219 East Franklin Street

Text

WILLIAM TANKERSLEY HOUSE
c. 1911, 1960s, 1980s
This two-story, gable-on-hip-roofed, Colonial Revival-style house has a distinctive two-story, engaged front porch with decorative wrought-iron posts and railings. The house is three bays wide and five bays deep with plain weatherboards, a wide cornice, and two interior brick chimneys. A six-panel door, centered on the façade, has multi-light, geometric-light sidelights and transom. It is flanked by replacement nine-over-nine wood-sash windows with six-light sidelights at the first floor level. On the second-floor façade, a pair of fifteen-light French doors open to the second-floor porch and are flanked by paired ten-light casement windows. All of the windows have molded wood lintels and several second-floor windows on the right (east) and left (west) elevations have modern metal balconies on metal knee brackets that serve as fire escapes from the second floor. The two-story porch is supported by decorative wrought-iron posts with a wrought-iron frieze and decorative wrought-iron railing at the second-floor level. The first floor porch was modified before 1974 with the construction of a low brick wall that encircles the porch. There are louvered vents in the small gables, twelve-over-twelve wood-sash windows on the first-floor side elevations, and eight-over-eight windows at the second-floor level. A one-story, hip-roofed wing at the left rear (northwest) has an inset screened porch at its rear and a metal railing at the roofline. A one-story, hip-roofed wing on the rear (north) elevation has eight-over-twelve windows. A second-floor catwalk at the left rear connects to a large, two-story, T-shaped, gable-on-hip-roofed wing that faces East Rosemary Street at the rear. The catwalk has bands of eight-over-eight wood-sash windows over weatherboards. The rear wing features double-hung windows with transoms along the west elevation, and three one-story, inset bays on the east elevation that feature full-height doors and windows that open to an uncovered terrace. The wing has eight-over-eight windows at the second-floor level and an entrance on the rear (north) elevation is sheltered by a hip-roofed porch supported by turned posts on a brick foundation. A low stone wall extends across the front of the property bordering the sidewalk. The house appears on 1911 map with a large rear addition by 1925, however the current rear addition likely dates to the 1980s, likely when the building began use as a sorority house. In 1928, it was occupied by William Tankersley [Bryant].

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.