The Stentorian Newspaper

Tag: history

  • What’s Hiding in Hill House?

    By Viviana Gardner, Stentorian Staff Writer

    The lingering smell of sawdust in the air paired with the clattering of construction materials inside Hill House had filled my senses for the past three months. Every day, I walked past the building, my thoughts bubbling with curiosity about what lay inside the unfinished building. As my mind ran rampant with the possibilities held within Hill, I stumbled upon a theory greater than anything I had imagined.

    October 16th. The day had been particularly draining–the PSAT along with the altered schedule had thrown the student body off, going from class to class while instructors tried to drain every 25 minutes they had with us dry for education. We were tired.

    To give myself a break from the hustle and bustle of the day, I decided to give myself a short walk around the campus from the lovely comfort of the air-conditioned breezeways. Upon reaching the Greynolds tunnel to Watts, however, the air changed. The air was thin and it was alarmingly quiet. There was no ambient noise from the air-conditioning units and no scurrying of the rats in the wall. An absolute ear-deafening silence had been cast throughout that tunnel.

    A peculiar thought entered my brain at that moment, and I couldn’t help but let that thought guide my actions as I took cautious steps forward. My footsteps felt light but they were the only things I could hear as I went deeper into the tunnel and pushed my hand against the unusually heavy door to Ground Watts.

    The skull and cross-bones on the door to Hill Tunnel beckoned me forward and I was in no position to question its orders. The lights in Ground Watts were flickering, as if the power supply was running out. But that didn’t matter. Not when strange inhuman noises were bellowing from beyond the door to the Hill Tunnel. 

    Nobody had been in the area, or at least, no one was supposed to be in there; it was a restricted area and all the construction workers had been long gone. 

    Those noises only enthralled me further, and it felt like I had been walking for hours. Upon reaching my destination, a random Hill classroom, my eyes almost couldn’t believe what I had seen. Pods–hundreds of large humanoid pods molded in what appeared to be replicas of students who had been noticeably acting strange. 

    Upon further investigation, these were the same students who had let the stress of college applications get to them and fell victim to the curse of the “senior slump.” However, this was no ordinary slump. It was a disease that took over their minds rapidly and was somehow using their accumulated stress to produce an alien body double. 

    This is no satirical article. This is a call to action. Hill House is no construction zone. It is a housing unit for the aliens that have come to take over the minds of North Carolina’s best and brightest and if you’re not careful, you might be next…

  • History of Watts Hospital

    By Suchetana Kona / September 1, 2023
    1920 photograph of Watts Hospital. (P. Preston Reynolds)

    Was Ground Reynolds really a morgue? Was Beall a psychiatric ward? As students get accustomed to NCSSM, they  have probably heard from their seniors about the purpose of the rooms they lived in before the school was established. Watts Hospital was opened in 1895 to account for the lack of hospitals in Durham, with its increasing population. During the first few years, Watts hospital was meant to be small, containing only four buildings. They were all connected with corridors that were enclosed during winter, one of which contained patients and isolation rooms, where the others had  the mortuary, autopsy facilities, and a carriage shed. However, as the hospital grew, so did its facilities.

    In 1906, the hospital needed more space and it underwent construction to expand the building, but also the staff. This project was finished around 1909. By this point the hospital included an administration building, operating building, power house, laundry, and one patient pavilion. The entire building was constructed from fireproof material. The first research was located in the pathological and bacteriological labs of the administration building in what is now Watts Lobby.At the time Watts Lobby was the “first of its kind” based on architectural history. Although the new hospital provided for numerous people, there was still a need for expansion. The medical facility underwent another construction period a year later to make a patient pavilion specifically for female patients. The hospital accommodated 98 patients, and had 40 single rooms for nurses with the new building housing other services such as a gym, reception rooms, and more. There was more space dedicated to new medicine practices such as isolation rooms, and a shift towards surgery as the central focus of hospitals. 

    Aerial view of Watts Hospital looking northwest, including the newly completed Valinda Beall Watts pavilion, in the late 1920s.
    (The Herald Sun)

    Later towards the mid-20’s the hospital peaked, ranging from the amount of patients to  the type and quality of the services. More doctors had specialized fields while working there, and the amount of surgeries occurring increased by 25%, which began to dominate the work of the hospital. Due to the rise in surgery cases at the hospital, in 1926, the hospital decided to create a branch for private patients, which has become present day Beall. This expansion eventually led to the hospital receiving an “A” for their services, patient care, and staff. This construction was the final major installment in the hospital.

    The historical journey of Watts Hospital, which eventually evolved into the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM), had major developments. Even though we will never truly know all the locations of the hospital, it is certain that the hospital was very popular!