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Bruce Strowd and the Strowds of Chapel Hill
by Charly Mann
Bruce Strowd and friend Ernest Hutchins on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill in 1903. The Methodist Church now stands where the house behind them is.
Bruce Strowd was born on August 18, 1891 in a large house on what is today Davie Circle. The house was called Plum Nelly because it was "Plum out of Chapel Hill and Nelly to Durham". Today this area is considered part of central Chapel Hill and is located less than a mile from the center of town. As you drive up Franklin Street from Estes Drive almost all the land you pass was at the time part of the Strowd estate which consisted of about 1200 acres. The hill you go up towards downtown has been known as Strowd Hill for more than a century. It was not until 1950 that this area became part of Chapel Hill.
This is a photo of Plum Nelly, The Strowd House on Davie Circle, from 1985. It use to be one of the grandest houses in Chapel Hill.
This is a photo of Plum Nelly from 1978.
William F. Strowd was Bruce Strowd's grandfather, a U.S. Congressman, and one of the largest landowners in the area in the late 19th century.
Bruce's family was one of the most prominent in Chapel Hill at the beginning of the 20th century. His grandfather W.F. Strowd (Dec. 7, 1832 - Dec. 12, 1911) had been a two term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1895 to 1899, and was largely responsible for the building of a railroad to Chapel Hill. His father R. L. "Bob" Strowd was Vice President of the Bank of Chapel Hill, and had been the Chapel Hill postmaster, and a local merchant. A building that he built on Franklin Street is still standing and is called the Strowd Building. Sutton's Drug Store is now one of the tenants there.
Both Pickard and Strowd were involved in many Chapel Hill businesses. At the time of this ad in 1907, Mr Pickard also had a livery stable and a hotel. In the 1950s through the 1970s Leadbetter Pickard Stationery Store was a leading business downtown, first on Henderson Street and then in the center of Franklin Street.
R.L. Strowd was a leading Chapel Hill merchant all of his life. This is a 1909 ad. His son Bruce established the first car dealership in town.
R.L. Strowd was a banker during most of his career in Chapel Hill. His house, "Plum Nelly", was one of the largest in town. This ad is from 1931.
From an early age Bruce had a fascination with internal combustion engines and automobiles. In 1903 the Dean of the School of Pharmacy, Vernon Howell, brought the first automobile to Chapel Hill. This new contraption fascinated Bruce and by the time he was sixteen in 1907 he built his own rudimentary automobile using parts from a sewing machine, wheelbarrow and a boat motor. It only went about five miles an hour and made a terrible racket that scared the horses in town when he drove it down Franklin Street. It had a smokestack that billowed out a cloud of smoke as it roared by it went "chooka, chooka, chooka, pow, pow, pow, pow." Chapel Hill soon banned him from driving the thing in town saying it was too noisy and unsightly.
Drawing of early automobile built by Bruce Strowd in1907 called the Strowdmobile
Bruce worked hard from an early age and was employed at Carr Mill in Carrboro for most of his teenage years. In 1911 he left Chapel Hill to learn more about cars by working in a car manufacturing plant in Wisconsin. In 1914 he returned to Chapel Hill and opened the first auto repair shop, in what is now Porthole Alley behind the Carolina Coffee Shop. The location had been a livery stable, and horses were still the primary mode of transportation in town. He was the only person in town who could work on cars. There were then thirteen cars in Chapel Hill. Bruce also got the rights to sell Ford Motors cars which people could special order from his shop.
This is Bruce Strowd's Garage and first Ford Dealership in 1914. It was behind where the Carolina Coffee Shop is today. Before this the building had been a popular livery stable for many decades.
The Strowd Ford Dealership in about 1946. This was the largest retail space in Chapel Hill with over 20,000 square feet. In later years the Zoom-Zoom, Logos Books, Copytron, and even a short-lived 5 and 10 cent store would occupy some of this space. In 1970, when I was twenty, I ran a music management company from an upstairs office here.
His car business grew slowly, specializing in used cars for much of the depression era 1930s. Eventually he opened the first modern car dealership in Chapel Hill at the corner of Columbia and Franklin Street.
Bruce Strowd in October 1937 with 1914 Ford
This is the auction for the sale of the huge farm that the Strowd family owned in Chatham County. It was almost 3,000 acres. It was never a very profitable farm. The R.L. Strowd family owned 1200 acres that are now part of central Chapel Hill. The auction occurred on May 22, 1928. Land and real estate prices plummeted in Chapel Hill a few years later during the Great Depression.
Bruce was an outgoing and gregarious man and in 1937 the Chapel Hill Kiwanis Club named him Chapel Hill's "Most Valuable Citizen" for that year. He was an avid Tarheel basketball fan long before the team attracted much local attention.
This is Johnson Strowd Ward furniture store on West Franklin Street in 1965. It was the only furniture store in town in those days and also sold televisions. One of the owners was Gene Strowd
Bruce Strowd retired in 1953 and sold his Ford Dealership to Crowell Little. He died in 1955.
Well into the late 1940s Strowd Motors sold more used cars than new ones. These are prices for some of their used cars in 1937.
This is the corner of Franklin and Columbia Street in Chapel Hill in 1925 soon after the building was built and Strowd Motor Company moved in to sell Ford cars and ESSO gas. If you look closely you can see a pump at the corner of the two streets.
Thanks to Susan Prothro Worley for the Strowd House photos
Comments:
G Marks
9:54 AM Thu 1/28/2010
There seem to be a lot of important families in Chapel Hill history. I hope you cover more of them including the Cobbs, Battles, Grahams, Spencers, and Kochs.
I have enjoyed your articles on the Gooch, Taylor, and Strowd families.
Bebe Fox
10:38 PM Wed 1/27/2010
Martha..yes, my g'father was about 15 when the photo was made on muddy Franklin St. He married Mattie Atwater in 1911, and opened his first business in 1913. Bruce got better looking as time went by!!
Speaking of Bruce being a character...many of his contemporaris, some of whom I remember, could be called characters...Bruce, a charter member of the C.H. Rotary Club, chr. of the first Welfare Board, and one of the few laymen who were invited to become a member of the UNC Faculty Club, for fun, pronounced the word as Char-AC-tor. He employed more people in C.H. then anyone except the University.
Maybe sometime we can post the super drawing that William Meade Prince, friend of Bruce's and author of the legendary, locally, anyway, of the book The Southern Part of Heaven. Prince's fine drawing featured Bruce as a young fellow driving his homemade motorized hmmm, vehicle...the Strowdmobile aka the Devilwagon..lacking a muffler, it was pretty loud, thus scared the horses and townfolk on Franklin Street.
Martha Cherry
8:42 AM Wed 1/27/2010
My grandmother is 96 and grew up in Chapel Hill. She now lives in a nursing home in Charlotte. Once a week I visit her there. Her mind is losing steam, but when I show her articles from Chapel Hill Memories that are about the 1930s and 40s her face lights up and her mind begins to clear.
She really enjoyed looking at the ads in this one ant the UNC yearbook photos in the one that follows. I know it must take a long time locating ads that are sometimes over a 100 years old.
There is a photo you have of Bruce Strowd which you say is from 1906. You also say he was born in 1891. If you look at the photo you can see this is not a 15 year old boy. I bet the photo is actually eight or ten years older.
Bebe Johns Fox
6:37 PM Tue 1/26/2010
Harriet...Gene and Bruce were cousins or hmm 1/2 cousins. Gene descended from Bryant Strowd and Anne Snipes and Bruce was from Bryant Strowd and youngest dau. of John Wilson, founder of Damascus Cong. Christian Ch. out past Carrboro. White Cross area. Her name was Martha aka Patsy Cynthia Wilson.
Bruce bought the first tv in Orange, from Gene no doubt, but took it out to his getaway near Mann's Chapel in Chatham. Great looking cabinet but hardly could see the program called THE SHADOW KNOWS...scary to my little sister and me...what we could make out through the snow due to very poor reception!!
Bebe Johns Fox
6:20 PM Tue 1/26/2010
Mike...did you know Percy Sparrow...he worked for Bruce, my grandfather....a very loyal friend.
Bob....did you ever hear the story about several fellows working for Bruce who ahem....borrowed a bear cub from the fair in Raleigh, pulled up at Strowd Motor with the intentsion of going upstairs and letting the cub into the sleeping area...HOWEVER....the police had pulled in right beside them and offered a good deal...take that bear back to it's owner and I won't put you in jail!!! Love it!
Mike Sparrow
4:04 PM Tue 1/26/2010
Great article Mr. Mann. My father bought two cars from Strowd Ford in the 1940s. He thought Strowd was quite a character and said he loved to talk about cars.
Bob Ward
11:58 AM Tue 1/26/2010
My father, Ira Ward, lived in a room in the the upstairs of Strowd Motor Co. and drove their tow truck during part of the time he was at UNC in the late 30's and early 40's.
Harriet Yates
9:38 AM Tue 1/26/2010
I loved the Johnson Strowd Ward store. The Strowd who was part owner of that store was Gene Strowd. I think that business started in the mid 1940s and closed about 1980.
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".
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...I am so very impressed with both your love of Chapel Hill and your outstanding collection of both information and photographs. Thanks for all you do!!