Yet another historic house in Chapel Hill finds itself facing the wrecking ball, bulldozer or other demolition mechanism of choice.

The Edward Kidder Graham house on Battle Lane has seen better days; long empty, it's been assailed by time, neglect and nature. As if it hadn't suffered enough already, the house recently got clobbered by a storm-felled tree. It is, to put it mildly, a fixer-upper.

But it's not a lost cause, and we hope someone can be found with the resources and appreciation for local history to take it on.

After the tree smashed into the back end of the house, the town condemned the building. The owner has three options: restore it to habitable condition, sell it to someone who will or tear it down.

Local preservationists are doing what they can to help find a buyer to restore the house; the tree-damaged back part, they say, was an add-on that can be removed without harming the home's historical integrity.

The Graham House, built exactly 100 years ago by a prominent and influential president of the university, deserves the effort.

Graham was a UNC alum who returned to Carolina as an English professor, department chair and dean before being named president of the university in 1914.

He was a popular president who worked to strengthen UNC's connection to the state and its people. When the United States entered World War I in 1917 he threw the resources of the university into the war effort.

On Oct. 1, 1918, Graham presided over a ceremony inducting 650 students into the nearly formed Student Army Training Corps. The same day, a resident fell ill with the first reported case in Chapel Hill of the influenza that was then spreading across the globe, killing more people in a shorter time than any other pandemic in history.

Over the next weeks, the flu swept through town and campus. On Oct. 21, Graham felt the first telltale feverish ache. In less than a week he was dead.

The university community was stunned at his death, and tributes poured in from throughout the state. Graham Memorial on campus is named for him, and his cousin, Frank Porter Graham, would eventually go on to even greater renown.

The house Graham had built earned an additional measure of fame many decades later for rather less dignified reasons, when it was used as the setting for "Three in the Attic," a 1968 feature film that one reviewer called "one of the weirdest flicks of the 1960s." The movie is about a college guy who juggles three co-eds until they catch on to his shenanigans, at which point they take their vengeance by locking him the attic of their sorority house and trying to, um, love him to death. "Casablanca" it is not.

Still, even that peculiar bit of local lore has its place, and Graham's important role in the life of the university and the state make the house worth trying to preserve.

Not every old house is worth saving. But as the number of century-old houses here continues to decline -- the Dey house, built in the 1870s, fell to demolition just over a year ago -- those few that remain become ever more precious.