by Charly Mann

Brady's was one of Chapel Hill’s most popular restaurants for more than forty years. It opened in 1941 and closed in the early 1980s when commercial property values skyrocketed and it was sold and torn down to be replaced by the Siena Hotel. Today, that location is in what is considered central Chapel Hill, and is designated as being on East Franklin Street, but until the late 1960s it was a mile out of town on the Durham Highway.

This is the first ad for Brady's Restaurant in Chapel Hill. It is from early 1942, when it was also a gas station.

For much of Chapel Hill's history there has been a strong cultural division between "town and gown". People who grew up in Chapel Hill and were not assiciated in an educational capacity at the University had significantly different tastes in food, clothing, church membership, and politics than those who "immigrated" to Chapel Hill to teach or be administrators. Brady's was the most popular eating establishment for townies as well as anyone who enjoyed traditional home-style southern food. It had the best fried chicken ever served in a restaurant and they made incredible thick and long french fried potatoes to compliment it. For those looking for a way to blackmail me, my favorite dish at Brady's was their southern fried chicken gizzards. While the taste and texture of their gizzards are difficult to describe, they were definitely chewy with a delightful flavor. (I've been a vegetarian for most of the last twenty-five years, so chicken gizzards are no longer part of my diet.)

Brady's Restaurant ad from 1950 when Southern Pork Barbecue was also a specialty

Bradys Restaurant Carry-Out and Brady's Frozen Custard, Chapel Hill, NC from 1963

Other favorites at Brady’s were their pork chops and mouthwatering authentic Red Snapper. Meals at Brady’s were large and consistently good, and their menu prices were at least 1/3 less of most other local restaurants. The manager of Brady's for as long as I can recall was Louis Taylor. Brady's also owned and operated Chapel Hill's first drive-in restaurant directly across the street. It was particularly popular for having the only soft serve ice cream in town. Behind Brady's was a cinder block building which was used by local farmers to sell their produce.

Brady's opened their very popular Frozen Custard drive-in in 1952. This was Chapel Hill's first drive-in and fast food restaurant. (Ad from 1955)

During the civil rights struggle in Chapel Hill, from 1961 to 1964, Brady's like most other restaurants that catered to townies, remained segregated despite numerous protests and sit-ins. On the same day the Beatles were revolutionizing the music world with their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, 26 people were arrested at a sit-in at Brady’s and hauled away in the back of a paddy wagon. 

Ad from the then integrated Brady's Restaurant Chapel Hill, NC (1966)

by Charly Mann

UNC Wins it All for Dean Smith's first NCAA Basketball Championship March 30th, 1982

The pinnacle of UNC’s basketball greatness was its national championship game against Pat Ewing and the Hoyas of Georgetown in the packed New Orleans Superdome. At that time Dean Smith had been coach of the Tar Heels for twenty-one seasons, but had yet to win a national championship. The Carolina starting five was probably the best team in college history, including Michael Jordan, unquestionably the greatest basketball player of all time, James Worthy, the best player on that team, and now ranked as one of the fifty greatest basketball players of all time, and Sam Perkins, who contributed even more to the Carolina in scoring and defense during his college career than the other two men.

From left to right Sam Pekins, Jimmy Black, Michael Jordan, Matt Doherty, and James Worthy, UNC's NCAA 1982 basketball national champions starting five

Despite this abundance of talent North Carolina was far from dominate in most of its game during that season, losing twice, including once to unranked Wake Forest 55 - 48. To win the ACC tournament championship game against Virginia UNC had to resort to the four corner stall for the last eight minutes, and then be fortunate enough to have Matt Doherty make three free throws in the last thirty seconds for the 47-45 victory. Even in its first game of the NCAA tournament Carolina barely eked out a victory over the much less talented James Madison team 52-50.

In the NCAA championship game UNC needed every bit of luck it could muster. Georgetown's center Patrick Ewing blocked five Carolina shots in the first half, but all  were ruled goaltending, giving the Heels nearly one third of their first half points. Even so Georgetown held a 32 to 31 lead a halftime. For the entire second half the game stayed close, and with 32 seconds left Georgetown had a 62 – 61 lead. At this time Carolina called a time out that set up the most remembered shot in UNC history. Jimmy Black got the incoming ball and with 16 seconds left passed it to freshman Michael Jordan who was wide open, and made an incredible 17 foot jump shot giving the Tarheels a one point lead at 63 – 62. Still with more than ten seconds left, and in possession of the ball, Georgetown seemed poised to win the game with a final shot until Fortuna the Roman Goddess of Luck intervened. For some inexplicable reason Georgetown guard Fred Brown who had to choose which of his four team mates to pass the ball to for the final shot, instead passed the ball to North Carolina’s James Worthy thus giving the Tarheels their first basketball NCAA title since 1957.

Remembered as "The Shot", freshman Michael Jordan's 17 foot jump shot against Georgetown for NCAA title

James Worthy, not Michael Jordan, was the key player in the game scoring 28 points, and was named the most outstanding player of the NCAA Tournament. The mystery to me was how this Carolina team was not more dominant in the championship and throughout the season. It is rare for a team to have even one truly great player on its roster, and Carolina that season had three of the greatest in history. While it is true that some of their opponents had great players that year, including Ralph Sampson at Virginia and Ewing at Georgetown, UNC had three, and the two other Carolina starters that year Jimmy Black and Matt Doherty, one of Carolina’s best outside shooters, were outstanding. I’ve always believed Dean Smith was a great coach and exceptional recruiter, but that his coaching style which emphasized a slow moving and low scoring offense designed to get the ball as close to the basket as possible before a shot was taken, was not suited for the talents and athletic ability for most of this team. In those days there was no thirty-five second clock or three-point shot for long range baskets. The 1982 team had the ability to play a fast paced offense, and had a great defense led by Carolina’s all time leading shot blocker Sam Perkins. Finally Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, and Matt Doherty were among the best long range shooters ever to play the game, yet it was very unusual for any Tarheel to take a shot from what is now considered three-point range.

Another view of Michael Jordan's gaming winning shot in 1982 UNC National Championship game 

by Charly Mann

For more than twenty-five years of my life in Chapel Hill I lived near an area off Whitfield Road near Duke Forest and across from a small pond. During the late spring and early summer hundreds of wild tiger lilies bloomed around its shore. There is a joy and beauty in the lily that affects me like no other flower, and I think this feeling may be universal. Over the decades I have found nearly a dozen places around Chapel Hill where houses once stood, or along roadsides, where other types of lilies bloom. This is a collection of my photographs of these Chapel Hill lilies.

These are fairly common if you look around. I found this one by a pond in Finley golf course.

This Lily was found off the Bolin Creek Trail in Chapel Hill

Found along the bank of Morgan Creek

Discoved in an abandoned garden by a burned down farm house off Old Chapel Hill Road

I found this Lily on Hatch Road near Highway 54 outside of Carrboro

Water Lily in pond off Whitfield Road Chapel Hill

Star Lily that I came across very near Hogan's Lake in Chapel Hill

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.

 

by Charly Mann

Orange County Training School 1949 Band, Chapel Hill, NC

Orange County Training School was the first black high school in Chapel Hill. Unlike the all-white schools in town where the land and funding for construction came from tax revenues, OCTS was built in 1924 on nine acres of land donated by black businessman Henry Stroud, and much of the construction costs were funded by the black community as well as a grant from Julius Rothenwald, a Jewish businessman who was president and part owner of Sears. Chapel Hill began funding the school in 1930 after the black community held a special election allowing their homes to be taxed at a higher rate than white homes. Nevertheless, Chapel Hill's black schools never received comparative funding to the white schools.

Lincoln High School Senior Prom 1954, Chapel Hill, NC

In 1950 the black community voted to change the name of the school to Lincoln High School because they felt Orange County Training School sounded like a juvenile reformatory. The school was located on Merritt Mill Road near the railroad tacks, and is now used as the administrative offices for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

Lincoln High School Chapel Hill Class of 1962

From 1951 to its closing in 1966, Lincoln High School provided the black residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro a great sense of pride, community, and tradition. Academic excellence was instilled by its teachers and principals, and the its football team and marching band were the best in the state. In 1957, 1961, and 1962 its Lincoln High School Tiger's football team were the state champions. (I often heard that any Lincoln team at this time could decisively beat any UNC football team). Almost all the parents knew every teacher because they not only attended the same churches, but were also involved in raising funds for the school to buy library books, team uniforms, and band instruments.

Lincoln High School's 1950 Girls and Boys Basketball Teams, Chapel Hill, NC

Alberta Jones, Lincoln High School Senior, Chapel Hill, Goodbye Poem 1955

Special thanks to Stephanie Scott for supplying the photos for this article

For Chapel Hill residents and UNC students of the1960s and 70s no other bar in town was as quintessential as The Shack on Rosemary Street. It literally was an old shack that seemed to just barely be standing.

1966 Advertisement for The Shack

The Shack, Rosemary Street Chapel Hill

Jeff Seaton, who submitted this photo, was there the night The Shack closed in the late spring of 1979. He recalls seeing the owner/bartender, Wheaties, selling the last beer that night from the cooler. According to Seaton The Shack was especially popular with the frat and sorority crowd in the evenings. The afternoon crowd at the Shack   was much more local characters. Thel Jernigan who owned the bakery on Franklin known as Thel’s was a regular. People usually stood at the Shack but there were a few booths. Their shuffle board bowling machine was the most popular game and always utilized. Jeff said he often went to the Shack with fellow Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity brothers, and Chapel Hill residents, Jon Barrett (also known as Johnny) and Lennie Jernigan, Thel’s son.

The Shack was one of about a dozen Chapel Hill businesses that stayed segregated until the Civil Rights Act of July 2nd, 1964 became law

The Shack was one of the main locations for the sexploitation film, Three in the Attic, which was filmed in Chapel Hill in 1968.

One of the worst movies ever made, but it was filmed in Chapel Hill with some great scenes inside The Shack