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Page 11 text:
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pleased by the wide range of colors in the Hillsborough stone — various shades of brown, yellow, gray, blue, green and black — and gained assur- ance of its durability from both the state geologist’s office and the Bureau of Standards in Washington. When Duke and the trustees of the Endow- ment met in Durham in late March, 1925, he proudly led them to the sample walls where balloting revealed a decid- ed preference for the local stone. A ven- erable style of English architecture in- spired the original buildings of Duke’s West Campus, but the warmly colored stone came from a nearby Piedmont hillside. As much concerned about the lands- caping of the campuses as about the architecture, Duke selected one of the leading firms in the nation, Olmsted Brothers of Boston, to redesign the Trinity campus and to lay out the grounds for the new one. Founded by Frederick Law Olmsted, the creator of New York’s Central Park and of many other famous parks, the Olmsted firm emphasized, among other things, the use of attractive native trees and shrubs where possible; thence came the magni- ficent Southern magnolias, the great live oaks, the cedars, and other native trees that grace the two campuses. As the rebuilding of the old Trinity campus began in the summer of 1925, James B. Duke, up to then a vigorous and extremely active sixty-eight year old man, fell ill. His doctors, initially puzzled, finally diagnosed pernicious anemia, and Duke died in his Fifth Ave- nue mansion on October 10, 1925. Aside from the annual support for Duke Uni- versity that would come in perpetuity from The Duke Endowment — ap- proximately one-third of its annual in- come was designated for the university — James B. Duke provided altogether about $19 million for the physical plant of Duke University on its two cam- puses. Saddened by his younger brother’s death, an increasingly bed ridden Ben Duke lived until January 8, 1929. His own interest in first Trinity College and then Duke University never waned. While his gifts to the institution includ- ed such significant contributions as the Angier B. Duke Memorial scholarship fund in honor of his deceased son, Ben Duke’s role was overshadowed by the munificence of James B. Duke. None- theless, Few and others in the universi- ty publicly acknowleged and empha- sized the institution’s long-standing and crucial debt to Ben Duke. Despite James B. Duke’s great gener- osity to Duke University, the grim but unpublicized truth was that there was simply not enough money to do ever- ything in the manner that Duke had originally envisioned. Few had sold him on a most ambitious undertaking. If the philanthropist had lived, matters would no doubt have been quite differ- ent, but as it was, Few and his principle associates were forced to cut down on various plans in order to stay within available income. The lake that James B. Duke had wanted on West Campus and the two great fountains there, as well as the fountain in the circle be- tween the handsome Georgian library and matching union building on the East Campus, all had to be eliminated. Various other cost-cutting measures, all relatively minor, had to be taken in the Gothic dormitories. The loss of the lake may have been a blessing, for that ravine became the site first of an iris garden which Dr. Freder- ick M. Hanes persuaded Mrs. Ben Duke to underwrite. Then after she died in 1936, her daughter, Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, completed and expanded the project that her mother had helped start. The magnificent Sarah P. Duke Gardens, significantly enlarged in the decades after their formal opening in 1938, became one of the most distinc- tive as well as most beautiful parts of the university. By 1930, as the chapel tower, which was the last of the original Tudor Goth- ic structures to be built, began to climb upward among the lofty pines, Presi- dent Few’s worries about money had somewhat abated. He confided to an as- sociate: “The routine at times may be dull and gray, but the vision of the fu- ture is always golden and infinitely in- spiring.” Few drew great satisfaction from his belief that “we have now hit the open sea and that a long journey is ahead of Duke University.” It was to be a journey in which, in one very real sense, the past lived on in the present. Robert F. Durden Professor of History Duke University Introduction 7
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Page 10 text:
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tion. He secured the first option in No- vember, 1924, and by the spring of 1925 had succeeded in buying more land than was immediately needed. Pur- chases to round out the holdings con- tinued for many years, in fact, and Duke University wound up eventually owning around 8,000 acres, mostly in a forest preserve. It would never be handicapped by the land scaricty that plagues many educational institutions. Until James B. Duke had seen the new land, however, no one knew whether it would actually be used for the univer- stiy or, if so, just how. In three busy spring days in late March, 1925, as the dogwood and red- bud trees bloomed in what can be a magical time in the Carolina Piedmont, a great deal of the planning was accom- plished for what became the two cam- puses of Duke University. When James B. Duke finally inspected the new land, he, in consultation with Few, Trum- bauer, and one or two others, quickly decided that the Tudor Gothic build- ings, with a soaring chapel at their cen- ter, would be erected on the new land on a crest overlooking a deep ravine, which Duke envisioned as a lake. A life- long lover of fountains and water-falls, Duke pictured a great fountain in the central quadrangle with the water cas- cading over falls that emptied into the lake. The long-desired coordinate col- lege for women, rather than being crowded into a corner of the old Trinity campus, would occupy that entire cam- pus. While some of the existing build- ings there would be retained, several would have to go in order to make room for eleven new buildings to be con- structed of red brick and white marble in the neo-classic style so beloved by Thomas Jefferson. Trumbauer’s construction superin- tendent kept a simple notebook which is one of the few documentary sources for the decisions made in that spring of 1925. “Met Mr. Duke today,” the super- intendent recorded, “and went over the ground for the new University.” When Trumbauer arrived, the superintendent noted that he explained to the architect “the new location of the layout on top of the hill moving the chapel forward so it will come on the high ground. And the library was “to be moved over to a high spot to the right of where shown on plans, this being Mr. Duke’s idea of how the layout should be.” Trumbauer and his associates returned to Philadel- phia with instructions to prepare work- ing drawings, first for the new buildings on the Trinity campus, soon to be known as the East Campus, and then later for the Tudor Gothic structures to be erected on the new land, which would become the West Campus. The selection of the stone to be used in the Tudor Gothic bildings was an- other matter of keen interest to James B. Duke. Initially assuming that the stone would have to come from one of the well-known quarries in the North, he arranged for freightcar-loads of var- ious samples of stone to be shipped to Durham so that test walls could be built on the Trinity campus. Frank Brown, in the meantime, learned of an aban- doned quarry near Hillsborough, only a few miles from Durham. After a sample wall of the local stone had been built, Brown informed Trumbauer that it was “much more attractive than the Prince- ton wall” and “much warmer and softer in coloring. Morever, it would cost not more than $3.50 per ton delivered as compared to an estimated $21.00 per ton for the Princeton stone. Duke au- thorized the purchase of the quarry and additional testing of the stone. He was
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