by Charly Mann

From 1944 to 1972 a true celebrity lived in Chapel Hill at 315 Rosemary Street in perhaps the most elegant house in town . Her name was Betty Smith and she was one of the most acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century. She came to Chapel Hill in 1936 as a poor struggling playwright and author with two daughters to support. She first lived with her two children in a one room apartment on Hillsborough Street. They were so destitute that she once tried to get a $3 loan from the Bank of Chapel Hill so they would not starve. (The bank did not lend her the money.)

The Betty Smith House of Chapel Hill in its prime

When Smith first arrived in Chapel Hill in 1936 she was 39 had endured a hard and harsh life growing up in poverty in a cold tenement building in Brooklyn and an unhappy marriage. The one thing that had sustained her was her love for words and writing. She recalled that that one of the first words she learned was cat and had immediately associated the word with a real moving creature. From a very early age she spent almost all her free time writing, and would even copy entire books she loved word for word. At 12 she sent a poem to a newspaper that was published. When she was 14 she began writing letters to herself and enjoyed reading them as much as writing them. Smith loved Chapel Hill from the moment set foot in town. As she and her daughter were walking from the bus station to their rooming house her daughter asker her "Mama, how long are we going to stay here?" and she replied "Forever."

Betty Smith in Chapel Hill 1955 at her typewriter. She wrote an average of ten pages for her novels every day.

Betty Smith's first novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was published in August of 1943 to almost instant critical and popular acclaim. Like all three of her subsequent books it is highly autobiographical.  The main character Francie Nolan is based on Smith as a young girl. Francie loves to read and write, but lives a lonely life and feels like a nearby tree that is ready to bloom and enjoy the world. Francie sustains herself through her strength and dreams, and has been an inspiration to young girls and women for seven decades.

Entry to Betty Smith house at 315 Rosemary Street Chapel Hill. The double doors are original to the house.

Soon after moving to Chapel Hill Betty Smith and a friend walked by a magnificent house on Rosemary Street and Betty said, "I wonder what you have to do to own a house like that?" And her friend replied, "Be born there." Betty Smith said to her companion, "One day I'll own that house." Less than a year after the publication of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Smith became wealthy. The movie rights alone to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from Twentieth-Century Fox gave her $55,000. On September 1st, 1944 she bought the house she admired for $15,000. In those days it was called the Mangum Mansion, and when Smith moved in it was in poor condition. It was originally owned by one of the first professors of the University and was built in 1829, making it one of the oldest houses in Chapel Hill.

The parlor of the Betty Smith in Chapel Hill.

She totally renovated the house for a cost of $37,000 from a Southern Victorian to the Williamsburg that it is today. She had the front porch removed from the house, the outside of the first floor bricked, and added the stone walls around the property. She moved into the house in April of 1945 and lived there until she died in 1972. Smith always loved trees and it was the array of shade trees that especially enticed her to want the house. In August 1943 she was given a 14 inch tree in a small flowerpot which she called her pet tree. The first thing she did after moving in was plant that tree in her backyard. By 1955 that tree had reached the height of the roof of her two story house. I spent my earliest years less than a block from her house and recall the chinaberry, elms, oaks, azaleas, and crepe myrtles around her house, as well as a beautiful flagstone walk around a garden that was meticulously maintained. I remember that in the 1950s she had at least one cat, and that the yard always seemed to have lots of squirrels and birds. In later years she had an English sheepdog called Noname.

Betty Smith in 1966 tending to her garden under the trees she so loved.

Smith was a very private person who walked with her head down, but the success of her novel and the movie based on it made her house a tourist attraction and Smith celebrity. For the rest of her life every move she made was watched, and she received hundreds of fan letters and requests for appearances every week. In 1966 Chapel Hill honored its reluctant celebrity with the premiere of Joy in the Morning starring Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimieux. Chapel Hill mayor Sandy McClamroch declared the day Betty Smith Day and Franklin Street was renamed Betty Smith Boulevard. The profits for the premiere were given to the Chapel Hill Public Library.

Dining Room of the Betty Smith house in Chapel Hill.

Betty Smith for the first forty-seven years of her life lived hand to mouth, and the last twenty eight was very wealthy. I was in her house only once, and remember it being beautifully furnished. It was filled with mementoes including editions of her books in many languages, her original manuscripts, boxes with clippings of reviews of her books, and lots of trays of unopened letters which she said she always tried to answer. On the mantle was a gold trophy that she said was given to her by one the Presidents, but she could not remember which one. My most indelible memory of Betty Smith is seeing her driving around town in her black Cadillac convertible. It was the only time I ever saw her smile.

Front entry to Betty Smith House 1969.

The Chapel Hill Preservation Society was founded to prevent Betty Smith's house from being used for commercial development. The house and garden had deteriorated during the last five years of Betty Smith's life.They renovated the house and cleaned up the garden, and  sold it as a private residence in 1973.

Front entry to Betty Smith house in Chapel Hill 2010.

I heard Betty Smith speak once to aspiring writers when I was very young at the Methodist Church. I recall one of her insights into writing characters was to remember that no person is born bad, but that evil grows inside some people for various reasons. She said the same is true with intolerance, saying no one is born intolerant, but grows into this over time because of the prejudices of the community one lives in. Her greatest fear for civilization was that it would not be destroyed by the atom bomb, as most people felt then, but by intolerance. 

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