Chapel Hill Memories is for anyone who wants to relive and help preserve memories of Chapel Hill. We welcome your recollections of any subject related to Chapel Hill and The University Of North Carolina in written, photo, audio, and video form. We have the ability to scan and transfer photos, audio, and video if you do not. We do not charge for this, and will return your materials within a week.
Send your memories, ideas, photos, and questions to CHMemories@gmail.com.
If you need to mail us something let us know, and we will send you our mailing address.
Chapel Hill - From Tiny Village to Small Town
by Charly Mann
This is a campus map from 1881. Through almost half of UNC's history there were less than a dozen buildings on campus.
In 1952 John Williams Canada came back to Chapel Hill for a visit. He had graduated from UNC in 1896 and was now in his eighties. When he was student in Chapel Hill Carolina’s enrollment was less than 600, and the town was just a tiny village of 1000. He was saddened to see the growth that had come to his beloved town which now had a population of just over 9000. Of that number almost 6000 were students. In his day he said “Every boy on the campus knew each other, and professors took a personal interest in their students”. He said, “no one in 1896 could have dreamed of Chapel Hill ever being as large at it was now” (1952). When Canada was at UNC he recalled that in winter students had to go out into the surrounding forests to cut wood for the fireplaces in their dorm rooms. In 1893 he said no one could have imagined a building with central heat.
This map and index below lists every building in Chapel Hill from 1875 to 1885, and the names of the family who occupied each house in town.
In 1934 a group of older Chapel Hill residents were asked to describe the Chapel Hill they remembered in their youth some fifty to sixty years earlier. The map above describes the location and occupants of each building in town between 1875 and 1885. Sadly there are many houses whose locations have been recalled that no one could remember who lived there. I hope that readers of Chapel Hill Memories who grew up in town will send us maps of the locations of the houses in their neighborhoods, and who lived in them.
Comments:
M Sprunt
12:01 PM Tue 6/16/2009
Imagine trying to describe all the homes, businesses, and campus buildings in Chapel Hill on two index cards today.
H Ford
1:28 PM Mon 6/15/2009
I can't imagine Chapel Hill being so small. It is amazing that in less than a century the town's population has increased by about 8000%.
Check out our other website:
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
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.
Use Coupon Code chapelhillmemories to receive a $9.94 discount!
Memorial Hall in 1881 has an odd shape. Is the current Memorial Hall the same building?