PI KAPPA PHI FRAT HOUSE / ARCHER HOUSE / RUSSELL INN

Pi Kappa Phi house, View north, 1917 (via UNC's Yackety Yack)

1915 Sanborn Map excerpt (dwelling at #99)

Pi Kappa Phi fraternity brothers reading on the porch (Thomas Wolfe at center); view east, 1920 (via UNC)

Built as a dwelling sometime between 1911 and 1915 on the site of an earlier dwelling (known as the "bat house" because of bats that lived in the chimney) that had been built (likely) in the 1870s. This property was part of the 1915 Walter Grimes property subdivision.

The Kappa Chapter of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity rented and moved into this house sometime between 1915 and late 1918. The fraternity moved into a new house in late December 1918, but had to move back into this house after a fire that took place January 8, 1919 burned their "new" house. This was the future author Tom Wolfe's fraternity from late 1918/early 1919 to 1920. Of the fire, he wrote "Kappa was not daunted by this. The next day we moved back into the house we occupied last year, where we have been comfortably located since." However, due to increased membership, the fraternity soon began raising funds in order to build a new house they were hoping to start construction of later in the year (1919).

By June 1921 Pi Kappa Phi moved out of the structure and the property was purchased by UNC, which used it as a temporary women's dormitory, run by Edna Humphreys.

It burned in a late night fire on January 24, 1925. Another structure was named the Archer House, located on South Columbia Street, and is where the women from this dormitory moved soon afterwards.

 A new structure was built on the property by the end of 1925, by/for the Tankersley family. 

1925 Sanborn Map excerpt showing former site (dwelling at #99/216)

By December 1938, this property and several adjacent properties were apparently sold to the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company. The property was purchased in August 1952 by Kappa Delta Sorority, Inc.

The site today, view north, August 2019 (via Google Streetview)