Founded by the Reverend James Archibald Campbell in 1887, the academy grew and eventually consisted of several buildings, all constructed of wood.

Kivett was completed on November 2, 1903, and in its early days served as the primary building of the academy, a rural school that educated children from kindergarten to the 12th grade.

He lived on his farm, the “plantation”, located on the other side of the Cape Fear River from Buies Creek with his wife Lillian Lee née.

During the ensuring years Z. T. and Lillian had three more children Willis Ervin, 1902, and twins again, Mary Herndon and Mildred McNeill, 1909.

In a handwritten letter to Dr. Joseph McKay, a trustee of the school, dated September 10, 1923, Kivett relates the details of his meeting with the Reverend Campbell the morning after the fire.

I am quite sure you are well acquainted with the general movement of affairs about Buies Creek Academy from its early struggle on through the passing years to the present high place it fills in the County and State.

But as to details of every one's part in this advance, you perhaps are not so well acquainted, and would like to be a little better informed, as I judge from your desire to have some kind of a statement along this line of my own connections with the work.

Perhaps none of those connected with the school on the night of December 20, 1900 will ever forget how quickly 14 years of their labor and toil went up in smoke and drifted out of the community in lowering clouds and drizzling rain.

About daybreak of the morning after the fire of the night before I was aroused by the constant ringing of the "Phone" in my hall, and when I answered the call I found J.

A. Campbell geared himself for the long and tremendous task of his life work, of establishing Buies Creek Academy.

At this juncture Mr. Campbell informed me he had not been able to interest anyone enough to get them to take hold the undertaking and as he and I had "put over" the "Big Wooden Tabernacle" with little in sight two and a half years before, why not I help him again?

To this day, twenty four years afterward, do I well remember the time and place, that I put my hand in his, and promised my family and all my plantation if it required them, to rebuild in Brick a more suitable building.

Built of rough-cut wood, the one-room building was furnished with five bunks, wood-burning stove, washstand, shelving and benches.

Into this primitive accommodation Z. T. moved himself and his oldest sons Stewart, Herndon and Hendricks and his daughter Virginia in the summer of 1901.

There is great concern in the local community and among students, alumni, and friends of the university as to the future of Kivett Hall.

A number of alumni and concerned citizens of the Buies Creek community have organized meetings to debate the future of the building, but a final decision of its fate has not yet been determined by the university.

[4][5] The future use of the building by the university is now undetermined following the announcement on October 4, 2007, that the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law would be moving to downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, by the fall of 2009.