Qualla: D. H. Hill Jr. Library

D. H. Hill Jr. Library: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In December 1889, the trustees of what was then North Carolina State College authorized six hundred and fifty dollars for periodicals and books. The collection went into a single room of Holladay Hall, overseen by the university's first English professor. By 1890 it held fifteen hundred volumes, most of them reflecting the literary tastes of one man. By 2014, the system had passed five million volumes. The room that started it all became the D. H. Hill Jr. Library, named for that same English professor, who would later serve as president of the college and whose son's name was finally added to the building in 2019 to stop people from confusing him with his Confederate general father.

Read more: D. H. Hill Jr. Library on Qualla

D. H. Hill Jr. Library: The Library Nobody Wanted to Fund

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For decades, the library was an afterthought. The annual library expenditure in 1892 was one hundred dollars. By 1916, when Hill retired as college president, the collection numbered just eight thousand volumes, and ranked last among fifty land-grant institutions. The University ...

Read more: D. H. Hill Jr. Library on Qualla

D. H. Hill Jr. Library: Four Buildings, One Library

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Harlan Brown took over the day World War II broke out. When he left for the army in 1942, reference librarian Reba Davis Clevenger ran the place. By 1945 she and the library committee were demanding three things: a new building, more money for books, and better-paid staff. Constr...

Read more: D. H. Hill Jr. Library on Qualla

D. H. Hill Jr. Library: Integration, Theft, and the Quiet Tower

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1962, Edward Walker became the library's first full-time African-American staff member, hired as a mail clerk. He retired in 1992 as the bookstack supervisor. The following year librarians were granted faculty status. In 1970, William V. Frazier became the library's first Afri...

Read more: D. H. Hill Jr. Library on Qualla

D. H. Hill Jr. Library: What a Library Looks Like Now

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walk into D. H. Hill today and you find a building that has become something its 1953 architects could not have imagined. The Hill of Beans coffee shop opened in 2002. The Creamery, serving Howling Cow ice cream made by the food science department, opened in 2009. A renovated 201...

Read more: D. H. Hill Jr. Library on Qualla