A Century on Cameron Ave

Over the past 100 years, Cameron Avenue has transformed from a quiet neighborhood street to a bustling road with thousands of Chapel Hill residents traveling on it each day. In 1923, the road was photographed by the City Manager, Edward M. Knox. He captured this picture to show what the street looked like before the town had infrastructure upgrades.  He returned to this exact spot four years later in 1927 to capture what the street looked like after the upgrades. In his budget report that he wrote in 1927, Edward Knox explains how the town spent their infrastructure funds. Upgrading roads for an increased number of cars, installing curbs and streetlights, and increasing the amount of fire hydrants, the town of Chapel Hill significantly changed in just four years. One hundred years later I returned to the location where Edward Knox captured the original 1923 Cameron Avenue photograph. I used a Sanborn Map from 1925 and compared it with landmarks I saw in the image to determine the location where the photo was taken. On the right side of the photographs in both the 1923 and 1927 street scenes, you can see a small building located very close to an intersection. Comparing this to the map, there was only one building that was located close to an intersection. This building was right on the corner of Wilson Street and Cameron Avenue. Below is a part of the map that’s highlighted where I believe the 1923 and 1927 photographs were taken. Once I came to this conclusion, I visited the site. With tons of cars and people walking, apartment buildings towering over the street, and fraternity houses stacked next to each other in the distance, the scene looked very different from the 1923 picture.

Knox, Edward M. Cameron Avenue Before Improvements. 1923. Chapel Hill.

Knox, Edward M. Cameron Avenue After Improvements. 1927. Chapel Hill.

Pisciotta, Lucas A. Cameron Avenue Now. 2023. Chapel Hill. Knox, Edward

Edward M. Knox (City Manager), Town of Chapel Hill Budget Report, 27 June 1927, North Carolina Collection, VCp352.1 C46b c. 2, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC Chapel Hill.

Sanborn Map Company, Map of Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina, including Carrboro, June 1925.