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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