Minister Robert Campbell - Process of building (clip)
Interviewed by George Barrett and Kathryn Wall on October 28, 2022
Robert Campbell: The first thing is you got to have your plans. You got to have your concept, so that you can basically make sure that you’ll be able to find all the material for that building and how far you might have to ship it. And I will say that fortunately for most of the construction that took place in Chapel Hill, you had Fitch Lumber Company. You had the cement company that was in Tin Top, on Brewer Lane down there.
George Barrett: What was the name of it?
RC: I’m trying to think of the name of it. Was it Mert concrete company? I think Mr. Millock also was part-owner in that concrete company that was down in Tin Top. And so it was a good thing growing up because you could see the collaboration between the suppliers and the builders, and it was that collaboration I think that made it a little bit more feasible for some of the work that my grandfather and my uncles were doing. Because most of the houses and most of the construction wasn’t just for the professors and the doctors at UNC but it was also for local residents. And so, I think about some of my neighbors, Pastor John Henderson Jones was one of the rock houses that my grandfather built and that design is different from the rock house on Lloyd Street, Mr. Neville’s house. And they began to change different forms based on the needs of the family.
