200 W. Franklin Street
ACROSS FROM TARGET
The site across the street, today's Carolina Square, was the home of Chapel Hill public schools that, in the days of segregation, served white students only. Students at Chapel Hill Elementary, Chapel Hill Junior High, and Chapel Hill High enjoyed going to school on Franklin Street in the midst of town and university activities. The community now honors Stanley Vickers and his family, who, with the help of future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, won the right to integrate and attend the all-white high school in 1961. In 1966, 12 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional, Chapel Hill public schools were fully integrated. The schools on Franklin Street were torn down and a commercial development known as University Square was constructed on the site of the former schools. Dozens of the retail businesses in University Square evoke fond memories to this day. Chapel Hill families celebrated milestones with their children at Swensen's Ice Cream and UNC students refueled with biscuits and chicken in the wee hours of the morning at Time Out, a restaurant open 24 hours (now located in the 100 block of Franklin Street). And, the first year dorm room of superstar and Carolina grad, Michael Jordan, was in Granville Towers, seen rising behind the Target store.
In 2017, this 12-acre site was sold to the UNC Foundation to recreate a new retail, University and downtown living area, in partnership with the Town of Chapel Hill. It includes 246 apartments, 159,000 square feet of office space and 42,000 square feet of retail as well as one acre of green space and a parking deck with 880 spaces. Carolina Square is the largest downtown redevelopment in Chapel Hill’s history.
200 West Franklin fills the area of Belk’s parking lot above. This retail and office building opened in 1993 as home to multiple businesses, including an upscale restaurant, “23,” by Michael Jordan. Google had an office here until recently…and the space awaits new tenants. You may ask, “Where is the church on Church Street?” The Baptist Church was here - from 1854 to 1923, when it moved to the corner of Franklin Street and Columbia to be closer to UNC students. (You can probably see the church from where you are - the beige brick building looking east.) Black residents who grew up in Chapel Hill can remember their parents often reminding them not to go past Church Street after dark. Towns all across America - north, south, east and west - created arbitrary boundaries for Blacks after sunset until the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in July of 1964.
We encourage you to read about the history of education of Black students in Chapel Hill. A commemorative marker stands in front of St. Paul AME Church at 101 N Merritt Mill Road, across from Crook’s Corner Restaurant.
The sculpture across the street in the plaza of 140 West is by artist Mikyoung Kim, and entitled “Exhale.”