The Horace Williams House evolved over several architectural periods.
The west element or farmhouse (c.1840) retains its original pine floor
boards, mantel, and window surrounds.
The parlor and entrance hall were built in the 1880s,
the latter from what may have been a covered dog trot.
The parquet ceilings in both rooms are particularly noteworthy.
The Octagon Room, the major gallery since restoration of the house, was built between 1852 and 1855.
It was constructed during the tenure of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, a chemistry professor, who was "denounced from nearly every pulpit in the state" and dismissed by the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees for his outspoken opposition to slavery.
Horace Williams, a professor of philosophy (depicted here in the oil painting by Mary Rees Graves), was tremendously popular among his students. According to Thomas Wolfe in You Can't Go Home Again, "He was a great teacher, and what he did for us, and for others before us for fifty years, was not to give us his 'philosophy' . . . but to communicate to us his alertness, his originality, his power to think." Students met with him many nights in the front parlor.
On the death of Horace Williams, the University of North Carolina became the sole owner of the house named for him. Restored in 1974, the house is maintained by the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill as a cultural resource and art exhibition space.
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Horace Williams House 