405 North Street
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PUGH HOUSE
c. 1929, 1950s
Constructed as a six-room, center-hall-plan, Craftsman-style house, this one-story, side-gabled house is three bays wide and single-pile with a near-full-width, two-story, gabled rear wing with a ridge slightly higher than the main roof ridge. The house has unusual molded weatherboards, six-over-six wood-sash windows, and an exterior brick chimney in the right (east) gable. The one-light-over-one-panel, Craftsman-style door is centered on the façade, flanked by double windows, and sheltered by a full-width, inset porch supported by tapered wood columns on brick piers. The porch has a low gable over the entrance and a matchstick railing between the piers. There is a shed-roofed addition beyond the rear wing and a low stone wall extends along the sidewalk and the driveway at the right side of the house.
County tax records date the house to 1929 and the house appears on the 1932 Sanborn map. It was constructed by Mr. and Mrs. Pugh. Pugh owned and operated a printing company in downtown Chapel Hill, with the bulk of his business coming from the university. He was often referred to as “the University’s printer.” After World War II, Mrs. Pugh incorporated a two-story addition to the back of the house to serve as rental rooms for the influx of university students. The house was used by the Chi Omega sorority in the 1970s and 1980s and was then divided into apartments. In 1992, the house was converted once again to a single-family residence.
In the 2015 survey, this was deemed a Contributing Building.
GARAGE
c. 1930
Front-gabled, frame garage has German-profile weatherboards and replacement overhead doors on the south elevation. It is connected to the rear of the house by a gabled breezeway supported by square posts. 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.
