The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill Holiday House Tour

The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill at the Horace Williams House

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The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill's 2005 Holiday House Tour

Hidden Gems in Battle’s Park
Featuring Boundary, Senlac, Hooper and Battle Lanes

Saturday, December 10, 2005 and Sunday, December 11, 2005 - 1 - 5 p.m.

The Horace Williams House - Headquarters for the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

The Horace Williams House - Headquarters for the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Tickets go on sale November 1, 2005, for the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill’s 2005 Holiday House Tour, to be held Saturday and Sunday, December 10 and 11, 2005, from 1 to 5 p.m. each day. All of the homes are located in the two blocks just south of the 500 block of Franklin Street, on the outskirts of beautiful Battle Park, on Boundary Street, Hooper and Battle Lanes, and Senlac Road.

Homes featured on the tour include Senlac (the Battle House, now home to the UNC Baptist Student Union), home to several generations of the Battle family, including Kemp Plummer Battle, president of UNC from 1876 to 1891, and shaper of Battle’s Park, the 93-acre forest now being revived and maintained by the NC Botanical Garden.

In addition to this 19th century home, the tour will feature houses built on lots carved out of the original six acres of the Senlac property in the 1920s, including the McClamroch-Hogue-DeFriese house built by UNC English professor Roland Prince McClamroch and boyhood home to former Chapel Hill mayor and WCHL and Carol Woods founder Sandy McClamroch.

Tour goers who were intrigued by the renovation of the Kennette house on Franklin Street, the talk of the Preservation Society’s 1999 tour, will want to investigate Clay and Margaret Hamners’ renovations and additions to the Patterson-O’Keefe House, also on Senlac Road. The tour features homes built by Albert and Gladys Coates, founders of the UNC Institute of Government, now home to Kathryn Bell, and the former home of Louis and Mim Graves, founders of the nationally known Chapel Hill Weekly, which is now the elegant residence of Martha and Wilson Cross.

Wyndham Robertson and Alan and Linda Rimer will open their Hooper Lane houses, built originally for pioneering women Mary Henderson, Elizabeth Henderson Cotten, and Mary Graves Rees. Mary Clara Capel’s cottage on Boundary Street was home to award-winning amateur golfer Gladys Lawson Page and her husband Julius. Each of the sites will be decorated to reflect the owners’ personal holiday traditions.

In addition to these private residences, The Chapel Hill Museum, the Chapel Hill Historical Society, and Preservation Society headquarters at the Horace Williams House, will be open to highlight the year-round efforts of these organizations to celebrate and preserve the unique historic character of Chapel Hill. There will be live musical performances at many tour locations, including the Horace Williams House, which will also feature an exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth City painter Mary Crutchfield and work by Raleigh photographer John Wall.

Tickets for the tour are $20 in advance and may be purchased from the Preservation Society at the Horace Williams House, the Chapel Hill Museum, Salutations in Meadowmont, The Painted Bird in Carr Mill Mall, Womancraft in Eastgate, the Purple Puddle on Elliot Road, University Florist on Franklin Street, Botanica in Univesity Square, Bloom at Southern Village, Morgan Imports in Durham, Pace at Glen Lennox, McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington, and A Southern Season in University Mall. Tickets may be purchased for $25 each on the day of the tour, only at the Horace Williams House, the Chapel Hill Historical Society headquarters at the Boundary Street entrance to the Chapel Hill Museum building, and the Chapel Hill Museum. Payment for all tickets by check (made payable to The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill) or cash only, please!

This tour is an important fund-raising event that sustains the ongoing work of the Preservation Society to protect the built and natural environment of Chapel Hill and is an opportunity for the public to get a look inside some of the loveliest and most significant properties that give our community its unique charm. For more information, contact PSCH director Catherine Frank at 919-942-7818 or chpreservation@mindspring.com.

The Homes