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.
The Best Downtown in The United States
Bank of Chapel Hill 1965 (current site of NCNB Plaza)
Thanks to Wayne Spransy for supplying the 1973 Chapel Hill Coloring Book from which this was created (additional coloring to be completed later). His late father was the manager of Huggins' Hardware.
Chapel Hill 1 Hour Cleaners and Laundry, 1968
by Charly Mann
It was not very long ago when almost half the stores in downtown Chapel Hill included the name of the owner, and every store and restaurant offered extraordinary personal service to their customers. For me, 1973 marked the beginning of the decline of this epoch. Today there are few locally owned and managed businesses on Franklin Street. While the downtown used to attract almost everyone who lived in Chapel Hill, it is now catering primarily to UNC students with an array of t-shirt stores and many bars and restaurants oriented to college students.
Downtown Chapel Hill 1973
Franklin Street, 1965
There was a time when Chapel Hill had the best downtown in America. There were hardware stores, clothing stores for women and men of all ages, a wide spectrum of dining choices for every taste ranging from semi-elegant to fast-food. It was the best place you could imagine to find books, records, appliances, gifts, stationary, jewelry, toys, and magazines. The best part of it was wherever you went you saw your friends and neighbors, or people who you did not know by name but who were very familiar because you had seen them dozens of times before. It was more authentically American than Route 66 or the Grand Canyon. Nowhere in the world was there another downtown so quaint and charming and also so accommodating to such a wide diversity of individuals.
Bank of Chapel Hill 1965 (current site of NCNB Plaza)
Thanks to Wayne Spransy for supplying the 1973 Chapel Hill Coloring Book from which this was created (additional coloring to be completed later). His late father was the manager of Huggins' Hardware.
In 1973 if you walked west on Franklin Street from the Post Office to Columbia Street, you would pass the following businesses in this order: The United States Post Office, Harry's Restaurant, College Sho-Fixery, The Fireside (women's clothing), Chapel Hill Cleaners and Laundry, Wentworth and Sloan Jewelry store, The Electric Construction Company, Milton's Clothing Cupboard, Foister's Camera Store, Sutton's Drug Store, The Tar Heel Barber Shop, Leadbetter Pickard Stationary store, The Shrunken Head, Danziger's Old World Gift Shop, McGinty's Sports Shop, Town and Campus Clothing Store, entrance to This End Up (bar), First Union National Bank, the Paper Castle, Lacock's Shoe Store, NCNB and plaza entrance, Friar Cellar, Alexander's Ambition (Alexander Julian's first business), entrance to Logos Book Store and The New Establishment Bar (both upstairs), N.C. Cafeteria, Hair Unlimited, Treasure Chest, Jeff's Campus Confectionery, The Varsity Theater, Dr. Kohn's Opticians, The Intimate Book Store, Continental Travel Agency, College Café, Rose's 5, 10, & 25 Cent Store, Huggin's Hardware, Bennett and Blocksidge Frigidaire Appliances, The Hub (clothing store), and Sloan's Drug Store.
Chapel Hill 1 Hour Cleaners and Laundry, 1968
Every evening in 1973 after most stores closed you could find Jim Kuppers selling records along Franklin Street. As of a few years ago Jim still had a business selling used records.
Comments:
Bob Northcott
8:25 AM Tue 5/4/2010
Hey Kuppers! I was wondering where you got to, and found this picture in my search! Drop a line sometime and fill me in on the last 25 years. What's the estore address?
Northcott
Trish Neubert
3:30 AM Fri 2/5/2010
As a 1971 CHHS grad, I moved away from Chapel Hill, yet I would try to recite the various stores and businesses from Sloan’s Drug Store down to the Post Office – in reverse order from your 1973 list (yes, the female brain must be different). Please don't forget the south side of the street, from the Carolina Theater down to the Planetarium.
But I would also try to remember what was down on west Franklin Street, down past old (old house) town library, the bus station, ice plant and car wash and on into Carrboro.
Who needs cross-words to keep the brain agile?
Jim Kuppers
2:54 PM Mon 1/4/2010
Can't believe it.There I am so many years ago.I'm still selling records
at shows in Baltimore,Lancaster,PA and Austin.My estore is almost
ready to open.Those were the days my friends.Here's a shout out
to CH from northern VA!
Terry Nash
11:29 AM Tue 12/1/2009
Thanks for bringing back memories of my hometown. These photos are fantastic.
Avery Little
10:15 PM Mon 11/30/2009
You are right there was no better place on earth than downtown Chapel Hill in the 50s, 60s, and the first part of the 70s. After that the mall, traffic, and the town just getting too large changed the face of Franklin Street
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!
My dad owned the New Establishment bar, and my mum worked there - they sold it shortly after my birth in 1974, but I certainly have heard a lot of stories!