We all know that Chapel Hill is a town with a very rich history, and there’s nowhere in Chapel Hill with more history than Franklin Street.

Now, a pair of organizations has joined forces to share that history with you – in a brand new way.

I’m walking with Missy Julian Fox along the 100 block of East Franklin Street, where every storefront has a story to tell. She’s telling me about the Carolina Theater, a movie house that got its start where the Varsity Theater is now – then moved across the street in 1942, at the height of World War II.

“The only reason it got finished is because we had the Navy pre-flight school here,” she tells me. “During the war, all the building materials went to support the war effort, (but) this theater was allowed to be finished – because it supported those Navy Cadets.”

Photo via ChapelHillHistoricalSociety.org.

We’re talking about the stories featured in “Welcome to Franklin Street,” a joint effort of the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership and the Chapel Hill Historical Society.

It’s supposed to be a self-guided walking tour. But – when you get the chance to hear the stories from the expert herself, you take it.

“They had this famous scoreboard outside that had games across the United States,” she says of one long-gone drugstore. “And you would literally see crowds and crowds of people gathered, to find out all those other scores.”

Missy Julian Fox – of the Chapel Hill Julians, yes – joined forces with Joe Petrizzi to create the tour, which features stories about beloved Chapel Hill institutions. The stories are accompanied by photos going back decades, including several taken by a Boy Scout troop back in 1977.

“Put your phone on the QR code and you get a story,” she says.

You can find and scan those QR codes downtown – there are close to a dozen already on Franklin Street, with more potentially in the works.

You can also access the project from anywhere, at this link.

One of those QR codes is at Epilogue Books, where we ducked inside to get out of the cold.

“This was the Rose’s five-and-dime store,” Fox remembers. “At Eastertime, they would have a little bin of baby chicks we could all go up and pet.”

Back in the present day, we run into Jaime Sanchez, the co-owner of Epilogue Books.

“These types of projects are important,” he says, “just to maintain the understanding of how important downtown is, not just for our business, but for the community.”

Walking with Fox, I’m impressed by how much fun she’s having recalling old memories of long-gone stores. But the tour also serves as a reminder about Franklin Street’s continuity: it urges you to notice not just the beloved places that are gone, but also Julian’s, and Sutton’s, and Four Corners, and the Cave – and more than two dozen other Franklin Street shops and restaurants that have been around for three decades or more. (Plus a couple that recently left us: Fox and I discovered along the way that Ye Olde Waffle Shoppe used to be called Ye Ole Waffle Shop, without the D in “Olde” – or the “PE” in “Shoppe,” for that matter. We’re still not entirely sure when those extra letters slipped in.)

Proof that there is, in fact, continuity on Franklin Street. (Photo via ChapelHillHistoricalSociety.org.)

And at the end of the day, Missy Julian Fox says “Welcome to Franklin Street” is not just about remembering Chapel Hill’s past – it’s also about promoting Chapel Hill’s future.

“This was designed to be the heart of the town, and what makes it that is that people use it, enjoy it, meet here, make a memory here,” Fox says. “And those kinds of things are happening still…

“The message again and again for the community is: don’t forget that piece of our heart, because the more you use it, the more it thrives. So we can’t wait to see you downtown.”

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