Richard Stanhope Pullen was rather shy and didn't like loud noises - especially barking dogs.

In fact, the philanthropist who became NC State's first benefactor had almost as many eccentricities as large tracts of land that he donated to communities across the state.

Born Sept. 18, 1822, in the unincorporated Wake County community of Neuse Station - located about nine miles north of Raleigh's city center - he was a family caretaker who strategically handed out the land he inherited from his childless aunt and uncle, as well as the land he purchased with his impressive investment portfolio.

For every gift of land he made of more than 300 acres across the state, he purchased $5,000 in stock to build a cotton mill, a great boost to North Carolina's textile and manufacturing industries. Not needing a mill on the industrial school's campus, he joined in the call to establish an institution dedicated to educating mill managers and technicians, which became the genesis of NC State's Wilson School of Textiles.

Holladay Hall was one of the first buildings on campus in the 1890s. Photo courtesy of NC State University Libraries Special Collections Research Center.

In the late 1800s, Pullen was Raleigh's wealthiest, busiest and most generous philanthropist, even though he steadfastly refused to ever establish a business office.

"He was a very busy man," said his 1895 obituary. "He had no office because he said that he thought that when a man had a place of business he should always be found there.

"He could not be there always, and therefore he would not have any."

His most enduring legacies were the 62 acres given to North Carolina to construct a long-discussed but never realized industrial and technical school in the state capital, and the 66 acres he gave to the city of Raleigh to become the state's first public park.

The industrial school became the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, which eventually became NC State University. On the grounds originally donated by Pullen are buildings named for many of his contemporaries: Alexander Q. Holladay, Arthur Winslow, William Stuart Primrose, Joseph Peele, Augustus Leazar and other members of the Watauga Club. All of them, of course, shaded through the years by the trees he helped plant and the sacred footprint of the Memorial Tower.

A lifelong bachelor, Pullen never had children of his own, but he provided opportunity for the nearly half million sons and daughters who have received high-quality public education at the institutions he helped found and the hundreds of thousands of children who played on the grounds of the park that bears his name, across the street that bears his name, from NC State's modern campus.

The entrance to nearby Pullen Park.

These words, written at the time of Pullen's death on June 23, 1895, still ring specifically true:

"As the years witness the expansion of the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Raleigh, and thousands of young men go out to labor, and newer and happier conditions come to sweeten the life of the toilers - all who have been blessed by the wide influence of the Agricultural and Mechanical College will recall that its commodities and structures are built upon land donated by a modest and unassuming man, who without saying anything about it, was an earnest believer in industrial education.

"When the Normal and Industrial School of Greensboro [later the North Carolina College for Women, now UNC Greensboro] has reached its zenith, and thousands of young women from every nook and corner of the state are carrying the light of education to the youth of all classes, and this school has grown to be as famous in its maturity as its youth promises - then will come gratitude in a multitude of hearts to the generous old bachelor who gave one-half of the land upon which it is located.

"A hundred years from now, when Raleigh's large population has quite outgrown its present limits, Pullen Park's ample shade, its cozy trysting places, its sweet retreats, where tired mothers will carry their children for refreshing shades - all these will tell the story of the liberal gift of a plain, honest, unpretentious man, who wanted in a practical way to give happiness and rest to his fellow citizens of these unborn generations."

Pullen was a hands-on benefactor, laying out the road that divides the park and the school himself, with the help of a young boy, a plow and a mule. It was one of the enduring qualities that made him one of Raleigh's most beloved citizens.

He was carried to his final resting place in the family plot at the entrance of Oakwood Cemetery by seven African American friends and a group of five elder pallbearers that included Holladay, whose namesake building still stands on the land Pullen donated.

The city and state mourned.

An obelisk near Pullen's grave in Oakwood Cemetery.

Pullen was quite stubborn. He refused to ever let anyone take his picture or paint his likeness. The North Carolina Federation of Home Bureaus raised $10,000 to create a handsome memorial to Pullen, a man the News & Observer remembered as "Raleigh's most public-spirited citizen."

Jane McKimmon, the state home extension agent who earned both an undergraduate and a master's degree from NC State College, called the fundraising effort "the first public undertaking of organized farm women of the state."

All they asked in return was for Pullen to sit for a portrait to go with an archway they planned to construct at the entrance to the university.

"They'll never get it," he said.

And they never did.

"It is greatly regretted by the family and friends of Mr. Pullen that he had never had his picture taken," the N&O reported in his obituary. "He had been requested over and over again to do so but always declined. What his reasons were nobody knew but him.

"It was never done, however, and every trace of his likeness, except that which is stamped on the memory of his friends, was buried with him."

A Picture in Words

While Pullen was never photographed or painted, the News & Observer did its best to describe his physical appearance in its June 6, 1907 issue.

"None can say exactly how he looked, striking as he was. [Pullen] regarded photographers and the whole cult of painters and portraiturists askance; and he passed away before the vest-pocket kodak arrived. Not an example of the features of one who a dozen years ago was known to every man, woman and child in the city remains in daguerreotype, photograph, or sketch. The 'Pullen Hall' at the A. and M. College, for which he was largely responsible, cannot boast a passing picture of the man for whom it was named. Yet still the character of his look remains, perhaps accentuated by memory in the points of his marked character and merged therein-a small, unobtrusive, retiring and yet alert figure; eyes that seemed to be looking at the ground yet were in ambush with interest under bushy grey brows; a sparse grey beard veiling a stubborn chin with modesty and deprecation; a mouth that was aquiver with restraint, that opened to speak only the digest of what was grist to his mind and yet was always dripping with the juices of reflection; and wrinkles innumerable that were the only indices of what was evidently a broad and analytical inner experience of philosophy and the humour of observation...Who has not seen his striking figure as he walked in the fields and suburbs of the city, alone and meditative, yet keenly alive and observant? At such times, he was planning and thinking. And his communion with himself was never unproductive. Whether he was building, planning landscapes, assessing real estate or mediating charities, he came back decided." Read about his appearanceCollapse

Generally, the women of the state adored the bachelor with no heirs because he gave half the land needed to build a women's college. He saved Peace Institute (now William Peace University) from foreclosure, and he designed the play spaces and planted the trees for the city's children to enjoy over the decades.

Mrs. E. E. Moffitt of Richmond, Virginia, and Mrs. Wallace Carl Riddick, wife of NC State College's president, led a 20-year effort to raise money to commemorate his initial gift of 62 acres to the state of North Carolina for a true land-grant college in the state's capital city.

Eventually, NC State managed to put Pullen's name on a student affairs building that was dedicated in 1903, eight years after his death; but it burned to the ground on Feb. 22, 1966, when a student arsonist set fire to it and several other buildings on campus. Through the years, that building had served as a library, dining area, auditorium and home of the school's band and orchestra. It also hosted the only home game ever played by NC State's first basketball team in 1911.

The original Pullen Hall in 1940.

A well-seasoned plaque dedicated to Pullen now rests on a concrete base under a willow oak tree on Hillsborough Street, near the two-lane roundabout at the school's northeast entrance.

For nearly a quarter century, there was no physical memorial to the philanthropist. It took a loud request by his great-grandnephew, Charles Hinton Belvin III '30, to get Pullen's name on another building. The current Pullen Hall is also a student affairs administrative building, located at the corner of Dan Allen and Thurman drives near the tri-tower residence halls of Carroll, Bowen and Metcalf. It was dedicated by Chancellor Larry Monteith on Oct. 12, 1990.

The building is home to University Housing, Student Legal Services, the Career Development Center and guest and conference services, with a replacement plaque dedicated to Pullen's impact on what became North Carolina's largest university.

His legacy endures.

Pullen Hall today.

Pullen was a groundbreaking landowner in Raleigh. Long before Oakwood and Mordecai were designated as the city's most historic neighborhoods, that part of town was known as "Pullentown."

He bought the farmland northeast of downtown for $3,000 and sold individual parcels after laying out all the streets, which he then deeded over to the city free of charge. He made North Blount Street prosperous long before NC State students began running to a famous doughnut shop there for the Krispy Kreme Challenge.

Though he owned a dandy two-seat Rockaway carriage, Pullen preferred to walk his land. Long before fitness-tracking technology, he knew the number of steps he took on a daily basis, from his home to his bank, from his home to his park, from the park to the bank - but never to an office.

He and his avid walking partners, usually Col. Fred A. Olds or Stanhope Lynne, trod all over Raleigh back when the roads were recently carved and not yet paved.

He was always planting. Wherever Stanhope Pullen's foot was laid he dropped a seed in its track. That seed always grew. Nothing he planted dies.

One day, while walking near his home on Hillsboro Street (as the famous thoroughfare's name was spelled at the time), Pullen was attacked by a neighbor's vicious dog, who often kept him awake at night while barking. He aimed to buy the boisterous creature and move it out of town to a quieter location.

"Sir, you do not have enough money to buy my dog," his neighbor told him.

As Raleigh's wealthiest resident, Pullen did have enough money to buy the house and plot of land where the neighbor lived, and he did so the next day. He then gave the neighbor the choice of moving from her rented residence or getting rid of the dog.

She chose the latter, and Pullen rested peacefully for his remaining days.

Pullen was greatly interested in the proposition of building North Carolina's land-grant college in Raleigh, though he was never active in the advocacy of the Watauga Club, a collection of progressive farmers who fought to keep such a school away from the state university in Chapel Hill. Many of the members, however, were his friends. He watched with interest as they talked about locating the school in Nash Square, a site later determined to be "inadequate and unsuitable."

They also considered a four-acre spot near Glenwood Avenue and St. Mary's Street called Devereaux Meadow, which later became a baseball field and City of Raleigh transportation hub and is now being considered for a multibillion-dollar municipal stadium.

Pullen thought the state's Board of Agriculture was thinking too small for the new school and doing too little. He thought the board would abandon the idea of building on such a small spot if someone provided a better piece of land.

One of several signs for Pullen Road on and nearby Central Campus.

Quietly, Pullen bought the farm of local resident Eason Lee, who was a member with Pullen at Edenton Street Methodist Church. The land was perched on a high spot off Hillsboro, with expansive acres of undeveloped land going all the way back to the Method community and on the other side of the Seaboard Railroad tracks toward Western Boulevard.

One chilly morning in 1885, Pullen requested that Wynne "come walk with me."

They climbed over rocks and ridges and dirt roads, along the banks of Rocky Branch Creek and across the pastures of Lee's farm. Pullen wanted to know what Wynne thought of his idea.

Not long after, Pullen offered 62 acres to the Board of Agriculture, knowing full well that there were several large pastures owned by local farmers and investors, like Board of Trustees member J. C. L. Harris, that were ripe for the school's expansion.

That school's land eventually came to total 2,100 acres: more than 800 acres on either side of the railroad tracks of main campus, 1,105 from a state gift to create Centennial Campus, and 250 acres of one-time federal land at the Centennial Biomedical Campus that houses the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The school stands on the bedrock of his initial gift.

A marker near the Belltower honors Pullen for his contribution to the university.

Pullen had no professional title other than philanthropist and landowner. He took pleasure in giving it all away, including the $200,000 estate he left behind.

At heart, however, he was a landscape architect and planter who sowed the seeds of industrial education and agriculture that have reached, through his gifts and the children the resultant schools have educated, from the small tract of undeveloped land on the outskirts of Raleigh all the way into Earth's orbit aboard the International Space Station.

"He was always planting," Wynne wrote of his late friend in 1931. "Wherever Stanhope Pullen's foot was laid he dropped a seed in its track. That seed always grew. Nothing he planted dies.

"His deep and practical love of nature is testified today by hundreds of spreading trees shading sidewalks, populous with children at play, with the haunting deeps of the park at night, with cool stretches of lawn and clumps of shrubbery in which birds are nesting.

"The man had the passion of the created thing, which is the soul of a poet, and almost the poet's joy in the creation - a strange and subtly beautiful trait of this hard-headed old bachelor, playing at gruffness, taking a mischievous delight in straining at a hardness that was his one and only sham."

And all his seeds continue to grow.