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Chapel Hill's Glen Lennox Apartments and Shopping Center
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
Comments:
Charly Mann
7:51 PM Wed 12/30/2009
Hello Sarah,
I'm pretty sure I remember you and would love to hear more of your recollections about growing up in Chapel Hill. I will soon be doing an article on Glenwood School and in 1956-7 I believe the principal's name was Mr. Kiddo. Was your friend Sarah's last name Kreps? As I recall, the Kreps grew up on Oakwood Drive before they moved to Durham.
Please contact me at CHMemories@gmail.com.
Sarah Geer
7:22 PM Wed 12/30/2009
Glen Lennox was such a great neighborhood for young married students, for new faculty, for divorced people, and generally for anyone who needed comfortable, affordable housing. There were no other apartment complexes in town in the early days. I grew up on Oakwood Drive, right next to Glen Lennox, in the 1950's and 60's. We rode our bikes up and down all those hills, and of course walked through the streets to Glenwood School. In my era, Charly, I think the principal at Glenwood School was Mr. Battle, and Sarah West was a third grade teacher. The hill in front of the school was a big meadow where we would fly kites. Harris Teeter is there now.
How nice to see the note here from George Harris, who had such a pleasant pharmacy in Glen Lennox. I'm sure we drove him crazy reading all his comic books. The shopping center was a true community meeting-place. Mothers would leave their babies in carriages outside the Colonial Grocery Store while they shopped. Every December, I would look forward to the arrival of the guy who painted big Santa Claus decorations on the windows of the Dairy Bar and other stores. It took him several days, and we would watch in fascination.
I agree with Andy Norwood that Halloween in Glen Lennox was the best! Most Chapel Hill neighborhoods were dark and wooded, no sidewalks or streetlights, but Glen Lennox was safe, well-lit and by far the most efficient neighborhood in town for trick-or-treating. We all had home-made costumes (tramps, ghosts, witches and clowns were the easiest). In 1960, my friend Sarah K. and I turned Halloween into a political campaign opportunity with "Kennedy Girls" costumes in support of JFK. We made cardboard panels into sandwich boards decorated with campaign bumper stickers, and wore plastic boater hats her parents brought back from the summer Democratic convention.
George Harris
11:35 AM Thu 10/22/2009
We moved into Glen Lennox in 1957. We opened the Glen Lennox Pharmacy in 1958. I had a long and happy career there. The neighborhood was full of great friendly people. Mr. Muirhead was an exceptional man.
He turned down a lot of plans that would have been very profitable in order to keep Glen Lennox beautiful.
Melinda Ellison
2:54 PM Sat 5/2/2009
I loved living in Glen Lennox. Great location and wonderful mix of residents.
Sandy Barnes
9:43 AM Fri 5/1/2009
I can't believe your ads for the "old" Dairy Bar. That was one of my favorites stops while walking home after school at Glenwood Elementary. I think almost all the kids who lived in Glen Lennox either walked or rode their bikes to school in the 1950's and early 60s.
H Stetson
4:27 PM Thu 4/30/2009
I think Glen Lennox needs to be desiginated as a historic landmark. It captures the best attributes of the post-war planned community.
Diane Keith
3:16 PM Thu 4/30/2009
There were lots of professional offices over the stores in Glen Lennox. My dentist was located there the entire time I lived in Chapel Hill.
Andy Norwood.
1:28 PM Thu 4/30/2009
Thanks for the piece on Glen Lennox. I lived there with my family from 1954 to 1962, and have nothing but great memories of the place. The best thing about it as a young kid was Halloween. There were more than 400 apartments that you could easily walk to without crossing a busy street. I recall many people actually made cookies, flavored popcorn, and other candies for their treats.
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.
Lived there from 1956 until 1970. My mom Homer Webb was the crossing guard at Hwy 54 for Glenwood School and also worked at the bank in the shopping center. Many great memories from those days. It was a great place to grow up, lots of kids, plenty to do and even had the old bus that would take you downtown.