“A Worthy Place”: Durham, Duke, and the World of the 1920s-1930s

Horace Trumbauer Architectural Firm Designs

In the new university campus, Duke administrators and J. B. Duke aimed to construct a monument to higher education following traditional Western models. Early architectural designs drew heavily on European styles adapted to the U.S. context. Before a site had been confirmed or land purchased, Duke selected the Philadelphia-based Horace Trumbauer Architectural Firm, which had designed his Fifth Avenue Mansion in New York City and the greenhouses at his Somerville, New Jersey, estate. The architect who led the new campus project was Julian Francis Abele, who brought considerable education and experience in European designs. Abele was also an African American designing a campus for a university that at the time accepted only white students. Abele’s role in the project was either unknown or unpublicized by Duke administrators until one of his descendants, Duke student Susan Cook, wrote a letter in the Duke Chronicle in 1986 highlighting her great-great uncle’s work.

Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architecture

In addition to the Trumbauer Firm, Duke engaged the Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architecture Firm, the firm responsible for New York City’s Central Park and the grounds at the Biltmore Estate near Asheville, as well as numerous school and college campuses. The Olmsted Firm was responsible for designing not only plantings but also walkways, roads, water features, lighting, and other key infrastructure. The two architectural plans shown here reflect a campus concept that differed significantly from Abele’s designs. Both firms’ designs, however, included sizable water features of the kind that J. B. Duke was known to favor. Ultimately, Duke selected one of Abele’s earliest designs, and Abele and Olmsted’s Percival Gallagher designed a campus seemingly outside of time: they graded the campus ridgeline to accommodate a neo-Gothic plan and masked modern amenities like the coal-powered electric plant, whose smoke stack is just visible in the background of the photograph above.

Architectural Inspirations

To aid in campus planning, Professor and University Comptroller Frank C. Brown and President William Preston Few traveled across the U.S. looking for architectural inspiration and taking note of what was most iconic and memorable at other institutions. By modeling Duke’s campus on Princeton, the University of Chicago, and similar institutions, Few and Brown carried on a tradition of emulating the architecture of older European universities like Oxford and Cambridge. The map above shows the number and geographic spread of institutions visited. The facsimile shows pages of the scrapbook that Brown and Few kept along the way. These pages feature annotated images and notes about aspects of specific schools they found both beautiful and useful and upon whose designs they aimed to improve.

See also: a prior Building Duke Project by Selena Qian mapping the sites of the architectural tour.

A Satirical Response

In 1933, an anonymously written, satirical play “The Vision of King Paucus” parodied the lofty aspirations of a university built on money and trade. While Chronicle editors encouraged readers to ignore it, and the play was never performed, the Chronicle nonetheless gave the play, and students’ critiques of it, front page status.

Reading The Chronicle

The Chronicle is a rich source of insights into student attitudes and campus life during the 1920s and 30s. It provides a window into contemporarous response to the changes planned for the former Trinity College. To explore the Duke Chronicle further, visit the Duke University Archives. You can also browse a database of selected topics and themes related to the relationship of the Duke and Durham communities and the wider world.