Morehead History
Construction workers and building materials assembled around the half-completed Planetarium in 1948. View from the rear of Graham Memorial (now home of the Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence). Image courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.
Part 2 – Construction
When first opened in 1949 after seventeen months of construction, Morehead Planetarium was unprecedented. The first planetarium in the South, it was only the sixth to be built in the United States. Designed by the same architects who planned the Jefferson Memorial, the cost of its construction – more than $23,000,000 in today’s dollars – made it the most expensive building ever built in North Carolina at the time.
Since Zeiss – the German firm that produced planetarium projectors – had lost most of its factories during World War II, there were very few projectors available at the time. Morehead had to travel to Sweden – where he had previously served as American ambassador – to purchase a Zeiss Model II to serve as the heart of North Carolina’s new planetarium.
Morehead Planetarium was officially dedicated during a ceremony held on May 10, 1949 and attracted some of the North Carolina’s most prominent citizens. U.S. Senator Frank Porter Graham, N.C. Governor Kerr Scott, Acting University President William Carmichael, University Chancellor Robert House, and John Motley Morehead III as well as other members of his family attended the ceremony. Following the dedication, assembled dignitaries viewed the Planetarium’s first show, “Let There Be Light,” narrated by Planetarium Director Roy K. Marshall.
While "Let There Be Light" was the Planetarium's first show, it would be followed later in 1949 by another show that is more familiar to Morehead Planetarium and Science Center's visitors: "Star of Bethlehem." While "Star of Bethlehem" has undergone extensive revisions throughout the years (most recently in 2002), some version of the show has run at the Morehead Center every holiday season since 1949 -- the longest streak for any holiday show at any planetarium in the United States.
The building that Morehead constructed under the counsel of Harlow Shapley wasn’t just another staid lecture hall but was rather a means of projecting science education to a wider audience -- one out beyond the stone walls of the University.
Planetariums were seen as a powerful tool for education. In 1925, Elis Stromgren, director of Copenhagen Observatory, lauded, “Never has a means of entertainment been provided which is so instructive as this, never one which is so fascinating, never one which has such general appeal. It is a school, a theater, a cinema in one; a schoolroom under the vault of heaven, a drama with the celestial bodies as actors.”
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