Circus Room
Located in the Monogram Club building (now Jackson Hall), the Circus Room was a popular soda fountain and snack bar. The Circus Room opened following World War II. It was decorated with dark wood paneling and a twenty-five-foot-long wooden carving of circus animals. The Circus Parade was carved by hand by university employee Carl Boettcher, based on drawings by illustrator William Meade Prince. After renovations in the 1970s the Circus Parade moved to the Carolina Inn cafeteria. It now hangs in the George Watts Hill Alumni Center. The Circus Room remained open as a snack bar and convenience store and was popular with students for decades: when the Office of Undergraduate Admissions was planning an expansion in the 1980s, students circulated a petition asking that the Circus Room not be closed. It remained in place until the mid-2000s.
Date Established: 1946
Date Range: 1946 – 2005
Interior of the Circus Room showing Circus Parade carving, ca. 1960s. Durwood Barbour Postcard Collection, North Carolina Collection Photo Archives, Wilson Library.