517 North Street

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DR. J. G. DE ROULHAC HAMILTON HOUSE
1914, 1924, 1960s
This one-and-a-half-story, hip-roofed bungalow is notable for its broad sweeping porch, but has been significantly altered with the addition of flat-roofed dormers on the side elevations, a glass skylight on the front roof slope, and multiple side and rear additions. The house is three bays wide and double-pile with plain weatherboards, two-over-two wood-sash windows on the façade, and replacement windows on the side elevations. A projecting entrance bay, centered on the façade, has paired doors flanked by paired ten-light casement windows in lieu of sidelights. The entrance bay has a glass-sheathed, shed roof that allows light from the skylight in the roof above to penetrate the center hall. The full-width, inset porch is supported by full-height, weatherboard-covered piers and has a low matchstick railing. The house has exposed rafter tails throughout and two interior brick chimneys. Shed-roofed dormers on the side elevations, constructed before 1974, have weatherboards and fixed windows, including some stained-glass windows. A two-room, hip-roofed wing was constructed at the left rear (northwest) in 1924 with an inset porch, matching the front porch, on its west elevation that was enclosed between 1974 and 1992. There is a projecting gabled bay on the right (east) elevation of the house, though a matching bay on the left elevation was enlarged between 1974 and 1992 to its current form as hip-roofed wing with a projecting gabled bay on its west elevation. A shed-roofed bay projects from the left elevation of the main house and connects to a shed-roofed porch the front of the hip-roofed wing. There is a hip-roofed wing at the right rear (northeast) and a shed-roofed wing across the rear of the house. A stone wall extends along the front of the property and along a driveway on the right side of the house.

In 1914, Dr. J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, head of the University of North Carolina History Department from 1908 to 1930, engaged N. C. Curtis, architect, to design his house in an adaptation of the currently popular “shingle style.” Essentially a square form, the house featured a broad verandah across the front and contained six rooms. In 1924 two additional rooms were added to the northwest corner of the house in an identical style with a matching porch. Dr. Hamilton was probably best known for his work in assembling the Southern Historical Collection at the University of Chapel Hill. The house appears on the 1915 Sanborn map.

In the 2015 survey, this was deemed a Noncontributing 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.