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Chapel Hill's Whitehead Circle Neighborhood
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.
Comments:
Judy Gouger
11:26 AM Tue 6/8/2010
This house was not the Gottschalk's but Dr. and Mrs. Morrison's house. They raised two children. Lucy and her younger brother. I was the neighborhood baby sitter and lived on the cornor of Mason Farm Rd. and Whitehead Circle.I baby sat for most of the families from 1957 until 1965.The Klingbergs lived in what was to become the Mann house. Next door to them was Dr. George Pennicks.
Jamie
11:59 AM Sun 1/24/2010
Charly, would it be possible to get a copy of your photo? We are keen to know more about how the house was originally conceived and appeared and has changed. From what I can see the only real change seems to have been glassing-in what appears to have originally been an external balcony and half a century of tree growth. Remarkably little in the 50+ years since it was built
Charly Mann
3:15 PM Fri 10/30/2009
Yes I have at least one very early black and white photo of the house. From the outside it has changed very little. For the most part the houses on Whitehead Circle look just as hey did when I first saw them about 1961. There are only two really radical changed houses that I recall.
Jamie
1:34 PM Fri 10/30/2009
Would anyone out there have early photos of the Kai Jurgensen house? We're in the process of buying it and woudl be fascinated to know how it looked when first built
Charly Mann
1:10 PM Mon 10/5/2009
Mike - Thanks for the correction, and detailed information on other families on Whitehead Circle. I remember the Craigs, Kirkpatricks, Joyners, and Stanfords very well.
I have several more photos of your former house, some that are quite old.
Mike Jurgensen
12:29 PM Mon 10/5/2009
Charly,
Our family lived on Whitehead Circle from about 1956-1967. It was the best neighborhood in the world to grow up in! There were so many kids in the neighborhood, and we all grew up together- playing kickball at the Kirkpatricks', sledding down the hill when the snow came, the dogwoods in the spring. Randy Stanford, Will Joyner, Jim Kirkpatrick, Peter Morrison, Sarah and Polly Craig, Tommy Daniels- plus friends who lived on other streets but hung out with us on Whitehead, like Jim Vernon, Jim and Ben Gibbs, Bob Shankle, and many more.
My dad, Kai Jurgensen, taught Theatre at UNC for about 25 years, as well as directing and acting in many shows at the Playmakers Theatre and the Outdoor Theatre. My mom, Mary Jo Jurgensen, was also deeply involved in the Playmakers. They divorced in the mid-sixties, and my dad later married Paquita Fine, who wrote for the Chapel Hill Weekly for many years.
In fact, the picture you label as 405 Whitehead Circle is actually number 410, where I grew up.
Thanks so much for putting this together- it brings back wonderful memories! And, by the way, I love the song- is that yours?
Bill Wells
9:49 AM Mon 10/5/2009
Whitehead Circle is a thoroughly delightful and charming neighborhood. When I was in graduate school at UNC, from 1967 to 69, I had the good fortune to rent a room there for $40 a month.
Donna Anderson
1:29 PM Sun 10/4/2009
Thanks for the mention of my favorite UNC professor Walter Spearman. I also highly recommend his book history of the history of the Playmaker's theater.
Rhonda Moore
10:42 AM Sun 10/4/2009
I love your pieces of Chapel Hill neighborhoods. Please do one on Laurel Hill Road someday.
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.
Charly,
Thanks for the page. This neighborhood is very near and dear to my heart. I grew up at 406 Whitehead Circle, the brick Cape Cod on the north side of the circle. My parents have been in the neighborhood since 1972 and are still there today. I knew your father, he was a very nice man. I remember he always used to give out apples at Halloween:)
What a wonderful place to grow up!