Entries

Wilson-Hall

16 Apr: Wilson Hall

Wilson Hall

Opened in 1940, Wilson is located on a hill near the corner of South Road and Columbia Street, described as "one of the most beautiful natural grounds for a building" on campus. It was built to house classrooms, laboratories, and offices for the Department of Biology and was expanded in 1965. The building is named for Henry Van Peters Wilson, hired in 1891 as the first biology professor at UNC, who later became chair of the Department of Zoology. He taught until his retirement in 1936. The proximity of Wilson Hall to Wilson Library has been an ongoing source of frustration to the first-year students seen every year on the first day of class wandering the halls of the library looking for their biology classroom.

Date Established: 1939

Date Range: 1939 – Present

Wilson Library, 1929. Photo by Bayard Wootten. Bayard Wootten Photo Collection, North Carolina Collection Photo Archives, Wilson Library.

 

16 Apr: Whitehead Hall

Whitehead Hall

Located next to the Carolina Inn, Whitehead was completed in 1938 as a dormitory for students in the medical school. Funded in part by money from the Public Works Administration, the dorm was part of a major expansion of on-campus housing for students. It is named for Richard Henry Whitehead, dean of the medical school and a professor of anatomy.

16 Apr: White Phantoms

White Phantoms

From the 1920s through the early 1950s the men's basketball team was known informally as the "White Phantoms." They were still the Tar Heels; this was an unofficial nickname used often by journalists, similar to how University of Virginia sports teams were sometimes referred to as "Wahoos," a term still used by fans of the University of Virginia and journalists. The nickname was probably first used by a journalist in Atlanta watching the team during the 1925 Southern Conference championship. At the time the basketball players wore white uniforms with a blue "NC" logo on the chest. The name is also said to refer to the fast, fluid play of the team. UNC was not the only team with an unofficial nickname. A 1927 newspaper headline, "Red Terrors and White Phantoms Meet Tonight," referred to a basketball game between Carolina and N.C. State.

16 Apr: Victory Village

Victory Village

After World War II the university experienced a rapid increase in enrollment, especially among married students attending college on the GI Bill. Faced with a housing shortage, the university obtained former army barracks that were no longer needed by the military. These metal, prefabricated houses, installed in 1946, were intended as a temporary solution but would remain on campus for more than twenty years. The new housing community was named Victory Village. Future UNC System president William C. Friday and future chancellor William B. Aycock were among the many students who lived at one point in Victory Village. While they served a necessary purpose, they were unpopular. The Daily Tar Heel referred to the buildings as "architect's nightmares" and reported that they had been called, at various times, "egg-crate construction, fire traps, and bandboxes." After the last ones were finally demolished in the early 1970s, the name Victory Village continued to be used by a university-sponsored daycare center.

16 Apr: Victory Bell

Victory Bell

The Victory Bell is the prize awarded to the winner of the UNC-Duke football game each year. Cheerleaders from UNC and Duke came up with the idea in 1948, most likely inspired by the tradition of traveling trophies exchanged by other college rivals. The large bell was obtained from an old railroad engine and mounted on a wheeled platform. In the 2000s, the players began spray-painting the platform in the school color of the winning team. The spray-painting ended in 2016, when the schools agreed to a professional paint job for the platform that featured the logos of both teams.

Venable-and-Murray-Halls

16 Apr: Venable and Murray Halls

Venable and Murray Halls

Venable and Murray Halls are home to the Departments of Chemistry and Marine Science. The conjoined buildings opened in 2010 as the final phase of the Carolina Physical Science Complex, the largest construction project in university history. From 2004 to 2010 the university completed Chapman Hall, Caudill Labs, the Brooks Computer Science Building, and then Venable and Murray Halls to complete the complex.

Venable and Murray Halls replaced the first Venable Hall, built in 1925 as a home for the Department of Chemistry. For a time in the late 1980s the pharmaceutical firm Glaxo leased lab space in Venable until its facilities in Research Triangle Park were constructed.

Venable Hall old and new were named in honor of Francis Preston Venable, professor of chemistry and university president from 1900 to 1914. He was the first faculty member to hold a Ph.D., and both as faculty member and as president he helped begin the transformation of Carolina into a research institution.

Murray Hall is named in honor of professor emeritus Royce Murray, who began his career at Carolina in 1960. He is an internationally recognized scientist in electrochemistry and the chemistry of new materials, who led the committee that guided the design of lab facilities in the new buildings.

Date Established: 2010

Date Range: 2010 – Present

One of the landmark features of old Venable Hall was the huge periodic table in the chemistry classroom, shown here during a class in fall 1957. UNC Photo Lab Collection, North Carolina Collection Photo Archives, Wilson Library.

 

16 Apr: Vandermint Auditorium

Vandermint Auditorium

In the 1984 movie This Is Spinal Tap, the British metal band Spinal Tap played a concert in Chapel Hill at the fictional Vandermint Auditorium. Despite problems with the food backstage —guitarist Nigel Tufnel was upset by the "miniature bread" —the band delivered a rousing performance of their song "Hell Hole."

VanceHall_973

16 Apr: Vance Hall

Vance Hall

Vance Hall was built in 1912 as part of a three-part dormitory for men students, along with Battle and Pettigrew. It is on the northwest corner of McCorkle Place on Franklin Street . The buildings were converted to offices in the 1960s. In excavations related to building construction near the Pettigrew and Vance Hall sites, UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology staff have uncovered artifacts from prehistoric American Indian occupation.

Vance was named in honor of Zebulon Baird Vance, who studied law at Carolina. Vance was in the U.S. Congress in 1861 when North Carolina seceded. He resigned his seat and entered the Confederate army. He served as North Carolina governor from 1862 to 1865. After the war and the conservatives regained political power, Vance served again as governor from 1876 to 1878, and then in the U.S. Senate until his death.

Date Established: 1912

Date Range: 1912 – Present

Battle-Vance-Pettigrew building, ca. 1920s. Vance Hall is in the middle. UNC Image Collection, North Carolina Collection Photo Archives, Wilson Library.

 

16 Apr: Van Hecke-Wettach Hall

Van Hecke-Wettach Hall

Van Hecke-Wettach Hall, the current home of the UNC School of Law, sits on Ridge Road on the eastern edge of campus. The building was completed in 1968 to give more space for the law school, which had outgrown its home in Manning Hall. The building is named for two law school deans, Maurice Taylor Van Hecke and Robert H. Wettach, both of whom joined the law school faculty in 1921.

The building also houses the Katherine Robinson Everett Law Library, named in 1993 in recognition of Everett's support for the school and her career. Everett was the only woman in the law school class of 1920. She graduated first in her class, was one of the first women admitted to the state bar, and was the first woman to argue —and win —a case before the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was also one of the first two women to win a seat on the Durham City Council (1951), a seat she held for twenty years.

16 Apr: Utilities

Utilities

A major theme for the early twentieth-century history of the university and Chapel Hill —as it was for much of the United States —was the development of utilities. Both university and village grew steadily from the 1880s to 1930, adding students, faculty and staff, a new railroad line, and new residents and businesses. UNC made the transition from a liberal arts college focused on undergraduate education to a multipurpose university by adding graduate and professional study, research, publications, extension, and service to its mission. The population of Chapel Hill more than doubled, and the mill village that became Carrboro came into existence.

These new enterprises demanded new infrastructure: more buildings to house more students, new research labs, and new ways to move water and wastewater and to provide heat and light. UNC physics professor Joshua W. Gore built the first water plant in 1893. A steam pump moved water from a well south of Memorial Hall to storage tanks in the attic of South Building and then through underground pipes to showers, tubs, and toilets in the basement of Smith Hall (now historic Playmakers Theatre). Two years later Gore added a small electric lighting plant, and in 1901 he designed a new power plant built on the future site of Phillips Hall. For the first time steam heat and hot water were piped to campus buildings and sewage was piped away. Gore also installed and became co-owner of Chapel Hill's first telephone system.

In 1921 the university began to purchase land at the west end of Cameron Avenue, which eventually became the site of a power plant and laundry building. The laundry (now the Cheek/Clark Building) opened in 1921 and provided laundry and dry-cleaning services to students and town residents. The first power plant on the site opened in 1940.

As the university continued to expand campus utilities, it also extended service to the town of Chapel Hill. That ended in 1977, when Carolina sold all of its public utilities. Under an agreement with the state legislature negotiated by trustee Walter Royal Davis, the Chapel Hill campus kept most of the funds from the $40 million sale. This funded the construction of Davis Library and renovations to Wilson and Health Sciences Libraries. It also helped fund the plans for the cogeneration facility completed in 1986.

Today multiple systems handle utilities for the campus and UNC hospitals. The cogeneration facility produces steam for heating and hot water, while the electricity produced as a by-product helps to power electrical systems. Although it is powered by coal, the facility uses the latest technologies to minimize emissions and waste. The electric network consists of 820 electric and telecommunications manholes, tied together with 39 miles of duct bank, containing 68 miles of underground cable. Steam is distributed through an extensive network of underground steam and condensate return piping in excess of fifty miles. In partnership with Orange Water and Sewer Authority, the university operates a water reclamation and reuse system and a storm water system comprised of thousands of catch basins and inlets, miles of piping, and outfalls that discharge water into nearby creeks.