by Charly Mann

The Hopper-Kyser House at 504 East Franklin Street is the oldest house in Chapel Hill. The house has grown from a 1400 square feet structure with no indoor plumbing or kitchen in 1814 to a magnificent home of over 4500 square feet with five bedrooms and bathrooms and a French kitchen. The original cost for the house is thought to be under $300. It recently sold for almost 1.5 million dollars. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

This is the front entrance of the house Kay Kyser and his wife Georgia moved into in 1951. This was also home to their three lovely daughters. Kay lived here until his death in 1985. The house has recently been sold to a new owner. 

 
This is Georgia and Kay Kyser's living room. Their stereo equipment is concealed behind the screen in the top picture.

This French styled brick-floored kitchen was added to the house by the Kysers in the 1970s

This dining room is another addition built for the Kysers. They bought the sawbuck table several years before moving to Chapel Hill.  

The house has three stories and includes a basement apartment. Kay Kyser used the top floor as his office.

This is the sun room of the Kay Kyser house. The flooring came from an old house in Hillsborough. Recently fashion magazine covers from the 1930's and 40's featuring a very young Georgia Carroll (Kyser) adorned the walls of this room.

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article by Bea Witten (with photos provided by Charly Mann)

LAUREL HILL NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORY

The neighborhood now known as Laurel Hill was called Rocky Ridge Farm when first developed. Though small in scale, it is one of the earliest planned residential developments in North Carolina. The developer was none other than William Chambers Coker, who saw that he could simultaneously protect the area's magnificent trees and offer home sites close to the campus for University faculty.

Grand home on Country Club Road in Chapel Hill

Dr. Coker, the founder of the UNC Botany department, taught at UNC from 1902-45. He was a popular and inspiring professor who also worked to improve high school science programs. He very actively chaired the University Buildings and Grounds Committee for thirty years and, beginning in 1903, developed the Coker Arboretum on campus, with its exotic and native collections, from a boggy pasture.

As a designer, his taste was for "dignified, uncrowded buildings softened by informal plantings". He exercised these principles not only in the campus setting but also as the first landscaping advisor to school planners across North Carolina; and he applied his ideas as an entrepreneur in real estate. Landscape design and urban planning had not yet emerged as distinct disciplines, but Coker was aware of projects like Myers Park in Charlotte and Shaker Heights in Cleveland, whose developers brought varied backgrounds to their projects.

Zoning laws did not yet exist. Coker laid out large lots and placed covenants on the deeds limiting the number of structures on the property, requiring quality construction, and barring both subdivision of the lots and the raising of cows or pigs. He also personally approved all building plans until one or two years before his death.

The former Chapel Hill Country Club building, now the Mormon Church

Coker undertook this venture in 1923 with the donation of land for a golf course with clubhouse adjacent to the Laurel Hill neighborhood and convenient to the campus. The Chapel Hill Country Club was something of a faculty club and inexpensive to join. Socially the faculty was a small and comfortable group. Academic salaries were low and were cut deeply three times during the Depression, but a number of members had other means. The early residents of Laurel Hill were senior faculty and department chairmen.

House at the intersection of Country Club and Ledge Lane in Chapel Hill

Blue Ridge Parkway planner T. Felix Hickerson laid out the neighborhood's winding roads to conform to rather than master the topography. He taught Civil Engineering and Applied Mathematics at UNC and, incidentally, also planned the sewer system of Chapel Hill. Low stone walls, so characteristic of old Chapel Hill and the University campus, were incorporated with the street plan to mark property boundaries or to retain a slope, but also for their traditional and picturesque quality. Chapel Hill's stone walls were originally, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a solution to the separate nuisances of geologic debris and wandering cattle, hogs, and sheep.

The population of Chapel Hill in 1930, when this development was getting underway, was below 3500, with UNC enrollment about 3000 and faculty and administration together numbering 210. Growth exploded with the Navy Pre-flight Training Program, the GI Bill, and the development of the medical school. Memorial Hospital and RTP were years away. In the 1940s Coker's land agent became Henry Roland Totten, who was his colleague and collaborator in writing Trees of North Carolina(1916), and himself a Rocky Ridge resident.

204 Laurel Hill Road - The Simone and Lillian Parks House

The main lots had all been sold before Coker's death in 1953, and the neighborhood was fairly built up by 1960. One change for gardeners since the old days is the deeper shade. Many pines have been lost over the years, and the denser oaks were ready to grow into their space. Laurel Hill was annexed by the town about 1956 and designated a National Register Historic District in 1989.

300 Laurel Hill Road, Chapel Hill

The Laurel Hill neighborhood in the 1950s and 60s was mostly made up of university faculty families and was a close-knit community. Everyone knew everyone, and they socialized a lot. The lifestyle was not posh, though it was usual to have a maid and a gardener once a week. There was a single family car, pre-owned; the driveway was unpaved; and a man took good care of his one suit. The surface of Laurel Hill Road was for many years Chapel Hill gravel below Round Hill Road. The children roamed widely in the woods, even to the area of the Totten Center, since there was no road before the Bypass.

The Crockfords who lived at 305 Country Club Road held an all-day Christmas workshop party in their roomy basement every year; neighbors pruned their shrubbery and brought their raw materials and a sandwich to the ping pong and card tables, and went home, maybe at the end of the afternoon, with their wreath and decorations, and the spirit of the season.

Chapel Hill was very small, and the country club was pretty plain and sparse, offering golf and later swimming, but no meals; however, it was a town-and-gown blender. Once a month the wives cooked dinner and carried it over for a dinner dance, spreading picnic cloths on the grass in warm weather.

The Lamonts, who lived at 300 Laurel Hill Road, planted hundreds of azaleas in their side yard that they had paid ten cents each in the 1940s.

360 Laurel Hill Road, Chapel Hill

Pine Lane was named for a huge tree that stood in the middle of the road until it was struck by lightning. One resident was Marjorie Bond, who led the effort to establish a public library in Chapel Hill. In the 1950s she oversaw first one, then two, rooms of books downtown in the McDade house, which stood beside the elementary and high schools where University Square is today.

The Farrars, who lived beside the Tottens (110 Laurel Hill road) , encouraged dramatics and had both an indoor stage and a mini outdoor theatre, now overgrown, where the children read poems and staged plays.

History of Selected Laurel Hill Neighborhood Houses

For five decades azalea blooms have cascaded down the long hill from Country Club to Raleigh Road around paths winding under great oaks and pines. This garden has sung its glorious Welcome to Chapel Hill! The property was originally owned by Bernard Boyd, Professor of Religion, and his wife Thelma who bought the 1¼ acre lot from Dr. Coker in 1950, when this corner was in Orange County, the road to Raleigh a two-laner, and the Institute of Government a pine forest.

Beginning of Laurel Hill neighborhood at Raleigh and Country Club Road

Dr. Boyd was not a born gardener. A few gift pots of azaleas, with these virgin woods and glaciated terrain, somehow sparked in him a passion for landscaping, and the garden grew under their eyes. He developed the design and did most of the work himself, with help from the many students who loved him. He followed organic-gardening principles. He cleared the garden down to Raleigh Road and avidly built gravel paths and stone walls. The stonework in front of the house he also designed and built, with the help of James Blacknell, the noted Chapel Hill mason. All the plants had embossed aluminum labels. The neighborhood children loved the azalea maze, and two young pranksters once gave new locations to all 300 labels!

Dr. Boyd died in 1975 and Thelma continued in the house until 1985, with considerable maintenance help from the Men's Garden Club. David G. and Harriet Martin bought the property in 1989.

The Dean Carroll House

This solid brick house was built in 1932 by Dean D. D. Carroll of the School of Commerce (now Business), for whom Carroll Hall is named. Eleanore Carroll designed the home in the Georgian style and sited it, though an architect worked out the specs. The Carrolls sold to UNC in 1957 and built a smaller house on the adjoining lot. The main house served as the Chancellor's residence for Aycock, Sharpe, Sitterson, Fordham and Hardin. In 1996 UNC sold it to Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Lieberman.

The brick terrace in back, where there had been a perennial garden and a serious badminton court, was paved at the time of Chancellor Sharpe. The terrace saw a lot of use, and was sheltered by a tent when it rained. Mrs. Sitterson recalls the tent's first use, at her husband's 35th college reunion in 1966. It was set up a day ahead, and then such a long deluge came that she spent the night poking a broom up against the pockets of water that threatened to bring the whole thing down in a heap.

Earlier, the Carrolls had had a rock garden with running water around the outcropping past the terrace, and a vegetable garden and chicken house beyond. One person only was accepted calmly, as a friend, by the chickens, a grandson aged 2, who also enjoyed chicken feed! Many households kept chickens during World War II. The Carrolls enjoyed having students in the house; they occupied the attic—calling it the Carroll Inn—in return for work instead of rent, and also an apartment over the garage. The Carrolls were Quakers and active in every stage of planning, building (1964) and enjoying the Meeting House across Raleigh Road. Eleanore was an energetic gardener and had an iris bed the elegant and sinuous landscaping of the front slope with native and familiar plants, and guttered brick walkways.

The Jake Wade House

Tom Krenitsky and Joe Sica moved here in 1970. It was the former home of Jake Wade, the sportswriter, which had been built in 1938 by Dr. Houston and Eula Buchanan. There was a little garden beyond oak trees and ivy in 1970. The house having a long axis, the garden has been designed for the many windows that overlook the back. In the front, mainly azaleas have been added. The garden in back is defined by a very varied collection of dwarf conifers, with the red of Japanese maples as a foil to the greens. From the second floor the ellipse of English boxwoods near the house forms a strong geometric pattern. JC Raulston was a close friend and influenced the design of the garden, the plant choices, and the use of statuary to complement them. Tom is a biochemist, and during his years with Burroughs-Welcome traveled frequently to England. Armed with lists from Raulston, he always returned with more rare plants. Tom describes JC as the most generous person he ever knew, and a "universal gardener". What he loved he shared, and he planted for the world.

This is one of the first houses on Laurel Road as you come around the sharp turn. It sits high above the road.

The Tottem House (110 Laurel Hill Road)

Dr. Henry Roland Totten had a horticulturally famous wife, Addie. Her vision here was an English cottage garden of the sort described by Vita Sackville-West, carefree and all running together. This, like the house, has been kept to the extent possible by the Tolleys.
The Tottens built this home in 1929, on an English model, and lived here until their deaths in 1974. She was a forceful person, he a gentle one whose words, though soft, were usually remembered. They left their property to the NC Botanical Garden, and the proceeds of the sale to Dr. Granville and Nancy Tolley were used to help build the Totten Center.

The Hayden House

The Hock house was built in the early '30s on a three-acre lot by Glenn and Helen Hayden. Dr. Hayden was Chairman of the UNC Department of Music and one of the country's outstanding musicologists in the '40s and '50s. The department was smaller, and entertaining was an important sideline. A reception followed every concert, often at the chairman's home, for students, their families, and faculty. Dr. Hayden, however, was devoted more to chess than to conversation, and a game was usually played out discretely on the mantelpiece, with the players coming and going through the evening.
Although the house has been twice enlarged, its siting made it impressive from the start. Conrad and Deborah Hock bought the property in 1993 and have built the carriage house and undertaken considerable landscape renovation since the arrival of city sewerage. The overall scheme for this landscape plan involved the clearing but preservation of the surrounding natural areas while refining & adding to the existing plantings.

The George Howe House

This, the first home in Coker's development, was built in 1928 by Dr. George Howe. He was Professor of Classics and a nephew of Woodrow Wilson. In the 1950s Jacques Hardré, a professor of French, used this garden as the setting for a murder mystery which he wrote to introduce the French to American culture. The present owners are Dr. and Mrs. Townsend Ludington.

Hunt House, Laurel Hill Circle, Chapel Hill

The great oak in front, scarred and repaired after storms, may have been topped long ago to make it a broader shade tree. There are other signs that there was once a farm or homestead here, and Buttons Road is named for one Buttons Norwood, a bootlegger who is thought to have lived here, had his still at Morgan Creek, and supplied UNC students during Prohibition. The island at the top of Buttons Road is called the Buttonhole.

The Whitney-Eason House

The home of John Whitney and Terry Eason was built in 1939 by UNC football coach Jim Tatum, and owned 1940-1989 by John Wright, M.D., and his wife Lillian. In the spring there were bulbs and flowering bushes everywhere. The front yard is still covered with bluets in spring.

601 Laurel Hill Road, Chapel Hill

The Goldfinch House

When John and Carolyn Goldfinch moved here ten years ago, they wanted a garden immediately. They incorporated horse manure and planted some perennials here at the curb, without feeling that sure of what they were doing. Someone was watching over them and began leaving other plants, each in a pot, as offerings to the garden. This garden fairy has never been identified.

The Goldfinch home, built in 1956, is the entrance to the neighborhood. Carolyn sees this sunny curb garden as a gift both to herself and to all the passersby, on foot and in cars, who stop to chat with her about it. It is a pleasure that spreads. The summer and fall flowers, wonderful roses aside, include hollyhocks, daisies, black eyed Susans, white yarrow, tuberoses, Money plant, Japanese lanterns, carnations, cleome, mums, crepe myrtle, many lilies, sedum, and more!

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by Charly Mann

There was no better to place to learn the John Dunne lesson that “no man is an island” than Chapel Hill in the 1950s. No one in town felt isolated because there was so much family and community interaction, and everyone growing up at that time had the opportunity to learn and be influenced by a wide array of unique and highly intelligent individuals. In the 1950s, Chapel Hill had a myriad of great role models for young people. The majority of adults were in their mid to late thirties and had endured the hardships of the Great Depression, and most of the men had experienced the hell of World War II. Almost all of the men, whether they were professors or merchants, had come from small southern farming communities and were the first members of their families to have had a college education. I was fortunate to know many of these people, and they were collectively a great influence on me. From them I learned courage and discipline, and that anything was possible if one was determined and worked hard. One common denominator of these people was that each had experienced huge hardships in their lives, but rather than becoming cynical or hopeless, they grew stronger and more optimistic. Each of them also taught me to think creatively to solve my problems.

Charly Mann and family at home on Old Mill Road in Chapel Hill, May 1958

In those days, there was so much more time to talk, observe, and absorb the stimulating ideas of 1950s Chapel Hill. Few people watched more than three hours of television a week. That contrasts to today where the average person spends 35 hours a week watching television. Life then seemed like a constant adventure of listening to people talk about their interests or relating their daily activities.

Almost every night a couple of houses in every Chapel Hill neighborhood had at least four cars parked out in front, signifying they were having people over for dinner. Guests would sit and talk for at least an hour in the living room before being ushered into the dining room for dinner. After dinner the children would usually be sent to bed while the adults returned to the living room to talk.  Typically the women and men would sit in separate groups then. There was rarely any alcohol served at these dinners, and few people smoked.

In 1950s Chapel Hill there was no more exciting and stimulating time of the day than the family dinner. There was never any TV, radio, or music on nearby; just the family and often one or two guests sitting around a table enjoying each other's company over a home cooked meal. Though I remember that my mother's cooking was good, the conversation was usually better. At my house we would all share the events of that day in our own lives, as well as discuss some of the major stories going on in the world. We would also joke and laugh, and we enjoyed hearing ideas and opinions that were different from our own. In this daily forum new ideas were exchanged and learned.

Mothers raised the kids and cooked most meals. It was not unusual to eat on a porch or in the backyard on a warm summer evening.   

Almost every adult and childhood friend I knew was an independent thinker, and everyone had at least one parent who was involved in a civic organization or church group.

My mother was the Den mother of my Cub Scout Troop which met every Wednesday afternoon. My sister was a Brownie and did very well selling Girl Scout cookies at UNC fraternity houses.

The neighborhood you grew up in Chapel Hill was a contributing factor to your development. There was a significant difference between children who lived in each neighborhoods. The Kings Mills Road - Morgan Creek area, for example, was made up of primarily well paid University professors and administrators who had only recently settled in Chapel Hill. Unlike other neighborhoods it was heavily wooded and few people had lawns. Children there played in the woods or down along the creek, and today almost all of them still have friends from that neighborhood. Most of these children went off to private schools not long after completing elementary school and of the almost one dozen I have kept up with, all have had exciting lives and successful careers. On the other hand, growing up in one of the established downtown neighborhoods seemed to be far more challenging for a kid. Of the ten people I still keep up with or knew well who lived in the Downtown Historic District, Gimghoul, or Laurel Hills, there were very few happy childhoods, and many resulting tragedies in adulthood. Most of these people had primarily negative memories of Chapel Hill and have no sentimental attachment for the town. Even as a child you could differentiate unique traits and interests in the children of each neighborhood whether it be Glenn Lenox, Greenwood, Estes Hills, Dogwood Acres, Gimghoul, Laurel Hills, Carrboro, or anyone from the country (which at the time meant three miles or less from Chapel Hill proper). 

In the 1950s new houses were going up all over Chapel Hill. A large home in a neighborhood like Morgan Creek or Greenwood in the 1950s would cost around $25,000 with central air-conditioning.

I had friends all over Chapel Hill and would often bike, walk, or hitchhike to their houses to spend the day. All Chapel Hill kids spent a lot more time outside than kids today. One reason for this was that very few houses were air-conditioned, and there were lots of places outside that were cooler than inside.

Everyone dressed up for Church on Sunday morning. Church services were over by noon and lunch after church was the only time most families would consider going out for a meal. The most popular places for Sunday lunch were The Pines, The Colonial Inn in Hillsborough, Howard Johnson's which was an eight mile drive towards Durham, and Brady's.     

More than anything else, growing up in Chapel Hill gave me a strong sense of individualism and integrity, and now 50 years later I still often measure my actions by the standards of the adults I was surrounded by then.

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by Charly Mann

In 1972, I was making $150 a week managing two Record and Tape Center record stores on Franklin Street.( One was on West Franklin Street, and the other was in NCNB plaza.)  I was also twenty-one and was able to afford to own a nice house within five minutes of downtown at 812 Ward Street that cost $21,000. My down payment was $1,000 and my mortgage was $169 month. Today that same house is valued at $210,000, and I do not think many twenty-one year olds could afford a house in Chapel Hill. Recent data shows that the median price for a house in Chapel Hill now ranges between $470,000 and $506,000.

First house I owned at age 21 at 812 Ward Street Chapel Hill in 1972 (at the end of Barclay Road). This house also had a large front and back yard.

Only twenty years ago, in 1989, the average price for a house in Chapel Hill was $136,000. At this time Chapel Hill's city council was worried that there was an emerging trend for developers to build more expensive homes, and they tried to encourage construction of more affordable homes. Joe Hakan, Chapel Hill's most respected builder, complied with their call and proposed a new community called Rocky Hill off Weaver Dairy Road where the homes were going to range from $150,000 to $200,000. The citizens of two nearby neighborhoods, Chesley and Chandler's Ridge which were made up of expensive executive-sized homes, were outraged at this plan, and argued to the Chapel Hill council that if such homes were built near them, it would drive down the values of their homes.

$849,000 house at 205 Chesley Lane, Chesley community, Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill is now one of the least affordable areas in the country on a per capita basis correlating average incomes to home prices. Today the median price for a home in Chandler's Green is $628,000 and $827,000 in Chesley.

$800,000 home at 105 San Mateo Place in the Chesley community Chapel Hill, NC

Even for those who want to rent in Chapel Hill the cost is very high. In 1971 I rented, with my then girlfriend, a one bedroom apartment on the top floor of a house just steps away from downtown at 211 North Columbia Street for $100 a month. Today a similarly sized apartment, more than a ten minute drive from town, rents for $827.

I rented the upper floor apartment of this house at 211 North Columbia Street Chapel Hill with my girlfiend Colleen Frances Edgell for $100 a month from 1970 to 1972

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by Charly Mann

We all have a neighborhood we came from. It is from here we go off into the world, and come home to. For me this is the Whitehead Circle neighborhood of Chapel Hill where my father lived at 426 Whitehead Circle from 1964 until 2003. It was from here that in the 10th grade I left from the back yard to descend down an embankment to the 15-501 bypass and begin my daily 16-mile sojourn hitchhiking to Durham High School. (In those days it did not seem to be a problem to go any public school in the state as long as you could get there, and I then had more friends in Durham than Chapel Hill). It was also here that I lived when I started my freshman year at UNC in September of 1968.

Top two photos are of William Robert Mann's home (front and back) from 1976. This one is from 2009.

The Whitehead neighborhood sits between Mason Farm and Purefoy Roads. It is a beautiful place where the majority of the homes lie in a wooded circle. Most of the houses were architect designed in an assortment of modern and traditional styles. All of the homes were built in the 1950s and early sixties. As you walk the area the most noticeable quality is all of the tall oaks and pines that shade almost the entire neighborhood.

419 Whitehead Circle, Chapel Hill, NC

My Dad and I rarely went anywhere in the car. You could walk to campus in fifteen minutes and almost anywhere else in town in twenty. My father was friends with everyone on Whitehead Circle.

Melissa Long and Dr Long's house at 424 Whitehead Circle, Chapel Hill, NC

This neighborhood will always be a part of me and is where many of my memories are from. Whenever I come back to Chapel Hill I always take a drive or walk there, and leave feeling relaxed and happy. Everything is so familiar, even though it has sometimes been five years between visits.

Kai Jurgensen house, 410 Whitehead Circle, Chapel Hill, NC

I feel privileged to have lived on Whitehead Circle and these photographs and this song are a way to share with you, and for me, to relive, this special place.

400 Whitehead Circle, Chapel Hill, NC

Whitehead Circle is named for Richard Henry Whitehead who was made first dean of the UNC medical school in 1890. Even though Whitehead only stayed in Chapel Hill for fifteen years (in 1905 he became dean of the University of Virginia medical school), he established the medical curriculum that ensured UNC would have a first rate medical school.

First Dean of the University of North Carolina Medical School, Richard Henry Whitehead (1865-1916)

Whitehead Circle has had many distinguished residents. I will include a small sampling of them here:

Edgar Alden, UNC music department chairman, violin professor and expert glider pilot, with his wife Dorothy, one of Chapel Hill's best violinists, and their daughters Meredith and Priscilla Alden. Alden founded and was the original conductor of Chapel Hill’s Village Orchestra. Dorothy Alden started, and was the conductor of, Chapel Hill's Young People's Orchestra.

Many houses on Whitehead Circle are set back deep in the woods

Walter Spearman (1908-1987) who was the most acclaimed professor in the UNC School of journalism and a distinguished actor in many productions by the Playmaker's Theater. During his 45 year teaching career he may well have been UNC's most beloved professor.

Michael Barefoot founder and owner of the United States largest gourmet food store, A Southern Season.

407 Whitehead Circle, Chapel Hill, NC

Dr. Carl W. Gottschalk, physiologist and internationally known kidney researcher, was a professor of medicine at the UNC medical school from 1952 until his death in 1997. He was also a collector of rare books, and left his collection to UNC's Rare Book library. It contains 12,400 items dating from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the twentieth century.

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by Bea Witten

How the Greenwood Neighborhood in Chapel Hill Came to Be

The Greenwood neighborhood began in 1933 when Paul Green (1894-1981) purchased over 200 wooded acres outside Chapel Hill—in the country—with his earnings from screenwriting in Hollywood. He paid about $25 per acre. It was the Depression, but the '20s had been a time of strong growth for the University, and land was viewed as a good investment while it was cheap. Furthermore, Paul had grown up on a Harnett County farm and always loved land—walking it, acquiring it, selling it, using and developing it.

Paul Green the founder and first resident of Chapel Hill's Greenwood neighborhood

A Pulitzer Prize winner in 1927, Paul was at this time teaching philosophy at UNC. He and his wife Elizabeth had met as drama students here in 1919 and, in the long woodland walks that were a part of their courtship, had discovered this place where they would build their dream house, "if their ship came in." Build it they did in 1936 at the end of the road that Paul laid out himself. He always favored curves, and while Greenwood Road is a fairly direct mile from Raleigh Road to the house, it follows natural contours and is not straight. Paul Green’s son remembers how they made the track drivable, his dad standing on the old road grader hooked to the Buick and he, age 10, driving the car very slowly.

In the beginning the four Green children had the wilderness to themselves and their playmates were all from school. The way they came home in the car was to get out at the beginning of Greenwood Road and hang onto the runningboard while Paul drove weaving and teasing and scaring them all the way home. They tramped the woods barefoot and lay on the grass summer nights learning all the constellations from their father. They loved to watch and feel a storm build and roll up the valley. A three-mile walk to get anywhere was normal. Paul Jr. liked to tinker with radios, and his sisters helped him scavenge for components at the town incinerator down at today's University Mall. The Greens kept a cow for milk and a pony that plowed the two-acre vegetable garden; it fell to the children to clean the large chicken coop.

In developing their land, the Greens envisioned a community in direct touch with nature. With engineers from NC State College, Paul mapped lots of up to 5 acres, shaping them on both aesthetic and practical lines. The price per acre was about $250 in the early '40s. The covenant that guided most of the development assured that a new house would not obstruct the view from existing homes, and the cost in 1944 should be a substantial "minimum of $10,000." The Greens had borrowed from the Bank of Chapel Hill and taken advances on royalties to build their own house. The first lots, all on Greenwood Road, were sold to academic and literary friends—Louis Katzoff (908) of the Philosophy Department, the writer Noel Houston (801), James Tippett 704) who edited science texts in the Education Department, Palmer Hudson (710), Clifford Lyons (716), and Harry Russell (712) of the English Department, Bill Lang (708), the popular head basketball coach, William Meade Prince (707), the famous illustrator who came to chair the Art Department, Phil Schinhan (700) of the Music Department.

Phil Schinhan, with his wife Mary Frances, moved to Greenwood in 1947. Phil and Mary Frances had met in 1936 at Watts Hospital, where she went to have her appendix removed and he his tonsils. Mary Frances was the daughter of Howard Odum who pioneered both the Department of Sociology and the School of Social Work at UNC, the man for whom Odum Village was named

700 Greenwood Road in Chapel Hill - The Schinhan House

Greenwood in the 1950s

In the 1950s a post-war building boom swept the country. This was the period of greatest development in Greenwood. Mortgage companies grew up to do some of the work previously handled by banks: credit history, title search, closing. It wasn’t hard to get a mortgage if you had a steady job.

It was a new idea to build and live on one level. Many Greenwood houses are ranch-style or one-story contemporaries. A local architect or contractor adapted a plan offered in Better Homes & Gardens or a book from a hardware store. The home of Earl and Rhoda Wynn at 900 Stagecoach Road, built in 1950, was the first of many houses in Chapel Hill designed by Jim Webb in the California Style. His firm also created the master plan for RTP and designed the old public library, now the Chapel Hill Museum. Artist Didi Dunphey Hudson drew her own graceful plan for 619 Greenwood Road. A number of homes were built with a rental apartment having a separate entrance, and the tenants—graduate students or young teachers—blended into the neighborhood.

William Meade Prince was an illustrator much like Norman Rockwell. He did many magazine covers in the 1930s and 40s. He lived with his wife Lillian at 707 Greenwood Road in Chapel Hill. He also wrote the book The Southern Part of Heaven which describes growing up in Chapel Hill at the beginning of the 20th century. He commited suicide at his house on November 10th, 1951. He was only 51.

Old Mill, Stagecoach, Arrowhead and Christopher Roads were laid with one-acre lots for $1250 - $1500. Green declined a realtor's suggestion of $3000 because he wished not to exclude young faculty on small salaries. By 1960 there were some 75 homes and many children. "Wild Bill," who operated the road grader, allowed children to ride up there on his machine with him as he worked. Greenwood Road is said to have been named by Chapel Hill newspaper editor Louis Graves. Arrowhead was named for the great number of Indian arrowheads found in this area, Christopher for Christopher Barbee who had owned the land in the 18th century, and Stagecoach for ruts that showed the old stage route. Sugarberry and Houston Roads were opened later. (Paul Green named Houston Road in memory of his friend Noel Houston, who died in 1957.) The covenant committee, chaired by Maurice Newton, the dentist, who built at 814 Old Mill Road, reviewed all building plans until the covenant lapsed in the '70s.

In the early years the dirt roads had been at times a horror of bumps and potholes, for which the Greens were held responsible as owners. The pathetic maintenance department was the cantankerous pony Billy, who was hitched to a sledge piled with rocks to plow the snow or level the roadbed as best he might; the neighbors together would hire an oil truck to settle the awful dust. The Town of Chapel Hill annexed the Greenwood neighborhood in 1956 and paved the streets around that time.

Some Who Have Lived in Chapel Hill's Greenwood Neigborhood

A number of writers, as Paul Green hoped, have come to live on Greenwood Road. James Tippett, who gardened at 704 from a wheelchair, wrote poems for children like:

My Dog

I do not love my dog because
He's good at doing tricks
Like standing on his two hind feet
Or fetching balls and sticks.
I do not love my dog because
He's gentle and polite
And barks to drive away the things
That prowl around at night.
I do not love my dog because
He really is quite fine.
But oh! I love my dog because
I'm his and he is mine.

704 Greenwood Road Chapel Hill, The Tippett House

William Meade Prince wrote The Southern Part of Heaven, the rich memoir of his childhood here at the turn of the century, in his home at 707. (Chapel Hill has been basking in this title ever since.) His wife Lillian played Queen Elizabeth for many years in The Lost Colony, which was first performed in 1937. Paul Green invented the genre that he called 'symphonic drama,' and wrote eighteen historical plays, to be presented outdoors, in which music, dance, and special lighting effects all 'sounded together' with the action and dialogue. Robert Frost stayed with his friend Clifford Lyons on his way to and from Florida, and they were seen strolling together after a reading or a party. Lambert Davis, a talking encyclopedia popping out all the time, directed the UNC Press 1948-70 and built 701. His wife Isabella was a walker and dressed in dramatic, strong colors, gloves and a wide hat, swinging a cane in her later years. They were famous for their comfortable, stimulating and intellectual hospitality. The poet Charles Eaton lives at 808; he began the Creative Writing Program at UNC in 1946 with Paul Green’s support. Noel Houston (801) wrote fiction and pieces for The New Yorker, and his home was a regular gathering place for Chapel Hill writers to toss around ideas. Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, bought a large parcel in 1948 at the head of Greenwood with her literary earnings but never built on it; still undeveloped, it is now owned by UNC.

In the '50s and '60s Sandy McClamroch, mayor of Chapel Hill 1961-69 and founder of the radio station WCHL, lived at 815 Greenwood. He also guided the whole development of the Carol Woods Retirement Community as president of the Association from 1972-82. Further up the road, at 714, lived Adelaide Walters, who in 1948 helped establish the local League of Women Voters and was the first woman elected to public office in North Carolina. She is described as attractive, vivacious, and informal, also progressive, selfless, devoted to good works, respected and well liked by everyone. She had no children and her husband was a traveling salesman for Hushpuppy shoes. She served for three terms on the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen and worked tirelessly for civil rights, improved conditions for the poor, political power for women, urban and regional planning, and good government. Vermont Connecticut Royster, winner in 1953 of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, upon retiring from the Wall Street Journal in 1971, came to teach journalism at his alma mater UNC and lived at 905 Arrowhead Road. How many neighborhoods in America have been home to two winners of the Pulitzer Prize?

Baucom House on Stagecoach Road  Chapel Hill shortly after being built - early 1950s

Bill and Claire Newman built their home at 808 Old Mill Road, the first house on this street, in 1950. He taught music 1945-77 at UNC, and he had a passion for motorcycles. He helped and taught his students to fix anything. He also made a cross-country piano tour by motorcycle in 1953, Claire having wrapped his concert clothing in tissue paper to limit wrinkling! Wherever he stopped overnight, he was able by inquiry to locate a Steinway to practice on. His AJS bike died as he ended the trip and turned into his own driveway. The Newmans landscaped their acre for entertaining and maintained, by themselves, a large lawn with a tractor mower. They hosted frequent receptions for faculty or following a concert. Bill ran a clinic every summer 1950-70 for up to 200 piano teachers from around the state and beyond, and invited them all over for a home-cooked dinner. In addition to the preparation of food and decorations, loaner chairs had to be brought from and returned to Walker's Funeral Home in the back of a car. If it rained, they just took everything over to Hill Hall. Claire edited Bill's scholarly works, as well as teaching typing and later computer skills to many children. And she painted the outside of the house four times by herself. A senior UNC student who was majoring in voice asked Dr, Newman his advice for launching a nightclub act after college. Bill replied that piano tuning would be a more reliable career. Within a few weeks Andy Griffith instead stepped into his dazzling career with “What it was was football.”

At 907 Greenwood Road lived Bill and Lena Cherry. A banker, Bill volunteered for almost 40 years as treasurer of the UNC Educational Foundation. It became a family tradition to host a picnic in the backyard, the Saturday before football practice began in August, for the families of UNC coaches, UNC administration, and the Bank of Chapel Hill—200-300 people, and then to go off to the beach for a week.

In 1950 the future UNC chancellor Bill Aycock, during his first year of teaching law, built a cement-block house at 902 Arrowhead Road, laying many of the blocks himself, while his brother was the electrician. Maynard Adams, an assistant professor of philosophy, excavated a full basement below his ranch at 813 Old Mill Road; "Maynard's Folly" occupied him from 1959 until 1965. First he dug out of the clay a 3' crawlspace with a mattock, shovel & wheelbarrow. He learned what he needed to know about carpentry, electricity and plumbing from manuals sold in the hardware store and created a space 77' x 26' with 8' steel columns and windows; it had a study with working fireplace, a bathroom and a darkroom.

813 Old Mill Road,The Maynard Adams House

Helen Peacock, famous CHHS librarian, wore a sweatshirt that read, "Old librarians never die; they just get checked out." Her husband Bill never drove a car but for 30 years rode his 3-speed bike from 901 Stagecoach Road up the long Raleigh Road hill to his office at the UNC Physical Education department. Their teenage daughter Margaret Ann, as a voracious reader, diagnosed her own appendicitis!

Didi Dunphey, at 616 Sugarberry Road, is an artist and commercially successful illustrator in the fields of fashion, medicine and science. She conceived and helped create the Women's Center Art Show in 1985. Thirty years earlier, as a woman and young artist, she had missed the support of a forum and a venue for her art in Chapel Hill.

Married women who held jobs in the '40s and '50s were usually schoolteachers, secretaries, or nurses. Rhoda Wynn taught radio production and programming at UNC until ‘excused’ by her marriage in 1951 to Earl Wynn. He was the founder and chair of the department, but no one escaped the University's nepotism rule! This rule fell away with the growth of the medical school and the hospital in the 1950s. Candidates for medical positions were often married to other medical professionals, and they could demand jobs for both. Through the '50s and '60s Lena Cherry and Rhoda both worked at Collier Cobb's insurance company, handling the new area of homeowner's insurance. Previously separate property, contents, and liability policies were being consolidated to cut cost and improve service.

Fred Ellis House at 805 Old Mill Road, Chapel Hill. Childhood home of Francie, Barbara, Marybeth, and Frieda Ellis.

In 1965 Paul and Elizabeth Green sold their house with four acres to Watts and Mary Hill and moved out to the country. Watts' father, George Watts Hill, had built the current Chancellor's house across Raleigh Road, and some quipped that Greenwood was the valley of humility between two Hills! The Greens' property was sixteen acres, and Watts suggested to Paul that he would do better developing most of it than selling it as a whole. Paul later thanked Watts for this advice!

At 908 Greenwood Road in the '60s lived Mary Walker Randolph, a professor of nursing who understood the mathematics that Jefferson used to build a serpentine wall one brick thick. When she retired, she bought a cement mixer and hired a mason to help her surround her large garden with such a wall, a memory from her childhood in Charlottesville. Her yellow primroses, peonies, and a Cecile Brunner rose are flourishing still in this garden 35 years later.

817 Old Mill Road, The William Robert Mann House

Bob Hardison, UNC Purchasing Agent, spent two years improving the soil before building at 811 Old Mill in 1956. After cutting the woods, he loosened the clay 30" deep and repeatedly incorporated organic material and sand; he added irrigation in the '70s. In 1982 he was a finalist in the PBS Victory Garden contest. Incidentally, Bob had worked his way through UNC in the '30s by washing dishes at his boarding house and selling peanuts at football games. His dad sent them down every week from the farm; Bob picked them up at the bus station and roasted them in a barrel turned by a handle. He hired a few fellow-students to help him, and helped his brother do the same. They had no competition in this enterprise.

The triangular islands at the top and bottom of Old Mill Road were Paul Green's design to provide open space for meeting and play areas. Mr. McGowan fitted a wire between two trees with a pulley for a long swing. Kickball and rollabat were popular, and the Prillamans provided pony rides here—as well as turns on the street in their restored Model T. Mrs. Prillaman started the Bluebirds Club for little girls to cook or sew or put on a play or talent show.

Summer heat meant picnics in the woods, where wild strawberries and other berries were abundant. It meant swimming out at Hogan's Lake—which offered a concession stand and had a float in the middle, away from the cows. Many families paid something for their children to spend a week at the Hogan farm, where they learned to milk a cow, gathered eggs, and took part in all sides of ordinary farm life; it was the best of summer camps for one family at a time. At home the Houstons dug a 4’ x 10’ swimming pool which they emptied and scrubbed every week, because they didn't use chlorine. In 1967 the YMCA and Community Center pools opened. Summer also meant walking or biking up for free lessons at the university pool, drinking iced tea, opening windows, pulling down the shades at 10 am, walking with your friends over to the Dairy Bar at Glen Lennox for a delicious cone, playing baseball in your front yard during the worst of the heat and loving every minute. When someone remarked that his grass took a beating, Bill Aycock answered that he was growing children now, would grow grass later.

Glenwood Grammar School, as it was called, became Chapel Hill's second elementary school in 1953 and served grades 1-7. Greenwood children walked there, even first graders, or biked, in pairs or groups, crossing the Bypass with no traffic light because there wasn't much traffic. The school library was created largely from private donations, and some dining tables were stacked with books waiting for a card envelope before going in. The principal was scared of dogs and once let the children out of class to empty the schoolyard of them. Before Glenwood opened, children were carpooled to school on West Franklin Street. There were several pools at once in one family, and mothers bonded that way both with each other and with other children.

The popular Wednesday morning coffee, at different homes, brought mothers and young children together until the population became just too large and the custom was abandoned. Greenwood children knew all the local mothers. The Tippetts were childless but welcomed the young at any time of day to swing on their porch hammock and enjoy some homemade cookies with lemonade and a few stories. Children flocked to these two gentle and unhurried people, she neat and handsome and soft, he avuncular in his wheelchair.

The Schinhan children had every possible pet. For the guinea pig installation in the back yard Phil rigged an outdoor heat lamp for winter because the indoors was full of cats and dogs. The Schinhans were night owls, and when Paul Green drove by one night he commented, "Even the Schinhan guinea pigs stay up all night." There was no leash law, and Lambert Davis's fine German shepherd Colgate Jones occasionally visited a bitch in heat on the other side of East Franklin Street. Once, since Colgate stayed with the Schinhan dogs when the Davises traveled, Mary Frances was called to retrieve him. In Martha Tippett's 1965 Christmas card two sad events are noted: first, that the Greens moved away and second, that "Colgate, self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood and dean of dogs, died."

The woods both within and around Greenwood were much more extensive 40 years ago than they are today. They held whippoorwills, bats, beautiful moths and owls (there are still some owls). Mary Frances used to count whippoorwill calls instead of sheep—whereas little Susan Prillaman, who lived closer to the Bypass, listened excitedly for a big rig on her way to sleep! Two children on a swing set one day watched a huge cat emerge from, and retreat back to, the leafy shadows. "We were old enough and wise enough to know that this was no pet cat!"

Halloween in the '50s was a central highlight for families, with makeup, costumes, parties featuring cobwebs and witches' brew, blindfolding, and mischief. Daddies and dogs escorted the little ones along the dark streets. The old slave cemetery now owned by the town, at the end of Greenwood Road, was a center of spooking. Older Glen Lennox children were "discouraged" in Greenwood, but Greenwood children were in heaven with the number of doorbells to ring at Glen Lennox. At Christmas time many families cut their own tree among the cedars planted by birds on open land, although it belonged to Paul Green. Children went caroling on Christmas Eve, singing out all the verses from little books distributed by the Chapel Hill Insurance Company. George Prillaman drove his Model T around town and wowed the children as Santa in a sea of presents; it was his daughter's chore at home to wrap those many empty boxes!

Every Thursday morning since 1966, 20-40 wives of foreign students have been meeting to practice their English at Betsy Chamberlin's home, 1001Arrowhead Road. The program was the idea of Mary Helen Hayman, who noticed in the late '50s that international students—all men previously—were beginning to bring their families along. The Chamberlin garage was remodeled into a play space. With the financial support of Churchwomen United, and with a staff of volunteer teachers and child care givers, English conversation classes are conducted at three levels, following coffee and a discussion of upcoming local events. Arrowhead has been chock full of cars on Thursday mornings, except in the summer, for 37 years!

Paul Green's cabin which stood behind his house at the end of Greenwood Road

Paul Green's cabin, his writing room for 26 years, stood some distance behind his house in the woods and overlooking the pastoral scene of the Conner dairy farm, complete with red barn, that preceded University Mall. The cabin came from Hillsborough in 1939, log by log, was rechinked, and gained a chimney. It was moved in 1991 for preservation to the nearby NC Botanical Garden, thanks to the efforts of Rhoda Wynn and Sally Vilas. The transport of the cabin on a flatbed truck down Greenwood Road was an impressive maneuver, with many stops to adjust it on the truck bed. I am told that the spectacle did not lose by comparison with a hurricane.

This is the second in a series of detailed histories Bea Witten has contributed on Chapel Hill's neighborhoods. Growing up in Greenwood in the 1950s and 60s and knowing most of the people and houses that she has profiled in this piece, I can unequivocally say she has captured the essence of this neighborhood better than any former or current resident could.

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by Bea Witten

In 1889 a UNC law student, Wray Martin, imagined an enchanted forest and named it Glandon. Its spirits and goblins he called gimghouls. On this height he envisioned a fraternity of his fellows who would share the ideals of chivalry and “the beauty of knightly ways”. Thus began the Order of Gimghouls. It is a secret society of twenty undergraduates, alumni, some faculty, and honorary members including state governors and UNC presidents.

This ad ran in Chapel Hill papers for three years from 1913 to 1915. Today this land would be worth at least $20,000,000.

The Order built a log cabin near the northwest corner of Rosemary and Boundary Streets, but in 1926 construction was completed of Hippol Castle on this most fitting site. The Gimghouls had paid $4500 for 95 acres in 1915, and in 1923 they ventured to create Chapel Hill’s first residential “colony” as a means of financing their castle. The Order sold off some 35 acres in 42 lots, and also sold their original lodge, amassing the construction cost of $36,000. The rest of the land they have over the years given to the University in different parcels. The architect was Courtland Curtis, a Gimghoul living in New Orleans who worked from a list of the members’ desires and submitted numerous revisions by mail. The contractor was Charlie Lee Martindale, who in the words of his son “built half of Chapel Hill”. The stonemasons were skilled Italian immigrants from Valdese NC who spoke little English; Sterling Stoudemire, a professor of Romance languages who was building his own house at that time, acted as interpreter for them. A.H. Patterson wrote a very interesting report of the building committee.

The Residential Development

This is an aerial view of the 90 acres Gimghoul and Battle Park land in Chapel Hill

Being the old edge of Battle Park beside UNC property at Raleigh Road and facing the campus, the neighborhood is a naturally bounded area. It consists of only the two streets Gimghoul Road and Glandon Drive, the first being level, straight, broad, sidewalked and built on both sides; the second winding, narrow, without sidewalk, and facing Battle Park below. The Gimghoul lots are regular and rectangular, the Glandon lots larger and irregular. A service lane, Evergreen, runs between them and another, Ridge Lane, cuts across.

Members of the Order oversaw all parts of the project. The general supervisor was George Stephens, the developer of Myers Park in Charlotte; Felix Hickerson, professor of civil engineering, surveyor of a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and planner of Chapel Hill’s sewer system, was the engineer; and Ralph Trimble, his colleague, surveyed the lots.

Thirty-seven homes were built, mostly between 1924 and 1942, and mostly of the Colonial Revival style. Chapel Hill had no zoning laws, but deed covenants included a review of exterior plans and of the location of all construction by a committee of the Order. Members were among the first buyers, but others included the manager of the Carolina Theatre, the head of the Western Union office, a retired traveling salesman, and an attorney. Four single women were among the company---a public school teacher, a law school librarian, the assistant to W.C. Coker, chairman of the Botany Department, and later the secretary to University President Frank Porter Graham.

Some architectural features are small detached garages and studies. Low fieldstone walls and Chapel Hill gravel sidewalk surfaces are other features of old Chapel Hill. 702 Gimghoul was built from mail-order plans, and 734 is a Sears & Roebuck house, its lumber and all the hardware shipped here by rail.

Life As It Was Lived

The neighborhood has always been full of people of all ages, and idyllic to children. The streets and all the woods were theirs, and the creek submitted to damming at any time. The nearby Chapel Hill cemetery was a quiet place to read and to imagine the lives on the tombstones. Families camped in the woods, and the horse tree was fenced in with fallen timber—the tree that had a bump in the trunk like a saddle. Family dogs could run loose. Rosie Young, a golden retriever, was often seen on the street carrying the umbrella that Mary Arthur Stoudemire had given her, and Everett Bacon always dressed up Rufus to trick or treat with him on Halloween. New children were welcomed by a jeep ride from Jeff Newton with his own five children. They walked to elementary school on West Franklin Street, since school buses ran only to rural areas. One young entrepreneur raised plants that he sold to the hospital gift shop, and others collected glass soda bottles and their wooden cases left near the stone fireplaces in Battle Park.

Beautiful Gimghoul neighborhood house in Chapel Hill

A big game was Rollabat, played on the flat but not too smooth surface of Gimghoul Road by boys and girls of all ages, in any numbers, at any time. A ball, any ball, was pitched to a batter and everyone else scrambled for it. Whoever got it rolled it at the bat, which the batter had laid across the plate. If you managed to hit the bat--but the bumps were tough--you were the next batter. No teams, no base running, and no score, but endless excitement.

Faculty wives shopped daily for groceries in the ‘40s, a two-hour ritual that included a lot of chat at Shields’ or Fowler’s. An hour of visiting might follow, with coffee or a Coke at Eubank’s Drug Store or at home. Most families had help, to cook and clean, to can and garden and help with the children. Many women hadn’t learned to cook. The main meal was at noon, and the table was nicely set and served every day; you never helped yourself in the kitchen. An award-winning professor had time to walk to work and walk home for lunch and a nap before walking back to the campus. There was no hurry, and very little travel. A conventional college-educated woman felt responsible for good conversation, the content of the newspaper, and the wellbeing of her family, but not necessarily for any attention to literature or awareness of broad current issues. On the other hand, Coriden Lyons, a very popular professor who lived down the street, led groups of 25-30 undergraduates around Europe in the 1930s and relied on his wife Mary to handle most of the arrangements.

Charlotte Shaffer, wife of and daughter of a Gimghoul, has lived here since 1952. Her grandfather graduated from UNC in 1847, her father in 1906, she in 1934, her children in the 1960s, and three grandchildren in the 1990s. Since Minnie Bennett did not allow smoking in the house, the Shaffers smelled the cigar of the head of UNC’s physical plant every evening as he strolled by their house. Colonel Taylor took children out to his farm to teach them to ride horseback, and Mrs. Taylor made a receiving blanket for every baby born on the street, including those of graduate–student renters, who represented a violated covenant to some. Kate Sanders and Katherine Hobbs, retired from careers and widowed, met for a walk followed by sherry every afternoon for almost twenty years. Kate Sanders was the sister of Frank Porter Graham, who lived during his last years in an apartment that she added onto her house. He was a pied piper to small children, and they waited for Dr. Frank every day to go sit on a stone wall and tell stories, or to visit his wife Marian’s grave in the cemetery.

Chapel Hill's Gimghoul neighborhood home

An undersung resident was Alma Holland, who, as the first woman to take out a building permit in Chapel Hill, built the house at 707 Gimghoul. As the right arm of the great botanist William Coker, she was research assistant, editor, secretary, proofreader, illustrator, co-teacher, co-reader of theses, and co-author from 1918 until 1951, when she retired to read and to garden. She was all business and no foolishness, yet was universally loved by students and colleagues. Since she held only an MA in botany, regulation demanded the presence of a “real” professor in the classroom; but “Miss Alma” taught the fern course and ran the labs, never forgot anything, and generally had as much to do with the success and reputation of the Botany department as Coker himself.

Battle Park

The part of Battle Park that the Gimghouls bought was land saved by Paul Cameron back around 1880. He bought it from the University when it might have been sold to pay off construction debts incurred in the 1850s, long before state appropriations existed. Furthermore, during the Civil War the trustees had allowed “indigent professors” to cut firewood on university lands, depleting the forests. In 1909 a bursar of the University had acquired some of the forest for a private lumbering venture, which plan so outraged the community that the acres were resold for real estate development. The problem of drilling a well in granite bedrock led to the land changing hands once more before the Gimghouls acquired it and overcame the challenges. About thirty forest acres were at this time “swapped” with the University, under the “express understanding that it would always remain park land,” for seven acres needed to improve the shape of Gimghoul property.
Battle Park is named for Kemp Plummer Battle, UNC president 1876-91, whose lifelong home, the present Baptist Campus Ministry, faced it. The forest “received the constant care of Dr. Battle. He assiduously laid out & marked paths, devised seats between trees, & built rustic bridges over the several branches,” wrote Louis Round Wilson.

The area in green as well as all the land in the adjacent Gimghoul Neighborhood was purchased for $4500 in 1915. Perhaps the best real estate investment ever made in Chapel Hill history.

The Forest Theatre at the edge of Battle Park was in use for decades before the stone seating tiers and lighting towers were built in 1940 with $20,000 WPA funds. “Proff” Fred Koch’s Carolina Playmakers began in 1919 with student, faculty and community participation, and children watching rehearsals on their way to the woods. Paul Green, Shakespeare, and Greek tragedians gave thrilling opportunities to all, as well as the camaraderie of parties after performances. This was one of life’s highlights for a Gimghoul teenager. 

Bea Witten is a long time Chapel Hill resident who has done exhaustive research on the historic neighborhoods of Chapel Hill. In this quest she has conducted interviews with several dozen residents of the homes in these areas. This is the first in a series of articles by Bea that we will be publishing in the coming months.

 

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by Charly Mann

Glen Lennox was the first planned community in Chapel Hill. It was built in the early 1950’s to meet the demand of the influx of students entering UNC on the GI Bill following World War II. It was the ideal temporary home for new faculty members and merchants until they could afford to build their own homes. Businessmen like Milton Julian, Crowell Little (owner of the Ford Dealership), and Monk Jennings (manager of Town an Campus) were all early residents.

Ad for Glen Lennox Shopping Center in 1962

The elegance of a Glen Lennox cottage

This is view of Glen Lennox in 1951 before the shopping center was built. At that time not even all the "cottages" where finished.  

The first apartments were finished in 1951, and by the spring of 1952 the adjoining Shopping Center that was anchored by the Colonial Grocery Store was complete. By 1952 finding parking downtown was difficult, and most spaces had parking meters. Glen Lennox had plenty of free parking, and also featured a bank, a drug store, Pace’s Gift Shop, a Laundromat, a children’s clothing and toy store, the Dairy Bar restaurant, and a full service Sinclair Gas Station. I lived across the bypass in the Greenwood neighborhood during the 1950’s, and made several trips a week to the Colonial Grocery Store with my wagon filled with empty soft drink bottles that I would collect along the 15-501 highway or in the woods near Kenan stadium after a football game. I received 2 cents for each bottle, and often made more than $5.00 a week with my little enterprise. In those days that money went a long way, as candy bars and soft drinks were a nickel, comic books were a dime, phonograph albums were $3, and bag of one hundred toy army soldiers was a dollar. The only thing I ever found expensive were Dinky Toy cars and truck which the small toy store in Glen Lennox sold and kept in a rotating glass case at the front.

My family, like many other Chapel Hillians, were regular customers of the Dairy Bar, where we often had lunch or dinner. My sister, Carol, and I were originally quite partial to their toasted egg-salad sandwiches and milkshakes.

William Muirhead developed Glen Lennox. In the beginning Glen Lennox was considered so far from the UNC campus that they provided their own shuttle bus system for residents. The apartments were available in one and two bedroom units. Each was a single story attached cottage, which gave the area a neighborhood look and feel. All the streets were well laid out, and trees and shrubs were liberally planted throughout the development. The rents were $72 for a one bedroom, and $105 for a two-bedroom unit. While this might seem inexpensive by today’s standards it was not considered cheap then when the mortgage on a modest home in Chapel Hill rarely exceeded $125 a month. Twenty years later comparable sized apartments in Chapel Hill with more amenities including central air and community swimming pool rarely exceeded $150. Today rents are nearly ten times what they in 1952 in Glen Lennox, with one-bedroom units starting at $660 and two bedrooms at $1100.

Map of Glen Lennox today. Glenwood Elementary School is on far left. Amy Rickard is the current principal. The School opened in 1954. I attended it from 1956 to 1960 when Mrs West was the principal.

Grubb Properties bought Glen Lennox in 1986. They are planning to tear down the old Glen Lennox and rebuilt it with commercial offices, condominiums, and retail stores. Many people are fighting this plan, in hopes of preserving an area that use to be considered avant-garde and many still feel is aesthetically beautiful. 

Overview of Glen Lennox from 2009

Some of Glen Lennox's stores from 1962

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