by Catherine Frank

The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. As we look forward to our next thirty years, we are looking for more ways to "protect the irreplaceable" and to cultivate an appreciation for the built and natural environment of Chapel Hill. The desire to preserve a place is in part a desire to maintain tangible reminders of our history; one of the best ways to persuade people to protect the "built environment" is to reveal that history and to teach people to "read" what buildings and places are telling them.

The Horace Williams House, the Preservation Society’s headquarters and one of its first successful preservation projects, has fascinating stories to tell. We hope that revealing the house’s history will compel visitors to analyze their surroundings in order to appreciate what makes Chapel Hill the "Southern Part of Heaven."

Even if we know nothing about its inhabitants, the structure itself records changes in attitude about design and building both nationally and locally. The oldest part of the house is a farmhouse built in the 1840s. It implies the simplicity and lack of pretension in early academic life in the community. An addition to the house, the Octagon Room built in the 1850s, suggests that even early in our history Chapel Hillians were looking for unconventional solutions to their housing needs. The final additions to the house were made in the 1880s and ’90s when the owner added the front porch that faces Franklin Street, the high-pitched ceiling in the entry way, the parlor and the intricate wood work that give the house a Victorian flourish.

Each addition to the house has reflected contemporary taste; each addition has also maintained the proportions and original character of older elements of the building. Most importantly, the house has always had a beautiful park-like setting; it has always been suited to and characterized by the beauty of its natural environment.

The house tells us a story of owners who respected their history while trying new things. Horace Williams, the last owner occupant of the house, did not make any physical changes to the structure. He did open the house to his students (including Thomas Wolfe and Paul Green) who apparently discussed everything from family dilemmas to Hegelian philosophy in the parlor that Williams had converted to a study.

The Preservation Society continues the legacy of making this an important place in the life of the community. The house now serves as a cultural arts facility. Each couple that rents the house for a wedding, each artist who displays work, each performer who gives a concert, each audience member who comes away inspired or puzzled, adds to the history of the place. Everyone who uses the house is shaped by its eccentricities and beauties.

While the Horace Williams House may be the only historic house open to the public in Chapel Hill, every house, every monument, every classroom in our community, has a story to tell. The Preservation Society is working to solicit and commemorate those stories in a number of ways. The society has worked with the Town of Chapel Hill and the State Historic Preservation Office to fund a survey of important buildings in Chapel Hill. The society has also received a grant to create a manuscript from the formal survey work so that the stories of our community’s buildings will be more widely available.

The society is sponsoring a holiday tour of homes in the Franklin-Rosemary historic district to be held Dec. 7-8 from 1 to 5 p.m. each day. The tour will focus on old and new homes and suggest the diversity and eclectic style of our historic districts that reflect the individuality and diversity of our community.

Finally, the Preservation Society is planning an exhibition during its 2003 season to be titled "Chapel Hill Places." We hope that many people will be inspired to create an image (whether it is a painting, a photograph, a poem, an essay, or a quilt, whether it is representational, expressionistic or abstract) of a place that epitomizes the spirit of Chapel Hill. In addition to places like the Old Well or Franklin Street that are part of our standard set of images of life in a college town, we hope that people will be inspired to commemorate the secret bend in Bolin Creek where they go every year to experience spring. We welcome artistic responses to controversial places (either here or long gone) like Meadowmont or the buildings and businesses that were civil rights battlegrounds. We hope to create a repository for images and memories of the built and natural environment that will inspire both the preservation of important places and the planning of new places that maintain our sense of who we are. Contact the Preservation Society for more details and to be included on a mailing list for applications. And stop by the Horace Williams House to see an exhibition, to hear a concert, or just to enjoy the lawn and the stories of the people who continue to haunt this strange little cottage. As we go into our next 30 years, we hope to find new ways to serve and involve the community in preserving the spirit of place.

Catherine Frank is executive director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.