Chapel Hill's Christmas Past
by Charly Mann
For most of Chapel Hill’s history Franklin Street was filled with independent stores and restaurants. Christmas shopping downtown was a relaxing experience in holiday ambiance where every store carried unique gifts and customer service was always personalized.
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Comments:
Joanne Falconer Perry
2:03 PM Fri 4/8/2011
For Bob Patterson: I believe the toy shop you refer to was actually called Pace's.<br \>It was a gift shop and had such wonderful, fun items in it for all ages.
vwlinney
3:45 PM Tue 12/28/2010
J B Robbins! I bought my most beautiful calfskin red and navy slingbacks there. They were stunners. There was a calculus prof, JB Linker, whose signature so resembled the JB Robbins logo that I have always suspected he designed it for them. Classmates used to give Dr. Linker a SAS postcard for an exam a final grade just to get his fluorishing signature.
Bob Patterson
5:36 PM Tue 12/7/2010
I always loved Christmas in Chapel Hill. Do you recall the toy store next to the Dairy Bar in Glen Lennox? My parents use to get me Dinky Toy die cast cars and trucks that were made in England for gifts there for several years.
Babara Hayes
3:01 PM Sat 12/4/2010
I was 12 in 1955 and lived in Pittsboro. One of my fondest memories was going with my mother to shop in downtown Chapel Hill on Saturdays. In 1955 my mother allowed me to pick out at beautiful dress at J.B. Robbins for Christmas. That was a great store and it was sad when it closed in the late 1960s.
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.
Charly, the name of the owner of Leo's restaurant was Elias Eliatis (I am not sure of the spelling but it is close enough). I used to eat breakfast and lunch there when it was located at the back of the bus station, where the Franklin Hotel now stands. I worked at the Univeristy National Bank which was across the street from the bus station in the site of the present day Hamm's restaurant.