Grubb Properties plans to submit a redevelopment concept plan for Glen Lennox Cottages to the Chapel Hill Community Design Commission on Aug. 20. The plan would replace the cottages with a mixture of single-family houses, apartments, condominiums, a variety of retail stores and offices, several parking decks and a hotel.

Glen Lennox tenants and homeowners from the surrounding area have voiced objections to the proposed redevelopment. Long-time Chapel Hill residents, many of whom started families in the complex, are also dismayed at the possible destruction of the buildings that have played such an important role in their lives and in the 20th-century history of the town.

Glen Lennox was built to alleviate the housing shortage after World War II and was the first large apartment complex in Chapel Hill. A Durham contractor, William Muirhead, was selected as builder, and the architect is presumed to be Leif Valand, the designer of Cameron Village in Raleigh.

The chosen site was outside the town’s boundary at that time; 100 acres of wooded land facing N.C. 54 and adjacent to a housing development on Oakwood and Rogerson drives. Muirhead, a native of Scotland, named the site after his wife’s family, the Lennoxes. Streets were named after places in Scotland. In fact, the word “glen” is of Scottish derivation and means “a small, secluded valley.”

Glen Lennox Apartments were opened in 1950 with 314 apartments, and by 1953 had grown to 440 units. Monthly rents for one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments were $59, $69 and $79, respectively. The apartments were moderately affordable and appealing. In fact, the complex won the National Home Builder’s Association prize in 1950. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, the majority of the first tenants consisted of university faculty, retirees and married undergraduate students. The GI Bill, which offered inexpensive government loans for education, lifted many veterans to middle-class status. This increase in wealth enabled many to start families, and the corresponding “baby boom” of 1946 to 1964 increased the emphasis on family life.

Despite the complex’s unassuming appearance, it provides an excellent case study for understanding both architecture and culture in the postwar years. After the war, American architects largely abandoned historical styles based on European precedents and adopted Modernism. The Modernist style of architecture emphasized function and had little or no ornamentation. Although countries in Europe were also adopting this style, for the United States, the a-historical forms found in Modernism symbolized a new American style.

The apartments, designed in the Ranch style, are single-story, constructed of brick, and display Modernist features such as low-pitched, hipped roofs and wrap-around windows. Though they may have accepted this radical new style in architecture, as a general rule people in the 1950s were embracing conservatism and middle-class conformity in their personal lives.

The layout of Glen Lennox shows that the developers may have predicted that Chapel Hill residents would be hesitant about multiple-family dwellings. These apartments are very different from the typical multifamily units found in larger cities or even the few apartment buildings in Chapel Hill. In those apartments, everyone is under one roof, and tenants usually share a common entrance and lobby. In contrast, Glen Lennox developers designed apartments that had the appearance of single-family dwellings. While the style of the apartments indicate America’s postwar acceptance of Modernism, the form reflects the nation’s anti-public, family centered mood, and a preference for the suburban way of life.

Apartment units alternate in their distance from the street, and from some views appear to be detached from one another. Each apartment has its own entrance, an indication of the value placed on privacy. The picturesque, rambling, suburban look of Glen Lennox, with its allusion to single family Ranch dwellings, fit right in with the Minimal Traditionalist and Ranch-style houses that were being built in the surrounding neighborhood.

Despite the emphasis on privacy, tenants at Glen Lennox had opportunities for socializing and participating in family-centered activities in the community. In the early days, the management sponsored several tenant get-togethers each year. A Christmas tree was put up each December for the annual carol program. Management awarded a $25 war bond to the tenants with the best holiday decorations.

Ten play areas for children were located throughout the complex. Shared clotheslines, many of which are still in use today, provided a place for housewives to get to know one another. The Glen Lennox Echo, a small paper published for the residents, kept the community up-to-date on neighborhood news and events.

By 1952 renters could meet their shopping needs at the Glen Lennox Shopping Center at the edge of the complex facing N.C. 54. The shopping center also was designed in the Modernist style, in keeping with the apartment complex. In addition to offices, the first businesses included a Dairy Bar, a Colonial Stores grocery, a pharmacy, a barbershop, a bank, a post office, clothing and home furnishings shops, physicians’ offices and a service station. As the number of children in the community increased, an elementary school opened across N.C. 54 in the fall of 1953.

None of the original stores survives, although other shops and services have taken their places. The trees have grown since 1950, but the landscape of Glen Lennox and the surrounding houses remains largely unchanged. Chapel Hill is fortunate to have a significant number of historic buildings that recall the people who lived and worked in them, and Glen Lennox is a significant part of this history.

Sources: J.A.C. Dunn “Glen Lennox,” The Chapel Hill Weekly, Jan. 16, 1959; “Colony on Raleigh Road Is Named Glen Lennox; Rental Office Will Be Opened Next Wednesday,” The Chapel Hill Weekly, Dec. 23, 1949; Doug Eyre “Apartment buildings came to Chapel Hill in the 1920s,” The Chapel Hill News, June 26, 2002; Mark Gelernter, “A History of American Architecture: Buildings in Their Cultural and Technological Context” (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999); Ruth Little, “The Town and Gown Architecture of Chapel Hill, 1795-1975” (Durham: The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill, 2006).