(This is taken from the second chapter of “Connections . . . 100 Years of Wake Forest History,” which was written for the 2009 centennial when the town name was changed from the Town of Wake Forest College (1880-1909) to the Town of Wake Forest.)
One of the most visible improvements was the new national road, U.S. 1. It was linking towns all along the eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida. The second was a new state road connecting Wake Forest to Durham, N.C. 98. Both were completed in 1923.
The route for U.S. 1 led to a tremendous wrangle in which the town eventually triumphed over the federal government. The original Wake Forest-Youngsville road was on the east side of the railroad tracks (North White Street now), but the federal engineers chose to lay out the new highway on the west side and in doing so had to tame the steep bluff at the north end of Faculty Avenue.
The federal engineers wanted the new road to continue down Faculty Avenue, straight through the campus, and down what is now South Main, heading for Raleigh.
The town fathers and the college officials said no. It was true a road had gone through the middle of campus once, but that was years past. Finally, the engineers acquiesced and the highway swept around the campus.
If you have paved roads and long-distance motorists, you need gasoline filling stations, and A.J. “Jack” Medlin was happy to oblige, an action that led to the first zoning case heard by the state Supreme Court. He built his general store on Faculty Avenue at the corner of West Juniper Avenue (now the office for Utility Service Agency) in 1905. “I bought my first air rifle there,” Dr. I. Beverly Lake Sr. remembered. Medlin installed a dining room in part of the store and converted his house next door for a tourist lodge. The next step was to enlarge his curbside filling station and put in gasoline pumps.
The thought shook the families in the large Faculty Avenue homes, who apparently believed the pumps and stored gasoline would be a danger to children and the college campus.
They appealed to the town board in December of 1928, which then turned to Wake Forest College President F.P. Gaines and to law Professor R.L. McMillan. McMillan gave the board “a very instructive and entertaining talk about zoning,” and at the same time another law professor, John G. Mills, reported on his conferences with James H. Pou, the top lawyer in the county at the time, and Judge Mouring “in regard to abolishing the filling station.”
Mayor Dr. Solomon P. Holding and the commissioners – J.C. Caddell; W.R. Powell, who operated the Royall Mill store and was a director there; G.H. Greason, the mill superintendent; and R.W. Wilkinson, a merchant – waited 20 days before adopting a zoning ordinance with only one provision: it became illegal to maintain or operate a gasoline filling station west of the railroad tracks. Zoning was very new, having begun in New York City in 1925 and in Durham in 1927.
Medlin cooperated by operating the station until he was charged, taken to court and fined $50. He then appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court, and the case was heard in the spring of 1930.
Medlin lost, but by then he had the support of many town residents. Mayor Holding, remembered by the park the town built on the site of his South Main home, said the store was “the nicest in town.” Dr. George W. Paschal spoke for Medlin as did Dr. Needham Y. Gulley, the dean of the law school and owner of Forestville Dairy. Gulley said his home “is the nearest residence on the east side of Main Street to Mr. Medlin’s place of business. I live just across the pasture from Mr. John Mills.” The case is a landmark in the state because it upheld the validity of zoning.
No one apparently ever objected to Medlin’s tourist home or to the others on North and South Main streets that would flaunt neon signs for years.
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