223 East Franklin Street

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COATES BUILDING
1939
This two-story, side-gabled, Colonial Revival-style institutional building is seven bays wide and three bays deep with a Flemish-bond brick veneer, raised basement with soldier-course brick watertable, an exterior brick chimney on the rear (north) elevation, pedimented gables, and a slate roof. The entrance, centered on the façade, is a three-panel door with multi-light transom and classical surround with fluted pilasters and a broken-arch pediment. The entrance is sheltered by a three-bay-wide, two-story, flat-roofed portico supported by columns with “temple of the winds” capitals. A modern concrete ramp access the portico from its left (west) elevation. Barely visible above the portico are three arched dormers with multi-light fanlights on the façade. The building has twelve-over-twelve wood-sash windows with arched upper sashes under decorative round brick arches, keystones, and wood sills on the first floor. Second-floor windows are eight-over-eight windows with flat brick arches and wood sills. There is an arched double-hung window in each gable and an exterior metal fire stair on each gable end that accesses entrances at each floor. There are seven slate-covered hip-roofed dormers, each with a six-over-six window, on the rear elevation. Additionally, two entrances on the rear elevation each have paired eight-light-over-one-panel doors with arched fanlights, mimicking the form of the first-floor windows, and accessed by an uncovered concrete stair with metal railing; otherwise rear windows match those on the façade. Basement-level windows are six-over-six wood-sash windows. A low stone wall extends across the front of the property and there is paved parking at the rear. The building, designed by H. Raymond Weeks, was completed in 1939. The building was originally used as the Institute of Government, which was created by Professor Albert Coates and Gladys Hall Coates.

IIn 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.