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.

 

Tweet