711 East Franklin Street

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GORGON'S HEAD LODGE
c. 1920
Constructed as a lodge for the Gorgon’s Head Society, this one-story, hip-roofed, Craftsman-style structure is five bays wide and thee bays deep. The building is covered with wood shingles and has paired, diamond-paned-over-one-light windows. A three-bay-wide, projecting, hip-roofed entrance wing on the façade has paired six-panel doors sheltered by a pedimented, front-gabled porch supported by paneled square columns. The entrance is flanked by paired windows and a continuous wood windowsill extends around the full perimeter of the front wing. A single, hip-roofed bay projects from the right (east) and left (west) elevations, each with a tripartite window. A full-width, shed-roofed porch across the rear elevation is supported by square columns and has a matchstick railing. The building is set slightly below street level and has a brick and gravel parking pad at the front. The Order of the Gorgon’s Head, a secret society, was established at the University of North Carolina in 1896 to promote friendship, goodwill, and social fellowship among its upper-class male members. County tax records date the building to 1920 and it appears on the 1925 Sanborn map, the first to cover this part of Franklin Street.

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.