Obituary
On September 23, 2007, Robert Edwin “Bob” Stipe of Chapel Hill, director of the
Division of Archives and History and state historic preservation officer in 1974-1975, died
at the age of seventy-nine. He also served two terms, from 1987 to 1993 and from 1999 to
2003, as a member of the National Register Advisory Committee of the North Carolina
Historical Commission.
Born in Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1929, Stipe came to North Carolina in the late 1940s
to study at Duke University, where he received an undergraduate degree in economics in
1950 and a law degree in 1953. He later received a master’s degree in regional planning
from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. Stipe served as a professor
at the university and as assistant director of the UNC Institute of Government from 1957
to 1974. There, his policy leadership and legislative drafting laid the foundation for the
state’s modern public history program. During Stipe’s tenure as director of the Division of
Archives and History and state historic preservation officer, he carried out the programs he
had helped to create. In so doing, he made significant contributions to an effective envi¬
ronmental review process to safeguard historical and archaeological resources from unnec¬
essary destruction at the hands of public agencies. After cardiac surgery in the spring of
1975, his tenuous health cut short his time at Archives and History, and he resigned for a
period of recuperation. Referring to Stipe, his assistant director and successor. Dr. Larry
Tise, declared in the division’s 1974-1976 biennial report that, “In all of the programs of
the division he stressed a greater concern for the preservation or conservation of the man¬
made environment . . . [and] did much to bring the programs of the division into the
vanguard of the national preservation movement.”
Robert Stipe developed a pioneering “short course” in historic preservation, cospon¬
sored by the Institute of Government and the Division of Archives and History. The
intensive ten-day course, which was offered biennially between 1966 and 1977, greatly
propelled the still-fledgling historic preservation movement. As later observed by
preservationist Bruce MacDougal, “there was no other place to learn about the broad
scope of historic preservation. Bob’s influence was felt throughout the country.”
In 1976, Stipe joined the faculty of the School of Design at North Carolina State Uni¬
versity, where he developed a specialized curriculum that combined elements of commu¬
nity design policy, historic preservation law, and landscape and townscape conservation.
From liis study ofland use and historic preservation while a Senior Fulbright Research
Fellow at the University of London in the late 1960s, Stipe was able to bring vision and
fresh ideas to the classroom. Out of his classes at the Institute of Government and the
School of Design emerged his legacy: a generation of local officials, design professionals,
and preservationists who still work to preserve historic landscapes and structures in their
communities throughout the state. Stipe also lectured as a visiting professor at universities
in England and central Europe. North Carolina State University awarded him emeritus
status in 1989.
Robert Stipe also led preservation efforts in the private sector. He served as president
from 1980 to 1982 of North Carolina’s statewide nonprofit historic preservation organiza¬
tion, the Historic Preservation Society of North Carolina (now Preservation North
Carolina). He also headed the Chapel Hill Historical Society in the 1960s and 1970s and
the Chapel Hill Preservation Society in the 1970s.
Through his work as chairman of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s
International Committee and as a fellow of the U.S. Committee of the International
Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS), Stipe’s impact was worldwide. Over
the years, he was an organizer of and speaker at many international meetings and symposia
on historic preservation, including being the keynote speaker at the first Anglo-American
Conference on Historic Preservation in Winchester, Virginia, in 1976.
Of most significance, Robert Stipe’s editing and writing assured his lasting influence
on American historic preservation policy and education. His more than one hundred
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