Davis Arboretum Lake

The Science and Technology Building now stands where a lake and arboretum once graced the campus. The lake, a favored haunt of ECTC students, lovers, and campus guests, had humble beginnings: the area had earlier served as the school's swine lot. However, in 1931, as part of a campus beautification project, a creek on the south side known as Green Mill Run was dammed, resulting in a two-acre lake. The student body, by that point including a few men, responded enthusiastically to the new addition. The 1931 yearbook, the Tecoan, featured a full page of pictures entitled, "Scenes from Our Lake." Thereafter, pictures of the lake were regularly highlighted in the Tecoan. The yearbook photos reflected the fact that the lake had quickly become a favorite campus spot for, among other things, courting. Nor was the administration oblivious to this: students were not officially permitted in the area after 7:45 p.m.

The Campus Beautification Committee, organized in 1930 and chaired by professor of sociology Martin L. Wright, was responsible for this beloved addition to the southeast end of campus. In the 1920s, campus acreage doubled and ten new buildings were constructed. Professor Wright's committee worked to transform the construction sites into aesthetically pleasing dimensions of the burgeoning campus. In addition to the fountain in front of the Social and Religious Building (later Wright Building), the committee's largest – yet ultimately ephemeral – project involved planning an arboretum on the southeast side of campus surrounding the new lake.

In 1935, with federal funding through the Works Progress Administration, Wright and the Campus Beautification Committee had the arboretum populated with plants and trees native to eastern North Carolina. Hedges, paths, bridges across the lake to a rustic gazebo, and two granite entrances were added to the area. The pastoral site was named for Sally Joyner Davis, professor of history and the first chair of the Grounds Committee at East Carolina Teachers Training School. The finished project, Davis Arboretum, contained azaleas, weeping willows, wisterias, boxwoods, and other native plants.

However, the rapidly growing campus and surrounding residential developments claimed the lake and most of the arboretum within a decade of their creation. Extending Tenth Street as an east-west corridor paralleling Fifth on the southside of the campus required rerouting Green Mill Run to its current flow south of Tenth Street. Consequently, the lake ended up being drained. Construction of Flanagan and then Rawl Building meant the beginning of the end for Davis Arboretum. Further expansion of the campus with Umstead, Howell, Christenbury, Bate, and finally, the Science and Technology Building buried the once idyllic spot. Despite the arboretum's disappearance, the lake bed between the Science and Technology Building and Tenth Street still contains many beautiful, old trees from East Carolina's early days, a living memorial to the past. Occasional flooding in that area provides a flashback to the lake that once was.

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Sources:

• Bratton, Mary Jo Jackson. East Carolina: The Formative Years, 1907-1982. Greenville: East Carolina University Alumni Association, 1986.
• Ferrell, Henry C., Jr. No Time for Ivy: East Carolina University, 1907-2007. Greenville: East Carolina University, 2006.
• "College Plans Large-Scale Beautification Project for 1935-36." The Teco Echo, Vol. 11, no. 14.
• Ryan, Thornton. "College Nursery Farm Furnishes Shrubbery for Beautification." The Teco Echo, Vol. 15, no. 13.
• "Scenes from Our Lake." The Tecoan 1931: The Yearbook of East Carolina Teachers College. Greenville, North Carolina. P. 222.
• "Work on Davis Arboretum Halted for the Year." The Teco Echo, Vol. 12, no. 11.

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