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

Original plans to build Duke University around Trinity College included expanding Trinity's campus (now East Campus) northward in order to connect the university with Watts Hospital. When area homeowners learned of the plan and inflated their prices, Trinity administrators decided to look west toward farms and forests situated along Rigsbee Road and Sandy Creek, extending northward to the site of James and Nancy Bennett’s farm near Highway 70. Many property owners and tenants lived on and worked the land in what the Trinity Chronicle on December 2, 1925, described as “virgin forest.” The land that would become West Campus was meticulously surveyed and transformed to accommodate the iconic campus structures, beginning with the football stadium and ending with the Chapel, through the dual visions of architect Julian Francis Abele and the Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architecture Firm.

C.L. Berger & Sons Survey Transit Level, c. 1930. Private collection.

This precision instrument was a vital tool for surveyors and engineers in the early twentieth century. It features a mounted telescope on a rotating base, enabling users to capture precise measurements over long distances. A device like this was essential for the creation of the topographic maps in the survey plats for Duke's West Campus.