Carolina Inn (Chapel Hill, N.C.)

Visitors to Chapel Hill in the years around 1920 faced a troubling dilemma. Hotel accommodations were scarce, and when the privately owned and sadly dilapidated University Inn was gutted by fire in November 1921, the town lost its only provider of short-term commercial lodging.

The following year, University of North Carolina alumnus and trustee John Sprunt Hill proposed to alleviate the accommodations shortage by forming the Carolina Club Inn Inc., a non-stock corporation devoted to securing funds for a combination alumni center, faculty club, and hotel for the use of the University community. As part of this plan, approved by the Board of Trustees on 2 November 1922, Hill offered to donate the old Graves property located at the intersection of Cameron Avenue and Pittsboro Road, former site of the eighteenth-century New Hope Chapel, from which Chapel Hill took its name.

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