'Deep roots': The Carolina Inn celebrates 100 years of history in Chapel Hill

Furniture was one of Kenneth Zogry’s passions in the 1990s. In his 30s, Zogry was not like other traditional graduate students. Already, he had started a career in history and museum work and been published, but he knew that without a more specialized degree, he would not go much farther in his career.

So, to UNC he travelled — just like the many students before him, and the many students to come. Zogry saw himself on a mission for potential and success, an echoing alma mater following him, beating through the veins of an institution that has survived intricate and complex eras of U.S. history, from the American Revolution to the Civil War to the Great Depression to the Cold War.

Zogry became a colleague and friend of James Leloudis, a history professor. One day, Leloudis approached Zogry with an opportunity: to work on the historical preservation of The Carolina Inn, which was to undergo just one of many renovations the iconic and historic building has seen, spanning the larger part of the 20th century.

Built in 1924, The Carolina Inn appears, to many, timeless — a snapshot of Southern tradition, a permanent sun illuminating its blossoming gardens and green landscape, its columns and grand porticos seemingly ancient and immortal. For any student walking from off campus from their sparsely decorated apartment, trekking to class among thousands of other students, there stands the imposing and long-lasting legacy of UNC.

“People tend to think — they look at the outside of that building — and they think that it’s frozen in time, it’s been that way since 1924,” Zogry said. “Well, it hasn’t.”

Despite the hotel's allure, Zogry was unconvinced. 

“I don’t do hotel history,” he told Leloudis. But this became a statement which embarrassed Zogry in the next 20 years as he uncovered the vast and tumultuous history which stands as a testament to a University dedicated to research and academia. At the crossroads between Southern tradition and liberal academia, The Inn isa testament to the past, to the future, and the University’s ever-demanding present.

“Also like a person of great age, the story of this place is complex; sometimes joyful and sometimes sorrowful, sometimes proud and sometimes embarrassing,” Zogry wrote in his preface to "The University’s Living Room: A History of the Carolina Inn," which he published in 1999. “But these contradictions are what makes this place, and its history, so compelling.”

Changing times

In the early 20th century, UNC was an entirely different institution than the one many observe today. It was a much smaller campus, its first few buildings a “hodge podge” of whichever architectural styles were prominent at the time, Zogry said.

Memorial Hall was inspired by Victorian-gothic architecture, and many have described it as "coffin shaped," he said. Playmakers Theatre was a Greek revival building while Phillips Hall was more gothic.

Much like a prep school, professors did not have doctoral degrees. For students’ final exams, they would stand before academics and relay what they had been working on. Afterward, they would receive their degree. In more ways than one, UNC was a public institution that was highly exclusive to the sons of prominent white landowners in the South, and their degrees were either to confirm or establish their social positions, or to merely broaden their own intellectual horizons.

UNC briefly closed in the 1870s because of the Civil War, and when it reopened, the University was at a loss for how to reconcile with the "New South." Journalist Henry W. Grady coined this term in his work as the editor of the Atlanta Constitution to describe and call for a South which was modernized and had integrated with the rest of the United States. Additionally, this term was used to describe an effort to reconstruct a Southern economy which was built on the labor of enslaved people.

Led by President Kemp Plummer Battle alongside a more progressive board of trustees, the University created the research-focused, academic landscape in 1885 that would inspire John Sprunt Hill to conceive of and create The Carolina Inn. 

“John Sprunt Hill was very much involved in the carefully planned expansion of the University campus,” Zogry wrote in the first chapter of his book. “Thus his idea to build an adequate inn did not sprout solely from his desire for pleasant accommodations, but was firmly rooted in this overall conceptualization of a modern, full service university.”

After graduating in 1889, Hill went on to become a successful businessman and then a University trustee in 1905. Alongside William Rand Kenan Jr. and John Motley Morehead III, the three were critical in the development of UNC as a full-fledged research institution, Zogry said.

Although formed in 1843, there was little interest in the Alumni Association before the Civil War. But during Hill, Kenan and Morehead’s time as students at UNC, President Battle worked to build support for the University. In 1888, UNC’s football program was born, and the combination of increased alumni support and a new passion for the football program became a problem since there was very little lodging in Chapel Hill.

As a passionate alumnus, Hill was not satisfied with the accommodations already on Franklin Street, which were more like taverns and only had a few rooms.

Sold in 1902, Julia Graves’ boarding house was one such accommodation.

“It was here under the great oak tree that John Sprunt Hill, gazing at the Graves House, had his vision of the Carolina Inn that moonlit night in 1921,” Zogry wrote in his first chapter.

From a mythical vision to reality, The Carolina Inn was decisively formed, and Graves’ boarding house would go on to become the early cafeteria of the Inn.

A new University

From 1921 to 1942, the New York firm McKim, Mead and White as well as Thomas C. Atwood and Company of Durham built 35 buildings at the University upon being hired by trustees. Among them were Kenan Stadium in 1927 and Wilson Library in 1931.

Hill was a chair of the building committee, and was thus closely involved with the process. Fueled by his own vision for The Inn as a place for the University and its alumni, Hill hired Arthur C. Nash, who was critical in the University’s building design. The Inn and other new campus buildings followed neoclassical design, though Nash deviated slightly since The Inn was private at the time.

Zogry said that in the 1920s, The Inn was almost a playground between liberal and conservative politics. This divide was manifest between the intellectuals running the University and the alumni who came from older families, he said.

The Inn was a political stage, a melting pot between a complicated, remembered past and a progressive, future-minded academia.

For its first 10 years, The Inn continued to be privately owned by Hill. But in June of 1935, Hill gave The Inn to UNC Gov. J.C.B. Ehringhaus who expressed gratitude for the gift. But at the time Hill presented this gift, The Inn was struggling financially because of the Great Depression. In many ways, the University and The Inn were codependent in its early years: The survival of The Inn was dependent on the University, and the University needed space for its alumni.

Until 1993, the Alumni Association had permanent headquarters at The Inn. The Inn, then, was more than just a response to growing needs, more than just a vision Hill had on one moonlit night.

While The Inn was born out of a period of drastic change in the University as an institution — a change imagined by more progressive thinkers and alumni — The Inn architecturally represents visions of the old South. From its early conception to its realization, Nash intended to design an inn which appeared older than it was, as old as UNC itself.

While both buildings are 50 years apart in age, Zogry said, The Inn has architectural elements of both George Washington’s Virginia home, Mount Vernon, and an 1826 Louisiana plantation called Richland. Mount Vernon manifests in The Inn’s two-story portico, facing Cameron Avenue, as well as in its glazed cupola — a small, dome-like structure found at the top of the building. The double chimney stacks, on the other hand, bring forth the vision of an old plantation.

It is an architecture inspired by a nostalgia for the South, a politically motivated architectural wonder designed to appeal to older alumni, Zogry said.

But its architecture is not the only evidence of The Inn’s place as an institution deeply rooted in UNC’s history. 

In 1937, The Inn saw its first labor dispute during a banking convention, where acting manager Leigh Skinner authorized the hiring of 150 to 200 more workers, all of whom were reportedly African American men. These workers went on strike for unfair pay, they told Skinner, but Skinner did not meet their demands.

By the 1940s, the fear of communism had reached UNC’s campus, and then-President Frank Porter Graham’s progressive politics came into question as liberalism in general began to be questioned as a guise for spreading communism. In response, Graham hired William D. Carmichael, Jr. to become University controller. Carmichael was personally and professionally tied to NC’s more conservative-minded communities. When Carmichael came to UNC, he made executive changes in the design and functioning of The Inn to create a more traditional, classically Southern atmosphere as a direct response to these societal fears of progressivism.

To do so, Carmichael hired renowned interior designer Otto Zenke, who purchased custom-made china for the tables. One such china set was a rendition of The Inn made to look like the Tara plantation from "Gone With the Wind."

“Carmichael was able to conflate colonial and antebellum Southern history in one romanticized image, and to suggest that ‘traditional’ values were cherished at The Carolina Inn and at the University of North Carolina,” Zogry wrote in the third chapter.

The "Gone With the Wind" allusions did not stop at the new china. Carmichael then began to create menus which featured allusions to a traditional, conservative South.

“'THE OLD SOUTH… God bless it and keep it… The Land of cotton, tobacco, plantation mansions, magnolias, moonlight and music is not altogether gone with the wind,’ the menu declared, and ‘the atmosphere of the good old days — the informality, the conviviality, the high spirits — still lives in a few places like The Carolina Inn,'” Zogry wrote.

The Civil Rights Movement, however, was not to go unnoticed by progressivists at the University — and neither would their response be unnoticed by conservatives running The Inn.

The University did not accept Black undergraduates until a court order forced them to in 1955, and a year later, The Inn produced a brochure depicting on its cover a “deferential African American porter opening the front door,” Zogry wrote.

These early advertisements for The Inn were completely intentional, Marcie Cohen Ferris, author of "The Edible South" and UNC professor in the Department of American Studies, said.

“They're showing a very racialized South, where labor is Black,” she said. “People of color wait on us here, and so it reinforces racist codes, racial codes.”

A history of the South

In many ways, the South is the story it has told of itself, Ferris said. 

“So, you've got this branding thing, of selling this romantic South, and selling this ‘mythic’ South is really the better way to say it,” she said. “At the same time that the most horrific stuff is happening, which is the rise of white supremacy to push back at a post-Civil War South.”

In the 1950s, food served at The Inn would have been more traditionally white Southern food, she said, serving perhaps quail on a bed of grits or steak or fried fish — but a little more upscale. Southern food as a whole, however, is strongly influenced by a combination of European, Indigenous and African cuisine and food-making practices, she said.

“Those are the three core aspects that make it so incredibly interesting and powerful and probably the most important and unique food culture in our country,” Ferris said.

Southern hospitality is one of the core tenets of the South as a culture distinct from the rest of the United States, but Ferris said this idea is complex.

“What's so interesting about Southern hospitality — that idea — if you flip it, you see enslavement and control and white supremacy,” she said. “And you could also flip it and see white and Black families experiencing hospitality, people of color experiencing hospitality. So, of course, everybody can own that.”

Broader farm to table movements in the South have led to a more equitable vision of Southern dining, compared to dining which was manifest in many white-only establishments in the 1950s, she said. The South is a diverse place, and the food of the South must communicate that, while also ensuring that the process of laboring for the food is equitable and provides fair wage.

More pork, more greens, salsas, Indian ingredients and indigenous flavors all lead to a Southern food cuisine which is culturally complex and diverse — a version of the South that is not based in white supremacist control and fabrication, she said.

Along with food, however, Ferris said that music stands as an important testament to the richness of the South, including ways that the idea of the South can be democratized. Fridays on the Front Porch at The Carolina Inn give an opportunity for all community members to come and listen to music, and only purchase beer and food if they choose, which she said was a commendable, inclusive way The Inn has expanded its efforts to be inclusive.

Heidi Werner Dawson has been working at The Inn for nearly 14 years and is currently the director of sales and marketing, and she said when she first walked into the building, she felt like she was at home.

“Everybody feels in the community, like they own a little piece of The Carolina Inn. It’s been here 100 years,” she said. “People are like, ‘Oh, that's my corner, that's my chair,’ they feel comfortable navigating to where they're going.”

"The University’s living room" is an accurate description of The Inn, Dawson said, because it is a place for gathering, for people to see their families and experience critical moments in their lives, from weddings to birthday celebrations.

A culture of hospitality and of the South — specifically, an inclusive South — is something Dawson is dedicated to, she said. Among those is their afternoon tea parties. Most recently, The Inn hosted the Centennial Tea Party series, which concluded in June.

“It's a place where, even though you're out in public, it's a comfortable spot for people to come, and just be,” she said. “And I love that.”

Zogry said that the foot traffic in The Carolina Inn made him realize that it was a critical spot to introduce people to the vast and diverse history of the hotel. It’s getting the history out there, he said, and not just The Inn’s history, but UNC’s history as the institution people know of today.

The Inn is not frozen in time, he said, and it is not a static institution now. Rather, it is continuous, much like the South and its future.

“The students, they should understand that coming in that they're part of this too,” he said. “And that it may be all new to them, but some of it has very deep roots in the in the past.”

A tea party

In 1993, The Inn changed its business model to hire private management, separate from the University. While The Inn remains an important University site, its dedication is to the community, Dawson said.

Since then, The Inn has undergone some renovations, including one that Zogry was a part of during his time at The Inn.

When Zogry finished his doctoral degree, him and a friend who finished her doctorate at the same time hosted a luncheon at The Inn, inviting their friends and family to celebrate.

This culture of celebration is one that continues at The Inn.

On June 9, The Carolina Inn hosted its last Centennial Tea Party, which was a 1920s inspired assortment of sweet and savory tea items, including three different types of tea.

Held in two small rooms near the Old Well Room — the Alumni Room and the Club Room —  attendees sat at tables, covered in white tablecloth, sparkling chandeliers and classical music calling back to times lost — and remembered.

At one table, two guests wore 1920s garb, their hair intricately pinned, their dresses glimmering at they chatted and sipped their tea.

Afternoon tea is a largely British practice, Ferris said, but is indeed deeply Southern. But the practice of afternoon teas at The Inn did not start until the ‘90s. Today, many people attend the teas, including some long-time participants, and some stopping by for a birthday or anniversary.

On June 9, the menu included deviled eggs with caviar, pimento cheese and smoked salmon sandwiches, lemon tarts and cream puffs. Teacups and plates with various designs balanced on tables, from blue plates with roses to white plates with blue ribbon designs etched on plate rims.

It was an overcast Sunday afternoon. Everyone mingled with their friends and family, smiling and enjoying their food and tea.

“One main theme of all of this — and [when] you're talking about tradition — is that history repeats itself,” Zogry said.

@morganmbrenner

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