New Student Project on UNC Building History

The students in Dr. Anne Whisnant’s Introduction to Public History class have just released their final project: a terrific online resource dedicated to the complicated histories of buildings on the UNC campus and their namesakes. The site, Names in Brick & Stone: Histories from the University’s Built Landscape, is now available.

The site, built on the DH Press tool developed by the Digital Innovation lab, takes an in-depth look at 12 campus buildings, providing thorough histories of the structures, their uses, and the people they were named for. The site also includes summary information and visualization tools for the more than 250 “major” buildings on the campus. The visualizations are especially interesting for looking broadly at trends in the uses of campus buildings and the types of people they’ve been named for.

Buildings on the main UNC campus by the gender of their namesakes (blue dots marked buildings named for men, red for women).
Buildings on the main UNC campus by the gender of their namesakes (blue dots mark buildings named for men, red for women).

This project is another example of the terrific work on campus history being done by undergraduates and exemplifies the continued interest among current students in studying, challenging, and engaging with the history of UNC.