517 East Franklin Street

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COLLIER COBB HOUSE
1893
An impressive example of the Queen Anne style, this one-and-a-half-story, gable-and-wing house is four bays wide and triple-pile with a side-gabled roof and a projecting, front-gabled wing on the right (east) end of the façade. The house has plain weatherboards, sixteen-over-one wood-sash windows with molded lintels, pedimented gables and dormers (with the exception of the front-gabled dormer on the façade), half-round sawn vents in the gables, and two interior brick chimneys. Windows in the front-gabled wing include a tripartite window at the first floor and a Palladian window at the second floor, each with Gothic-arched panes in the upper sashes. The one-light-over-two-panel door has three-light-over-one-panel sidelights, a three-light transom, and a molded lintel. There is an oculus window to the left (west) of the door and both are sheltered by an inset porch cut out of the front left (southwest) corner of the front-gabled wing and is supported by a square posts with decorative molding. A flat-roofed porch extends across the left two bays of the façade sheltering a pair of eight-light-over-one-panel doors on the far left end of the façade. This porch is supported by square posts and has a sloping railing and a railing at the roofline that encircles a second-floor deck accessed via paired eight-over-one-light-over-one-panel doors and a sixteen-over-one windows in a wide front-gabled dormer that is partially inset into the first-floor porch roof. There is a shallow, shed-roofed dormer to the right of the front-gabled dormer with a fixed ten-light window. There are pedimented gabled dormers on each side of the front-gabled wing and a one-story, hip-roofed projecting bay on the right elevation with nine-over-one windows on all three sides. A modern deck wraps around the right rear (northeast) corner of the house.

The property where the Cobb House stands was owned from 1848 to 1893 by Charles Phillips and later his widow, Laura. In 1893 Laura Phillips sold the property to Collier Cobb, who is thought to have built the house and owned it until 1924; since that time it has been owned by his heirs. Collier Cobb, for many years head of the Department of Geology, was one of five faculty members who founded the now widely respected University of North Carolina Press in 1893. He is also said to have suggested the use of the “Westover Door” on South Building.

In the 2015 survey, this was deemed a Contributing Building.

GARAGE
c. 1920
One-story, hip-roofed, frame garage with wood shingles, paired plywood doors on the front (south) elevation, two-over-two wood-sash windows, and a paneled door on the west elevation. According to Sanborn maps, the garage was constructed between 1915 and 1925. 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.