307 Hillsborough Street
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WARD-KYSER HOUSE
c. 1840, c. 1995
Among the town’s earliest residences, the house was constructed about 1840 as a one-story, side-gabled house with a gabled ell at the right rear (northwest). However, it has been significantly altered with the replacement of much original material and the construction of a large addition at the right (north) and rear of the house. The house has replacement weatherboards, six-over-six wood-sash windows, six-over-nine windows on the façade, and two interior stuccoed brick chimneys. The replacement fifteen-light French front door has four-light sidelights on beadboarded panels. It is sheltered by a near-full-width, hip-roofed porch supported by square columns. There is a shed-roofed wing at the left rear (southwest) and the double-pile, gabled rear ell has a shed-roofed porch on its left (south) elevation. The porch has a metal roof and has been enclosed with four-light casement windows. The house has been enlarged since 1992 with the construction of a gabled screened porch at the rear of the ell. A side-gabled hyphen extends from the right (north) elevation of the ell with a full basement and shed-roofed porch on the right elevation. From the hyphen extends a front-gabled wing with projecting bays in the front and rear gables.
The house was the 1920s-1930s residence of Edward Vernon Kyser, inventor of note and professor of pharmacology at UNC. A small, dirt-floored room in the basement is rumored to have been a part of the Underground Railroad. County tax records date the building to 1852 and the house appears on the 1915 Sanborn map, the earliest map to record this part of Hillsborough Street.
In the 2015 survey, this was deemed a Noncontributing Building.
SHED
c. 1900
Front-gabled, frame shed with plain weatherboards, a four-light window on the east elevation, and a partially enclosed shed-roofed bay on the west 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.
