217 Hillsborough Street
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MITCHELL-LONDON HOUSE
c. 1925, 1970s
This two-story, front-gabled, Colonial Revival-style house is two bays wide and triple-pile with plain weatherboards, asbestos siding on the rear (west) elevation, partial cornice returns, and six-over-six wood-sash windows. A four-light-over-two-panel door on the right (north) end of the façade is sheltered by a full-width, hip-roofed porch supported by paired square columns with a matchstick railing. The house has a wide fascia that continues across the gable on the façade, a louvered vent in the gabled, and an interior brick chimney. A later one-story, hip-roofed wing projects from the left (south) elevation with a hip-roofed addition at its rear (west). A small screened porch at the right rear (northwest) is supported by square posts and opens to an unpainted wood deck. The house is located slightly below street level and has a stone wall at the sidewalk.
The house appears on the 1925 Sanborn map. It was operated as a rental property until 1935, when it was inherited by Emily Dewey Mitchell. In 1936, Ms. Mitchell married Lawrence F. London, PhD., a research librarian at Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina and curator of rare books at the library from 1952 until his retirement in 1972. The couple moved into the house in 1937. The side and rear additions were constructed after 1949.
In the 2015 survey, this was deemed a Contributing Building.
SHED
c. 1930
Shed-roofed, frame shed with German-profile siding, a six-light window, and paired batten doors on the east elevation. 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.
