NEWS

Photo note: To download a photo of inside the renovated Murphey Hall, see end of release.

Thursday (April 10) ceremony to hail bond-funded rebirth of historic hall

CHAPEL HILL – Just how much did North Carolinians who voted for the higher education bond referendum in 2000 really help the next generation?

Plenty, say classics professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who teach in Murphey Hall. The 1924 building just off scenic Polk Place is UNC’s first classroom building to undergo a complete historic restoration and renovation courtesy of the bonds.

The $6.7 million project "has vastly improved the whole environment for teaching and learning," said Dr. William Race, professor and chair of the classics department, which is headquartered in Murphey.

Thursday (April 10), the university will thank the public and celebrate the new Murphey with a 3:30 p.m. ceremony on the building’s northern landing. Speakers will be Molly Broad, president of the 16-campus UNC system, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser and Race. Building tours will follow.

The three-story, 27,029-square-foot building, opened in 1924, was restored from October 2001 to December 2002. Classes and the 15 classics faculty members began moving back in last January.

Workers had added central heating and air conditioning and scores of technological features for computers and audio visual instruction, but none of these modernizations are readily visible. Murphey’s new elevator is tucked away on the western side. Mostly, said classics professor Dr. George Houston, "the feeling, as you walk around, is early 20^th-century."

Houston, who began teaching in Murphey as a graduate student in 1964, was department chair when the project was planned. "Early on, the decision was made to do not just a renovation, but also a restoration," he said.

Stately moldings, ceiling materials and tall new colonial revival windows match the building’s style and period. The striking arched window on the landing between the first and second floors, cleaned and reinforced, looks out, in spring, to pink-blooming Kwanzan cherry trees. The original Maplewood floors have been resurrected from underneath sticky layers of tile, asbestos and plywood and buffed to a sheen.

While these aesthetic features reinforce the atmosphere of intellectual purpose, the modern touches have made the most obvious improvements in teaching and learning. Before the restoration, students strained to hear professors over noise outside open windows or the blast of window air conditioners, shivering if unlucky enough to sit directly in front of the units.

Not all the classrooms had window units, meaning that professors had no choice but to open the windows during hot weather. "Occasionally, bees would come buzzing in," Houston said. "Once or twice a bird came in. I think the birds saw what was going on and left, but the bees stayed and buzzed around for awhile."

What a difference a little help from one’s friends, the voters, can make. "I think the students are able to concentrate better, hear better and have more effective discussions," said Houston, adding that previously, noise pollution discouraged class participation. "And for the faculty, there is a much greater capacity of getting information to them. We didn’t have any computer or Internet capability before the restoration. Now we’ll be able to pull all kinds of things up from our Web site and the Internet. And we won’t have to shout or yell."

Previously, professors lugged around heavy, outdated projectors to show fuzzy images of ancient art, archeology and mythology needed in their teaching. And if hot weather was bad, cold could be worse. Steam radiators hissed. Repairs a generation ago had cut off half the heat supply to the 175-seat auditorium.

"In January, students began the semester in their coats, writing with their gloves on," Houston said. "Now, it’s absolutely spectacular." With its quiet heating and cooling systems and double-paned windows, students can learn without the distractions of noise and physical discomfort.

Classics isn’t the only department holding classes in Murphey, Houston said. So do the departments of English, political science, religious studies and others. "This restoration will benefit the faculty of at least eight different departments," he said.

Murphey was built with $170,000 from the state legislature; finishing touches worth about $2,700 were completed by 1929, according to UNC records. The Bull’s Head Bookshop now in the UNC Student Store was originally established in Murphey in 1928.

The building was named for Archibald DeBow Murphey, a member of Carolina’s second graduating class in 1799. He taught ancient languages from 1800-1801 and was a university trustee from 1802 until his death in 1832.

Murphey Hall opened in the same year as Wilson Library and three other major classroom buildings that still flank Polk Place, Carolina’s central outdoor quadrangle. "Murphey is part of a wonderful ensemble of buildings designed by McKim, Mead and White of New York," said Paul Kapp, UNC’s historic preservation officer. The firm also designed Columbia and New York universities and re-designed the University of Virginia’s historic lawn, Kapp said.

"Polk Place is one of the more beautiful campus quadrangle spaces in all of America, comparable to Harvard Yard, the arts quadrangle at Cornell or the lawn at U.Va.," Kapp said. Thus he found it critical to the university’s aesthetics and history that Murphey be restored.

"The University of North Carolina over the last 210 years is a real essay on the evolution of an American campus," said Kapp, who consulted on the Murphey project. "You can start at Franklin Street and work your way down to Mason Farm Road and see how the university has grown and evolved its mission. The architecture reflects that, and from a historical standpoint, that’s very significant."

Murphey is fifth project completed on campus with Carolina’s share of the bond funds -- $1.5 million --and its first historical, complete renovation of a classroom building. Previous projects were the completion of a learning center for autistic adults, expansion of a chiller plant, a Bioinformatics Building and the renovation of the Robert B. House Undergraduate Library. Of the lot, Murphey is the classic.

Just inside the northern, main entrance, Aphrodite, Apollo and Athena –Venus, Apollo and Minerva to the Romans – immediately proclaim Murphey as an intellectual center. The larger-than-life-size plaster sculptures, gifts from the classes of 1900, 1901 and 1902, have found their niches, set into the wall and added just for them. Previously, they were squirreled away in the department’s third-floor library, clad in 100 years of dirt and dust.

"No one in living memory had seen them cleaned," Race said. "They’re all spruced up now."

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Photo url: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/obj/murphey_hall.jpg

Contact: L.J. Toler, UNC News Services, 919-962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu