BOOZE TOUR

Built in 1959 on the property of Fred S. Cates (a.k.a. Mr. Hands in Every Cookie Jar).

The store/warehouse moved up the road/highway (to 201 Cornelius Street/US HWY 70) circa 1975. This building was then used only as Orange County ABC Board headquarters and warehouse until 2013-2014.

Sold by the ABC in 2014 to Triangle Environmental Services, it was demolished in 2019 after a fire gutted the structure.

View east, March 1959 (via The News of Orange)

View south, circa 2013 (image via Costar)

View south west, October 2016 (via Google Streetview)

View south west, August 2019 (image via ABC11/WTVD)

June 1959 (photo by Bill Prouty, via the Chapel Hill Weekly)

Expanding the original store, April 1961 (via the Chapel Hill Weekly)

View south, 1964 (via UNC Yackety Yack)

From the Daily Tar Heel, 1959

View north, circa 1964

View south, circa 1964

View north, 1961 (ABC store is circled in red) (via CHHS Hill Life)

Phi Delta Theta photo, 1968 (via UNC's Yackety Yack)

The ABC Store No. 2 was built (on "Lot E") in the Eastgate Shopping Center in 1959. It opened for business June 5, 1959 at 10:00 am. It was expanded in April-May 1961 by 14 feet.

It was a Boston Market for years. The building, after an extensive remodel in 2016, is now the restaurant Zoës Kitchen.

View east, 2003 (via Chapel Hill Historical Society)

View south, 2003 (via Chapel Hill Historical Society)

View south east, June 2019 (via Google Streetview)

1988

(Below in italics from the National Register nomination; not verified for accuracy by this author)

Mack Rigsbee, and his wife Julie E. Rigsbee, purchased in June, 1927 lots 72-75 in Block D of the Bankhead Forest Property (Orange County Deed Book 88, page 39). In April 1928, the Rigsbees purchased the adjacent lots 68-71 (Orange County Deed Book 90, pages 37-38). It is assumed that the house and outbuildings were completed and occupied by late 1928 or early 1929.

The Rock, House is a sprawling, one and one half story, roughly rectangular dwelling with a front terrace and three original porches on the side and rear elevations A deep hip roof crowns the rock first story. The exterior of the house is constructed of white flint rubble rock wall cladding with rope or grape-vine mortar. The steeply pitched roof has front and rear gabled dormers and large cross gables. All gables and dormers have decorative half timbering of wood and stucco. The white flint rubble rock stack of the interior chimney extends above the roof line on the east end of the house. The wooden six over six window sashes are placed singly and in groups of two and three in brick sills and frames. Originally, a rock arch led onto the front terrace. The columns remain but for safety reasons the arch was removed a number of years ago. A low white flint rubble rock wall surrounds the front terrace which is floored in a gray slate known locally as "Duke Stone." Two white flint rubble rock columns support the side gabled roof of the porch on the east side of the house. A smaller porch extends off the west side of the house and a screened porch off the rear elevation. The arched, wooden front door has two vertical panels topped by five panes of glass, stacked two over three. The door opens into an entrance hall, with a living room to the left side and a parlor to the right. Two of the five bedrooms are on the first floor, the other three upstairs. The interior of the house retains the original oak tongue and groove flooring, window and door surrounds, textured wall plaster, doors and door hardware. The house's only fireplace is in the living room, is constructed of white flint rubble rock. The original marble mantel shelf was replaced during an unknown period with a thick, varnished wooden slab mantel. The dirt floored basement contains the original furnace (inoperative) and the currently used modern heat pump. The house and surrounding outbuildings, with the exception of the garage, retain a high degree of architectural integrity, having undergone only one major refurbishing in 1986-87. This refurbishing carefully restored the original fabric of the house with only the following minor alterations. Several interior walls in the kitchen-breakfast room area of the rear were removed and the area converted into one large eat-in kitchen. Two new upstairs bathrooms were constructed out of a dressing room/bathroom and storage space in the rear gable, and a small upstairs bedroom was expanded utilizing storage space in the front gable. A closet was added to the upstairs master bedroom utilizing space in the steeply gabled roof.

Very little factual information is known about Mack Rigsbee but local stories of his notoriety abound even today. According to local lore Rigsbee was a Prohibition bootlegger who styled himself as a "gentleman farmer." He was alleged to have used the many storage areas created by his house's steeply pitched roof and dormers to hide the moonshine some say he distilled in the downstairs bathroom. The construction of the Rock House provides possible corroboration for the legend. The current owners found that the downstairs bathroom had a reinforced floor and an oversized drain in the bathtub. The upstairs bedroom and bathroom walls end far from the roof eaves, leaving oversized storage areas beneath the steeply pitched hip roof. One of the faucets in the upstairs sink was fed by its own tank concealed in the eaves of the roof. Some have speculated that Rigsbee and his guests had only to turn the appropriate faucet to fill their glasses with illegal libation. Another tale recalls a tunnel from the basement to the garage so liquor could be smuggled in and out of the house without being seen. Clarence Jones, a local historian who knew Mack Rigsbee, remembers the bootlegger as a short dapper man who wore kid gloves, drove a new Model A every year, dressed his wife in finery and was a wholesaler-distributor of illegal whiskey, known locally as East Lake Rye. (Charlotte Observer, 26 January 1987.)

The Rigsbees defaulted on their mortgage in 1931 (Orange County Deed Book 96, page 200). Since then the house has had a succession of owners. The [owners in 1988] purchased the property in June, 1986 and immediately began renovations to the house which had been neglected through the years.

10.09.2016 (G. Kueber)

Former Faddis Tavern, 1849 (Benson J. Lossing)

Faddis's tavern, 1768 Sauthier map excerpt

From Mary Engstrom's July 24, 1975 News of Orange County article "Faddis’ Tavern of Happy Memory":

The inn appears to have been built in 1767 or 1768 by the Halifax merchant, Ralph McNair, the shrewdly enterprising representative of the Halifax-based firm of Young, Miller & Co., and the business partner and close friend of Francis Nash...McNair and Nash together already owned Lots 27 and 28 on the north side of E. King Street, and in November, 1767, Nash deeded to McNair his own halves of those two lots plus the east half of Lot 26, thus giving to McNair the sole ownership of two valuable acres, ever after to be known in town records as “the Tavern Lots"...McNair apparently secured the services of a most accommodating inn-keeper, Phillip Jackson, the close friend of Nash, Thomas Hart, and McNair himself...On April 3, 1772, [McNair] sold the Tavern Lots with all their buildings for 600 pounds to the Quaker William Courtney...During Courtney’s long ownership a whole succession of General Assemblies patronized his “house,” and various records of committee meetings in the “Billiard Room” have been preserved. Cornwallis, also, occupied the Tavern during his brief stay in Hillsborough in February 1781 (when legend says his name was scratched on one of the mantels). Lossing labeled his sketch, “Cornwallis’ Headquarters,” and wrote in his text: “We (The Reverend Alexander Wilson and Lossing) next visited the headquarters of Cornwallis, a large frame building situated in the rear of Morris’ Hillsborough House, on King Street. Generals Gates and Greene also occupied it when they were in Hillsborough, and there a large number of the Provincial Congress were generally lodged"...In the late 1790’s Courtney died intestate, and U.S. Marshal John Spence West on August 22, 1799, sold the Tavern and the Tavern Lots for 50 to John Hogg of the Scots mercantile firm of Hogg & Adam. But Hogg found the Tavern far more dilapidated and run-down than he had supposed, and he promptly re-sold the property to John Faddis, “Tavern-Keeper,” for ,900...

After John Faddis died in 1829, his son, Thomas Jefferson Faddis "attempted only briefly to operate the Tavern. A succession of proprietors in the next 30 years included Thomas D. Crain (or Crane) who apparently first adopted the new name “Hillsborough House,” James Jackson, Jr., Robert F. Morris, who advertised a “Variety Store with a little bit of everything” in the storeroom next door to his exceedingly well-stocked bar, William McCauley, and Richard Tapp. On June 2, 1858, Tapp advertised the Tavern in the Hillsborough Recorder as having “…thirteen rooms and ten fireplaces, a good cellar, a good kitchen, with two fireplaces, a smokehouse, and stables with thirty six stalls, a good spring and spring house within thirty steps of the kitchen, and a front house on the street for business and nearly two acres of land, the best stand in town…”"

It is not known when the structure was demolished, but it appears to have been demolished between 1911 and 1924.

Faddis's tavern site, 2008 (site is behind 115 E. King Street)

View north west, 1960s

Interior, 1960s

View north west, circa 1978 (photo credit unknown)

View north west, 1979 (via the Daily Tar Heel)

Interior and "Wheaties," October 1977 (photo via the Daily Tar Heel)

Interior, 1979 (photo by L. C. Barbour, via the Daily Tar Heel)

1967 ad (via the Daily Tar Heel)

Built in the 1930s as a garage for jitneys (i.e. large touring cars used as public transportation) that took UNC students to and from the train station in Durham. Then was the Carolina Cycle Company starting in early 1946.

1946 ad (via the Daily Tar Heel)

In late 1947, Thomas Braxton "Brack" Creel rented the property and remodeled it into The Shack, a beer and snack bar. In early 1955, Creel retired and his son-in-law Walter T. Harville took over the lease and business. In the 1960s Harville sold the business to Bill Sparrow. Then Berkley Tulloch co-owned/operated the establishment until 1971 when John L. "Wheaties" Richardson took it over.

The Shack was a segregated establishment, and there were calls for a boycott of the place in 1963.

It closed at 5:00 a.m. (after an all-night party) on April 3, 1979, and was demolished a few months later. It is now a parking lot.

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

Built prior to 1768 on town lot 99. It was originally used as an ordinary/tavern and a dwelling.

1768 Sauthier map excerpt (showing the original site of this house on the right side of Churton Street)

View east, showing structure's original location, indicated by red arrow (circa 1910 postcard excerpt)

1894 Sanborn map excerpt

1900 Sanborn map excerpt

1905 Sanborn map excerpt

1911 Sanborn map excerpt

This structure was moved circa 1928 from the north east corner of E. Tryon and N. Churton streets (when the Esso service station was built) to its present location. The antebellum structure that was at the north east side of the lot was attached to the rear of the colonial structure when it was moved, the chimneys were removed and rebuilt, and new 3-over-1 windows were installed, among other renovations.

1943 Sanborn map excerpt

Image excerpt, view north east (structure at right), circa 1988 (photo by Susan Bellinger)

View north, circa 1990 (photo by Susan Bellinger)

The 1990 booklet Photocensus: A Photographic Survey of Buildings in the Hillsborough, N.C. Historic District Built Prior to 1950 lists the structure as being a Queen Anne style house, built circa 1880. This description was incorrect; however, at the time, the structure had been extensively remuddled and hid its true history behind the numerous modifications (see photo above).

The entire structure was renovated and restored by its current owners (Tom and Diane Magnuson) in 1992-1993, to include a new chimney on the west side of the original structure and new windows on the front. The house is labeled by the front sign as "Mason's Ordinary" with a build date of circa 1754.

From the 2014 Historic Hillsborough Survey:

This one-and-a-half-story, side-gabled house is the front portion of an eighteenth century house built for Catherine Lockhart about 1768 on the adjacent lot at the northeast corner of Churton and Tryon Streets. The house is three bays wide and single-pile with a full-width shed-roofed rear wing and a full-width gabled rear wing that is four bays deep. It has beaded weatherboards, six-over-six wood-sash windows on the façade and in the gabled dormers on the façade, and four-over-one Craftsman-style wood-sash windows on the side elevations. The six-panel door has a one-light transom and is sheltered by a replacement shed-roofed porch supported by chamfered wood posts. The Flemish-bond brick chimney in the left (west) gable is likely a reconstruction. In the early 19th century, the house was owned by William H. Brown, who lived there and kept his shoemakers shop in the house. About 1927, the Esso Company bought the house and the front half was moved to this adjacent site and remodeled in the Craftsman style. The Craftsman-style porch was later removed, a front stoop was added, and the front-gable dormers were reconstructed.

08.14.2016 (G. Kueber)

Smith's Bar ~1900 - from the History of Orange County

The frame building on the southwest corner of Churton and King pictured above, home of "Smith's Bar" per the History of Orange County, was likely built around 1890; the 1888 Sanborn maps portrays this entire corner as empty, with the text "Ruins of Fire."

From "History of the Town of Hillsborough 1754-1966" - looking west from the intersection of Churton and King. 100 S. Churton is the frame building on the left with the clipped corner.

This building likely remained standing on this site until around 1920, when it was replaced with an Art Deco, brick version of same.

Still frame from H. Lee Waters film of Hillsborough, 1937, showing 100 S. Churton in the background.

1968 (Hillsborough, NC General Development Plan, 1968-1988)

From the National Register nomination:

This two-story commercial building has a clipped northeast corner to take advantage of its location at the prominent intersection of South Churton and West King streets. The building is two bays wide and one-bay deep with the same façade treatment given to the east and north elevations. The brick building is laid in a one- to-six common bond and has a flat roof behind a brick parapet with bands of header- and soldier-course bricks. There are thirty-six-light display windows at the first-floor level and grouped six-over-six wood-sash windows at the second-floor level, each with arched transoms composed of four three-light Craftsman-style windows in a segmental-arched brick surrounds. The corner entrance bay features a replacement one-light wood door with one-light sidelights and a wide transom with dentil molding. A three-part arched transom with three-light Craftsman-style windows is located above and slightly in front of the recessed entrance and has a segmental- arched brick surround. There is decorative mousetooth brickwork at the corners, a soldier course at the cornice and dividing the first and second floors, and double-hung windows with arched transoms and segmental-arched brick surrounds at the basement level of the east elevation, now largely obscured by the sidewalk.

07.31.2016 (G. Kueber)

As of 2016, the building is home to Eno Gallery.

07.01.16

Built 1942-1943 for/by Efthimios Mariakakis. The Mariakakis family owned and operated several restaurants/businesses in the Chapel Hill area in the 1940s through 1970s. Mariakakis (a.k.a. "Ptomaine Tommy") moved to Chapel Hill in 1940, and owned and operated the Marathon hot dog stand until he started the Terrace View Supper Club.

This building was the Terrace View Supper Club from 1943 to 1950. It was a "couples only" dance club and dining spot and a location for private parties.

View south, 1945

Its neon sign, 1948

1945 ad

1947 ad

1948 ad, showing interior

April 1950 ad

Staring in late 1950, the property was offered for sale (because of excessive debt), and in 1951 Mariakakis sold the property (with "all equipment now contained in the buildings") to the trustees of the North Carolina Church of God Ministerial Campground Association.

Sometime thereafter the terrace was removed and a second story added (likely in 1979). It now kind of looks like 1950s military housing (is that an architectural style?).

View south, June 2019 (via Google Streetview)

View east, June 2019 (via Google Streetview)

View north, June 2019 (via Google Streetview)

The property is currently owned by the church Iglesia Poder de Dios.

Interior views can be seen in the 1948 film This is Chapel Hill (starting at ~46:05). Here's a 1946 ad for Willie Collins and His Royal Serenades playing.