Stone walls

Geology professor Elisha Mitchell is credited with bringing the distinctive stone walls to the university campus. Serving double duty as faculty member and university bursar, Mitchell was charged with enclosing the campus, partly as a means of defining the boundaries of the university, but also to k...

Grimes Residence Hall

Grimes Residence Hall opened in 1922, along with Mangum, Ruffin, and Manly dorms. During World War II the four dorms housed U.S. Navy cadets. There is some question as to whom this naming honored. The UNC Board of Trustees minutes record that the honoree was Bryan Grimes (1828—1880), while lat...

Activism

UNC—Chapel Hill students have often worked together to advocate for issues or push for change. Early in the university's history, students collectively petitioned the administration, for example, to complain about food on campus. In 1861 a group of students wrote to the university administ...

Flower Ladies

The flower ladies were a Franklin Street institution for most of the twentieth century. A group of local African American women began selling homegrown flowers on Franklin Street as early as the 1920s. They were popular with students and local residents. By the late 1960s more street vendors joined ...