is today called Jackson Hall and is where the Office of Undergraduate Admission is located.
This is one of six separate circus animal carvings that Carl Boettcher did for The Circus Room in 1948
What made the Circus Room incredible was that it was surrounded by carvings of a circus parade and large circus animals attached to the mirrored walls. The detail and craftsmanship exceed, or equaled, any carving you will ever see at a great museum. They also captured for all time in redwood the excitement of a young Chapel Hill boy in 1900 watching a circus parade come through town. This work of art was the product of two of Chapel Hill’s greatest artists William Meade Prince and Carl Boettcher in 1948. Prince, who grew up in Chapel Hill, made a sketch of the parade for his wood carving partner. The entire diorama is seven large pieces featuring a 25 foot long circus parade, which is the most detailed and intricate part of the carving.
This is the front third of the detailed Circus Parade carving that was displayed at The Circus Room from 1949 to 1968
Boettcher was born in Wolgast, Germany in 1887 and began a career as a wood carver at a very early age. He was an apprentice to several great German wood carvers and also attended Kunstgewerbe Art School in Flensburg, Germany. In Germany he specialized in carving alters, pews, and religious icons for Lutheran churches in the Westphalia area. He came to the United States in 1923 and moved to Chapel Hill in 1942. He did several other significant pieces for the University of North Carolina including a woodcarving of the University seal, a plaque at the Bowman Gray pool, several pieces in the Morehead Planetarium, and a gate for the Forest Theater which I would love to locate.
This is among the circus animals that were part of full Circus Parade piece. Not pictured in this article was a giraffe, which was the tallest of the carvings.
Carl Boettcher died in 1950 and is buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery just steps away from where the Circus Room was located. Today his spirit lives on in the works of Chapel Hill muralist Michael Brown whose mural Parade in the Porthole Alley was directly inspired by this great work of art.
This is the Circus Room in 1949 shortly after the Circus Parade carving based on a painting by William Meade Prince was installed
This is a circus Zebra done for the Circus Parade carving at UNC. The only other piece not shown here is a large standing elephant.
The Circus Room closed in 1968 and in 1970 the Circus Parade carvings were moved to the Carolina Inn where in spite of its magnificence it did not have the same impact as before. In 1992 the pieces were once again moved, this time to the Alumni Center where they now stand at the entrance of the Carolina Club. Where once the carvings hung on mirrored walls at eye level in small snack bar open to all, they now stand in a stairway high above direct eye level against a rather bland wall in a building that reeks of exclusivity.
This is an ad for the Circus Room at UNC in 1951. There were two other snacks bars on the UNC campus then. One at the YMCA next to South Building, and the most beloved of all, The Scuttlebutt, at the corner of Cameron Avenue and South Columbia Street.
This Kangaroo Carving from the Circus Room diorama first hung at the Circus Room snack bar. It is now a t the UNC Alumni Center near Kenan Stadium.
Comments:
R Wood
5:36 PM Sat 3/26/2011
I loved seeing the pictures of the Circus Room carvings. Attended UNC from 79-83 and remember frequenting the Circus Room after playing tennis at the nearby courts. I thought the carvings were there at the time unless possibly they moved the originals and had replicas in their place? Anyway great memories !
Neil Russell
8:16 AM Sat 6/19/2010
The Circus Room couldn't have closed in 1968. I went to UNC from 1969 to
1973, and frequented the Circus Room many times. This is the place where I learned to love yogurt! It was down near Cobb Dorm (Ahh, Cobb "Beach" when it was warm out!)
Priscilla
7:13 PM Sat 11/28/2009
I remember the Circus Room very well. It was a very convenient place to stop to eat on my way in or out of Cobb Dorm, where I stayed freshman and sophomore years. The carvings always held my attention and I wish they could again be in a place similar to the original room.
Larry Howell
10:54 AM Tue 10/27/2009
The Circus Room brings back fond memories of good food which reminds me of the strike that occured by the UNC workers back in 66 or 67. I will never forget the workers on strike with their picket signs in front of the CR; one of them stated "Jesse Helms eats UNC sandwiches". Once again, the humor at college could fill volumes. Incidentally, the comment could not have been applied to a nicer individual (tongue in cheek).
Hal K
12:08 PM Sat 10/17/2009
Pine Room...my god...been years since I've thought about it....Under Lenoir....and open later....Bob Bontempo, my roomie for a year, once remarked about a student who irritated him: "he cuts my Pine Room in half."
Dad, UNC '32 always talked about Swain Hall...his dining hall, known by the inevitable sobriquet, Swine Hall...think it was just next to Phillips.
Anne Brooks
10:56 AM Fri 10/16/2009
This should go in the student union or be put on display at the Ackland. It has no business being in the Alumni Center
Emily Warden
10:59 AM Thu 10/15/2009
This is the third or forth time I've come across something in Chapel Hill Memories I had never heard of before.
Charly Mann
9:08 AM Thu 10/15/2009
The Pine Room was in the basement below Lenoir Hall, and was much more hip than the cafeteria upstairs. I actually have more material on Lenoir Hall - The Pine Room, and the man who was in charge of feeding UNC students for twenty years, George Prillaman than any other subject. I hope to do a piece on this by next year.
Robert
7:53 PM Wed 10/14/2009
Where was the Pine Room? I'm thinking it was in the basement of the Monogram Club but were there 2 snack bars in one building? I'm glad your memory is better than the rest of us or at least glad that you wrote so much down through the years!
Brian Reed
4:25 PM Wed 10/14/2009
Thanks for the photos from the Circus Parade. I'm a little too frail to get back to Chapel Hill anymore and have such fond recollections of this piece.
Thomas Russ
11:15 AM Wed 10/14/2009
This brings back great memories. I lived at Cobb dorm in 62 and 63, and spent countless hours at the Circus Room. It stayed open until ten, which was very late in those days.
Kay Hearn
9:53 AM Wed 10/14/2009
I have lived in Chapel Hill since 1982 and had never heard of this piece of art. I Iook forward to seeing it in person soon. Thanks for the tip.
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Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
Check out Charly Mann's other website:
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
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If I'm not mistaken, Carl Boettcher also carved the wooden plaque emblem of the Golden Fleece for the Order. It was used sometimes in the tapping ceremonies when they were held in Memorial Hall. Seems to me it is/was about 4' x 4' or larger and maybe a one-and-a-half to two inches thick.