Tate Street: Evolving to serve a changing community

Tate Street, UNCG's original "campus strip" was originally two streets: Tate Street north of Walker Avenue and Lithia Street to the south. By 1923, when most of the area's commercial development was beginning, both sections shared the same name. The shopping area was targeted at a pedestrian population and included chain grocery stores such as Pender's (330 Tate Street), Piggly Wiggly (337 Tate Street), and Bi-Rite (403 Tate Street); Franklin Drugs (401 Tate Street); Hart's Hardware and Appliances (336 Tate Street); and the Donut Dinette (332 Tate Street). The Victory Theatre, later the Cinema, operated in the now-abandoned building at 326 Tate Street that most recently housed Addams University Bookstore.

As the adjacent Woman's College grew, the Tate Street "strip" became more campus-oriented. Longtime tenants such as The Corner, a soda fountain and variety store located at the corner of Tate Street and Walker Avenue and The College Shop, a clothing store across the street at 413 Tate Street, anchored the district. By the 1950s, Bi-Rite was the only remaining grocer, but it was still offering a full range of meats and produce through the early 1980s, when it was replaced by the current convenience store at the site.

Tate Street, 1963,
from Greensboro City Directory

As Woman's College became the coeducational University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1963, and as campus attitudes liberalized throughout the decade, Tate Street began to see the appearance of bars and other nightspots. Among the earliest were the original Joker's 3 at 449 Tate Street, a converted house that had previously housed a women's clothing store, and the Apple Cellar, a coffeehouse located in the basement of the Apple House diner. Later in the 1960s, the area in front of Brown Building, then home to the UNCG School of Music, would become known as "Hippie Hill", a hangout for the psychedelic generation that caused university and city officials much consternation.

In 1971, the Apple House diner, which had been the site of segregation battles, was replaced by Hong King House, a Chinese restaurant that served vegetarian dishes; this space is now Boba House. Nearby, Friar's Cellar, a much-loved wine shop and small grocery store began a several-decade run in the building at 334 Tate Street that now houses Tate Street Coffee. Around the same time, the row of shops of the east side of Tate Street added a new, unified façade as part of a project to "modernize" the street and give it more the feel of a suburban shopping center. This was also the genesis of the unusual parking arrangement on the street. Franklin Drugs relocated around this time to a new two-story building with a small parking garage attached at 948 Walker Avenue.

Next door to Bi-Rite in 1971 was a restaurant called Pizzaville (407 Tate Street) that would by the end of the decade be transformed into Friday's, a restaurant by day and venue for new alternative bands by night that hosted some of the earliest performances by R.E.M. and the Violent Femmes as well as local acts like Treva Spontaine and the Graphics. Friday's closed on 11 December 1983 with an unannounced performance by R.E.M., who by this time had "outgrown" the small club and were generally playing in larger venues. Subway and Leon's Style Salon now occupy the space,

Tate Street, ca. 1971

With Friday's and the dawn of the 1980s, Tate Street became a very active area for nightlife and live music in general. The old Piggly Wiggly, later a clothing store called The Cupboard, now became New York Pizza. The Apple Cellar coffeehouse became the Nightshade Café, another live music venue. Upon its closing in the early 1980s, the Cinema Theatre was replaced by the House of Pizza Cinema, a restaurant and bar that featured stereo broadcasts of the new MTV Music Television channel on multiple monitors. Also on the street were the Belstone Fox (329 Tate Street), a bar and live music venue, and Mr. Rosewater's, a restaurant and bar located in the former home of the original Joker's Three. Around 1983, the College Shop closed and was replaced by the Galaxy video arcade.

Recorded music was also a big part of Tate Street's appeal, starting with the opening of the Record Exchange (330 Tate Street), one of the first record stores in Greensboro specializing in independent and imported releases as well as used records and tapes. In 1983, Platterpus Records opened at 335 Tate Street as Greensboro's first record rental store; this short-lived format allowed customers to rent records, which were then sold as used merchandise. Record companies were incensed due to the potential for piracy. Copying of a different sort was facilitated by one of the state's first Kinko's locations, which opened around 1984 in the old Franklin Drug location at 401 Tate Street.

There was new construction on Tate Street in the 1980s as well, including a the block of shops at 427-435 Tate Street that initially included a Burger King and a Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop. This block of stores replaced a large old abandoned house and is now home to Coffeeology and Don Japanese Restaurant.  Around 1990, the building next door, which had housed the original Joker's Three and had later served as Mr. Rosewater's and The Edge nightclub was torn down for a relocated and expanded Kinko's, which remains there today as FedEx Office.

Nightspots became less common on Tate Street once the national drinking age was raised to 21 beginning in 1985 and the strip entered something of a decline even in the midst of a gentrification in the surrounding neighborhood. The House of Pizza Cinema closed and was replaced by Addams University Bookstore in the late 1980s; Addams closed around 2013.

Restaurants are now more common that bars on Tate Street. There is now a Qdoba located in the former Hop-In convenience store and a Jimmy John's where the College Shop once operated. New York Pizza is still open, though it closed briefly after a fire several years ago. A succession of Mexican restaurants have occupied what was formerly office space about the 1970s Franklin Drug location facing Walker Avenue, and Sushi Republic now occupies a former gas station at the northeastern edge of the strip.

Tate Street has proved to be very adaptable in its service of the adjacent campus and community.

Transforming Spring Garden Street

Upon arriving at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro campus, many visitors are struck by the long line of beautiful trees on Spring Garden Street. They might not realize that the tree-lined street, brick pavers, and manicured grounds are the result of a 1998 safety and beautification project. The project was envisioned to transform Spring Garden Street into an inviting “front door” to UNCG.

Spring Garden Street c. 1897

Throughout the school’s 125 year history, Spring Garden Street has served as an important traffic corridor that brought people to campus. At the college’s opening in 1892, the original administrative building and student dormitory all faced an unpaved street. By the early 1900s, Spring Garden Street was paved and trolley tracks were installed. As the school expanded during the following decades, more land was acquired and administrative buildings and dorms were built on both sides of the busy street. With the growth of the college and the city of Greensboro, the number of motor vehicles traveling on the street also increased.

By the 1990s, the University sought to transform the portion of Spring Garden Street (between Tate and Aycock Streets) that passed through the UNCG campus. Student and faculty safety was the motivation for the construction project. Lacking clear crosswalks, the News and Record newspaper reported that “pedestrians darted from between cars parked on both sides and dodged traffic to get across the street.”

1993 Engineering Report

A preliminary engineering report was issued in 1993, creating a “design character” that was of a pedestrian friendly “parkway.” Thus, the project’s goal was to slow traffic with a narrower roadway that was divided by a median. In addition, the renovation project would accommodate new bike lanes, brick crosswalks, and widened sidewalks. Street parking would no longer be allowed. The engineering report included the costs for: new roadways, curbs, and drains, electrical work for “decorative” street lights, and landscaping for the new median and along the sidewalks. UNCG and the City of Greensboro agreed to split the costs of the $3.2 million dollar project.

During the summer of 1997, Spring Garden Street was closed and construction work began. The renovation project would last for the next twelve months. The street closure did disrupt local businesses. The owner of Yum Yum Ice Cream noted that his walk-in business declined by twenty-five percent. Moreover, there were also a number of challenges with the landscaping portion of the project. A summer drought caused some of the newly planted trees to die and a significant summer storm toppled fifteen older established trees. Because of the continued drought and summer heat, the University would delay the planting of an additional ninety trees and shrubs until after the August 1998 reopening. Nevertheless, the project came in on budget and on time.

Ceremonial Drive on Spring Garden Street

On August 17, 1998, UNCG and the City of Greensboro commemorated the completion of the “Spring Garden Streetscape” project and the reopening of Spring Garden Street. At the corner of College Avenue and Spring Garden Street, a large celebration was held, with special remarks given by UNCG Chancellor Patricia Sullivan and Greensboro Mayor Carolyn Allen. The Greensboro City Council voted to bestow the honorary name of Lee Kinard Boulevard on the portion of Spring Garden Street between Tate and Aycock Streets. Kinard, a UNCG alumnus and a well-known television news anchor at WFMY-TV was asked to speak at the festivities. The event concluded with a traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony and a drive down the reopened street with Kinard chauffeuring the UNCG Chancellor and Greensboro Mayor in a red convertible.

Emmylou Harris: From UNCG to the Grand Ole Opry

Emmylou Harris in The Tempest, 1965

In April of 1976, country music star, Emmylou Harris, returned to Greensboro for a concert at the Piedmont Sports Arena. In celebration of this homecoming and her April 2nd birthday, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and local promoter, Bill Kennedy, declared it “Emmylou Harris Day” and held a “welcome back” party, inviting friends and professors who had known her when she was in college.  It had been only a little over a decade since Harris left The University of North Carolina at Greensboro to pursue her dreams, and on that April day in 1976, she was quickly on way to realizing them.
Born in Alabama and raised in North Carolina and Virginia, Harris entered UNCG in the fall of 1965 on a drama scholarship. While on campus, she appeared in plays, such as Shakespeare’s The Tempest and a children’s theatre production of The Dancing Donkey, before deciding that she would rather pursue a musical career.


The Dancing Donkey, 1966

It was during her time at UNCG, that Harris became part of a folk music duo called “The Emerald City” with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate, Mike Williams. Singing primarily folk songs by artists such as Bob Dylan and the Everly Brothers, they booked local venues as well as clubs as far afield as Virginia Beach and Washington D.C.


Harris also sang at the Red Door, a bar on Tate Street that had a “coffee house” atmosphere. She later admitted to actively trying to imitate the sounds of Joan Baez and Judy Collins, popular folk singers of the time. In a 1992 interview, Harris recalls that the Red Door paid $10 a night and all the beer that you could drink – a poor deal considering that Harris did not drink beer. Those who saw her perform remember her as tall, pretty, and talented.




Emmylou Harris performing in 2008
(CC BY-SA 2.0 Eric Frommer)

Realizing that her true love was not drama but music, she dropped out of college and headed for Virginia Beach, singing and waiting tables. After brief stints in New York and Nashville, Harris landed in the Washington D.C. music scene where she would catch her big break. While playing at a Georgetown nightclub, she met Gram Parsons, a young singer and songwriter with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, who was about to break out with his first solo album. Parsons’ blend of country and rock was a good fit for Harris and they recorded two albums and toured together before his death of an accidental drug overdose at the age of twenty-six. Harris considers Parsons her mentor and credits him for shaping her into the artist that she is today. Her style evolved as a successful combination of country, folk, and bluegrass, which has made Harris an extremely innovative and influential artist. She would continue to collaborate with other musicians, such as her friends Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton, and record her own albums as well, eventually winning a total of thirteen Grammys and inductions into the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame. In addition to making beautiful music, Harris has raised two daughters and become an advocate for causes such as animal rights and global landmine awareness. 

WC Students, Tate Street, and Desegregation in 1963

While the February 1960 sit-in at Greensboro’s F.W. Woolworth store downtown is well known, fewer people are knowledgeable about a second round of protests that escalated in Greensboro in the Spring of 1963. A number of Woman’s College (WC) students participated in the 1960 sit-ins, but the 1963 movement hit the students of WC a bit closer to home. While the protests stretched around town, one aspect of the movement was primarily targeted at businesses located on Tate Street, in the area known as “The Corner.”

Chancellor Otis Singletary

On February 27, 1963, 23 WC students (most African American) wrote Chancellor Otis Singletary asking him to immediately begin working towards desegregation of the Corner, a business area adjacent to the WC campus. The students wrote “This college has accepted us as students, therefore, as members of the Woman’s College community. Since we are accepted as such, we feel that the college has the responsibility of seeing that we receive the same privileges as any other member of this community. As of now, we are not granted such opportunities.” They added that “the decision to accept Negro students to Woman’s College implies the decision to give them your full moral support, not just a limited, partial support.”

The letter to Singletary earned a swift response. On March 13, he set up a meeting with a local business owner and Dean of Students Katherine Taylor. In the meeting, Singletary stressed that he recognized that he had no official authority to dictate policy to the business owners of the Corner, but he wished to request “unofficially that all students at the Woman’s College be served at the Corner eating places and admitted to the Cinema Theatre.” Singletary warned that, if the present segregationist policy continued, the students would likely begin picketing and boycotting these businesses.

On that same day - March 13, 1963 - the WC Student Government Association passed a resolution urging Singletary to "use his authority and influence as a college official" to convince owners of business on the Corner to desegregate their facilities. Specifically, they called out two restaurants - the Apple House and the Town and Country – as well as the Cinema Theatre on Tate Street. SGA’s resolution carried the same argument as the letter from the students to Singletary – the WC is integrated and its local businesses should be too.

SGA resolution calling for a boycott
of segregated businesses on Tate Street, 1963

 Three days later on Thursday, May 16, 1963, the WC SGA issued a call for "selective buying campaign" directed at the Tate Street merchants. On that same day, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants Association passed resolutions calling for equal access in all local businesses. Coinciding with a week of massive marches and demonstrations around Greensboro, approximately two dozen WC students picketed the offending Tate Street businesses they considered part of their campus community. One local businessman wrote Dean of Students Taylor that “it was disturbing, to say the least, to observe the fine looking young ladies harassing these local businessmen by parading before their places of business today … They appear determined to destroy our way of life and some of the business people whose taxes are educating them.”

Rallies and protests continued throughout Greensboro during the summer months. On May 22, 1963, more than two thousand African Americans of all ages and classes silently marched to downtown Greensboro to show their dedication to achieving racial equality, making it the largest march in the city’s history. A few days later, 1,643 white residents of Greensboro allowed their names to be published by the Greensboro Daily News in a full-page and partial-page ad in support of the integration of Greensboro’s businesses. On June 4, over five hundred students and adults joined North Carolina A&T student body president Jesse Jackson in a silent march. The next evening, Jackson led close to seven hundred African Americans to City Hall and was charged with “inciting a riot.” Protests continued throughout town, leading Greensboro Mayor David Schenk to issue an appeal to all businesses to desegregate immediately and for activists to halt their protests.

By June 13, eight more Greensboro restaurants chose to desegregate, making approximately one-quarter of local establishments open to African Americans. In July, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants Association insisted on a resolution calling for the immediate desegregation of all public spaces. And by the fall of 1963, close to 40 percent of Greensboro businesses had been integrated – including the institutions on Tate Street.

More information about the 1963 desegregation protests and marches – including more images and original documents – can be found at Civil Rights Greensboro.