211 Hillsborough Street

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DANZIGER HOUSE
1919
The largest house on the block, this two-story, cross-gabled house is three bays wide and double-pile. It has plain weatherboards, six-over-six wood-sash windows, an exterior brick chimney on the right (north) elevation, and a projecting, two-story, three-sided hip-roofed bay with a metal roof centered on the façade. To the left of the projecting bay is an arched twelve-light window located between the first- and second-floor levels. The entrance, centered on the left (south) elevation, is a fifteen-light French door with ten-light sidelights and is flanked by paired high windows. It is sheltered by a cat-slide-roofed porch that extends the full depth of the left elevation and connects to the front gable; it is supported by full-height weatherboard-covered piers with arched spandrels. A one-story gabled wing projects from the left rear (southwest) and is accessed by a fifteen-light French door from the porch. A shed-roofed porch on the right elevation is supported by square columns and enclosed with screens. The side slopes to the right and rear revealing a basement level beneath the right side porch that is accessed by a door on the north elevation. There is a modern pergola that extends around the side and rear yards, enclosing a rear deck, as well as a low stone wall at the sidewalk.

The house was constructed in 1919 and in 1944 was purchased by the Danzigers, a family of Austrian refugees that had fled Hitler’s Europe. Mr Danziger opened a coffee and pastry shop on Franklin Street and his restaurant “The Rathskeller” was a familiar hangout for generations of university students. Later owner Joel Williamson taught race relations and Southern culture at the university. The house appears on the 1925 Sanborn map.

In the 2015 survey, this was deemed a Contributing Building.

SOURCE: Heather Wagner Slane, National Register of Historic Places Nomination: Chapel Hill Historic District Boundary Increase and Additional Documentation, Orange County, OR1750 (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, 2015), courtesy of the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office.