407 North Street
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HOPE SUMMERELL CHAMBERLAIN HOUSE
c. 1950
The largest house in the 400 block of North Street, this one-and-a-half-story, side-gabled, Period Cottage is four bays wide and double-pile. It has a painted brick veneer, eight-over-eight wood-sash windows, and a projecting, front-gabled wing centered on the façade. The front-gabled wing is two bays wide with an exterior brick chimney on its right (east) end and a cat-slide roof sheltering an arched entrance bay on the left (west) end. Recessed within the entrance bay is a six-panel door. There is a hip-roofed dormer on the left end of the façade that has paired eight-light casement windows and diagonal wood sheathing. There is a one-story, side-gabled wing at the rear of the right elevation with an inset screened porch at the right rear (northeast) corner. In front of it, flush with the façade, is a flat-roofed porch on full-height brick piers that has been enclosed with wood on the façade and has a single window on the right elevation. A full-width, one-story, shed-roofed wing extends across the rear elevation.
While county tax records date the house to 1946, the house is not present on the 1949 Sanborn, but was likely constructed soon after. Hope Summerell, granddaughter of Elisha Mitchell, the UNC professor, geologist and botanist for whom Mount Mitchell is named, contracted Charles York to build this house for her in 1946. Chamberlain was an artist, author, and civic worker who wrote and illustrated several books. She lived in the house until her death, after which it was purchase by Henry Wilkins Lewis in 1966. Lewis was an attorney, author, professor, director of the Institute of Government at UNC from 1973 to 1978, and vice-president of UNC from 1968 to 1969.
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.
