Fundraising for UNCW's NC Teachers Legacy Hall

Contributions from Wachovia Bank (Wells-Fargo) tipped the balance between the idea and the creation of Legacy Hall.

At a press conference on February 24, 2003, officials from Wachovia Bank (now Wells Fargo) and UNCW Chancellor James Leutze announced that the bank would contribute $150,000 towards the campaign to create the North Carolina Teachers Legacy Hall. This donation, distributed over three years, gave the school the major financial backing it needed to design and produce the privately funded museum-quality exhibition in the first floor atrium of the Education Building. Legacy Hall offers an interactive environment to celebrate North Carolina educators and the history of teacher education.

Jay Robinson was a founder of Legacy Hall. A tireless advocate for public education in North Carolina, Robinson held a number of leadership positions including state superintendent. Robinson served on the UNCW Board of Trustees and was involved in early plans to honor the teachers of North Carolina through a permanent exhibition in a new education building on campus. According to documents in University Archives from 1997, this exhibition was originally conceived as a “Legacy Wall.” After Robinson passed away in 2000, the university established the Jay Robinson Memorial Fund to raise money for the Legacy Wall and student scholarships. Supporters of the campaign included prominent leaders in North Carolina government, business, and education.

The Legacy Wall project expanded to become Legacy Hall in 2001 at the suggestion of Dean Cathy Barlow. The university broke ground on the new state-of-the-art education building in 2002.

Designed by Chermayeff & Geismar and fabricated by Exhibitology, the North Carolina Teachers Legacy Hall serves as a museum, educational center, place to honor North Carolina teachers and principals, and a functional space for students and members of the community. The Hall’s creators intended for it to inspire students to become teachers.

Legacy Hall has nine unique niches featuring educational themes: “Films that Teach,” “Honorees” including Teachers and Principals of the Year, the “School Bus,” “Teaching Awards,” “Teaching News,” “School Desks” throughout time, “Teaching Tools,” a “One-Room Schoolhouse,” and the “Battleship USS North Carolina.” A tenth niche holds the “Bookshelf of Donors.” In addition, the hall features a timeline of education history along the floor of the hall and includes a bust of Jay Robinson. 

In 2008, the Legacy Hall added interactive components to its displays, including digital copies of original textbooks and exams from a one-room schoolhouse, and school bus trivia.

Legacy Hall and the Watson College of Education in UNCW Magazine

Hanover Hall is Officially Named on Feb. 22, 1966

Throughout the history of Wilmington College, and subsequently UNCW, the citizens of New Hanover County have remained steadfast supporters and patrons. 47 years ago, the Board of Trustees cited this community support, in the form of tax levies and referendums, as one of the major factors in the decision to name the new Wilmington College gymnasium “Hanover Hall.”

In 1946, North Carolina Governor Gregg Cherry called for a committee of North Carolina college presidents to brainstorm about ideas for addressing the higher education facilities crisis in their state. Their meeting led to a campaign in New Hanover County spearheaded by Wallace West, Chairman of the Education Committee of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. The importance of the campaign was tantamount. Regardless of the perceived support garnered for the establishment of a local college for Wilmington, the campaign additionally had to convince registered voters to make it to the polls. Any previously registered voter who failed to turn in a ballot counted as a “nay” vote at that time, and posed a serious threat to the college’s establishment.

On voting day, March 25, 1947, the residents of New Hanover County began their legacy as patrons of education. Seventy-four percent of the eligible voters approved a five-cent tax levy on every $100 of property value and raised $36,500.  The state created a Board of Education fund, separate from the rest of the taxes raised, to support the budgets of Wilmington College, and in the end Williston College as well.

The name “Hanover Hall” reflects the essential role of the citizens of New Hanover County in establishing the college, as well as the contribution of the school to preserving the tradition of local history in the area. New Hanover became a county in 1728, named in honor of the Hanoverian Kings who ruled England at that time.
 

Since its groundbreaking on September 26, 1963, “Hanover Hall” has played a number of roles for Wilmington College and UNCW. Originally costing $492,000, the gymnasium was a state of the art home for the Seahawk basketball team from 1965-1977, and hosted Wilmington College’s first 4-year baccalaureate graduation in 1965.  Hanover Hall became a physical education center following the building of Trask Coliseum, and is currently the home of the UNCW Athletic Center and the Seahawk Strength Center.

Book: From These Beginnings: Wilmington College, 1946-1969.

Article about naming of Hanover Hall in the student newspaper, the Seahawk in 1966

William-Adolphe Bouguereau's "Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros" ("Jeûne Fille Se Défendant Contre L'Amour") is considered to be his finest piece, a glowing example of the "Academics" approved style of painting by the Academie des Beaux-Artes. This work, which Bouguereau painted for the Paris Salon in 1880, made its way to New York, where it was purchased by Henry Flagler, co-founder of Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller, and prominent developer of coastal Florida resort towns such as Palm Beach. Flagler kept the painting in his Palm Beach mansion and eventually gave it to his sister-in-law Sarah Graham Kenan in Wilmington.

Mrs. Kenan's house "Sunnyside" was eventually donated, along with its contents, to Wilmington College (UNCW) and is now the Chancellor's home (Kenan House). The painting, a 61x43 inch oil-on-canvas, has taken part in many art exhibits since its "rediscovery" by the art world in 1983, when it was featured as "the lost Bouguereau." It can even be seen in the movie The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which was filmed in the Kenan House.

On February 12, 2001, after many years on the road in art exhibitions, Bouguereau's "Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros" returned to the Kenan House, and has remained in North Carolina ever since.

Timeline for “Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros”

♦ 1901/2: Henry Flagler and his wife Mary Lily Kenan Flagler purchased the piece in New York and moved it to their Palm Beach, FL, home “Whitehall.”

♦ Unknown date: Henry Flagler gave the painting to Sarah Graham Kenan.

♦ 1968: James Graham Kenan donated Sarah Graham Kenan's home, located at 17th and Market Streets, and its contents to Wilmington College (UNCW).

♦ Early 1980s: While planning an exhibition featuring Bouguereau, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta searched for a masterpiece that had been missing from the art world for generations, Bouguereau's “Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros." Museum board member James Kenan told the museum director, Gudmund Vigrel, that this work had always been in his Aunt Sarah's house. Vigrel visited the Kenan House to view the painting and confirmed that it was the long-lost treasure.

♦ January-October 1983: The High Museum exhibited the painting and included it in a touring exhibit. The Kenan House received “Gaston, Duke of Orleans” by Anthony van Dyck on loan. The Bouguereau painting was insured for $100,000.

♦ November 1983: The Bouguereau painting returned to Kenan House.

♦ 1984-85: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts included the work in a major international Bouguereau exhibition.

♦ 1990: The painting was exhibited at St. John’s Museum of Art.

♦ July 1992: The painting was loaned to the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) in Raleigh. It was insured for $2,000,000. Kenan House received “The Countess of Cassel and her son as Venus and Cupid” by François de Troy loaned in return.

♦ 1995: “Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros” returned to the Kenan House briefly for an art history lecture by Anthony F. Janson.

♦ February 12, 2001: Conservators from NCMA re-installed the painting in the Kenan House with museum-quality lighting. Two Kenan House receptions occurred that month to celebrate the painting’s homecoming.

♦ February 6, 2003: UNCW loaned the piece to the Louise Wells Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington for the museum's grand opening.

♦ 2003-2005: The painting was loaned to NCMA while the Kenan House underwent renovations.

♦ 2009-2011: The painting was returned to NCMA for a grand opening celebration of a renovated wing.

♦ 2011-: The painting is displayed in the lobby of the Kenan House.

Wilmington College Time Capsule from 1968

On February 7, 1998, UNCW unearthed its very own time capsule. The Collegiate Civitan Club buried the time capsule on June 2, 1968 to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of Wilmington College, which coincided with the school becoming a 4-year institution. The canister held microfilmed information about campus life in 1968, the history of the first 20 years at Wilmington College, and honored retiring President William Randall and mathematics professor Adrian Hurst.

UNCW excavated the capsule from under the sidewalk behind Randall Library two years early as part of the University’s 50^th Anniversary and the 1998 Homecoming Celebration. A UNCW birthday cake accompanied the event, which served as a prelude to the Seahawks’ homecoming victory over American University.

According to the 1968 yearbook, the Fledgling, those involved with creating the time capsule took elaborate steps to make sure their microfilm could arrive to the new millennium intact; however, chemical degradation over time ruined much of the information put into the time capsule. The Student Government Association announced at the 1998 opening that there were plans to create another time capsule to be opened at the 100^th Anniversary. The Seahawk student newspaper and the Campus Communique faculty and staff newsletter covered the event.

More information about the time capsule is in the Seahawk Student Newspaper.

Read 10 letters from Randall Library Special Collections written between 1861 and 1985. Connect to the manuscript collections and learn about the writers behind the letters.
http://library.uncw.edu/archives_special/10_letters