Duke's Architecture

Duke's Architectural Character & History

Duke's architecture represents far more than just Collegiate Gothic and Georgian styles, with a variety of modern and contemporary structures that build upon the architectural heritage of the University with varying degrees of success.

The common denominator for most of the campus buildings is an attempt to address this heritage in some manner through materials, scale, proportion and/or detailing, as deemed appropriate by the architect and the University administration at a particular time.

History of Duke's Architecture

Duke became a named university in the twentieth century. Trinity College became Duke University in 1924, and by 1932 a new campus was constructed, with the 210-foot-high Duke Chapel at its center. Former Executive Vice President, Tallman Trask III, wrote, “ Duke in fact became a great university in part because it looked like one from the start.” Two campuses emerged—one the more urban-like place, in a Georgian red brick; the other “from the forest” designed with local stone and carved limestone details in the popular Collegiate Gothic style. 

Horace Trumbauer, a Philadelphia architect, along with his chief designer, Julian F. Abele, and the Olmstead Brothers as landscape architects, designed both projects. By 1932, more than twenty buildings at a cost of 20 million dollars were in place in Durham. It was the single largest depression era project in the United States. Aldous Huxley wrote in 1937, shortly after the university was built, “These buildings are genuinely beautiful …the most successful essay in neo-Gothic that I know.” Today Duke’s Georgian East Campus and neo-Gothic West Campus serve as the core to a 2000 acre research, residential, academic, and health care university with over 250 buildings.

The interest in the quality and aesthetic appeal for Duke’s architecture has also found an audience from those who enjoy architectural history. More detailed information can be found at the Duke University archives, with maps and building descriptions available with Duke’s interactive campus map.

Collegiate Gothic Style

The term Collegiate Gothic derives from Gothic Revival, an architectural style inspired by medieval Gothic architecture. Beginning in the mid-18th century, Gothic Revival became a leading building style during the 19th century and was often employed because of its moral overtones for academic, political, and religious buildings. When the founders of Duke were deciding what the architectural style for the new campus would be, they visited many established universities, including University of Chicago, Yale, and Princeton, and came to the decision that a Collegiate Gothic campus within a North Carolina Piedmont forest would be ideal for Duke.

Architectural elements common to the Collegiate Gothic style that can be found on Duke buildings are arches, finials, gargoyles, parapets, and tracery.

Georgian Style

Thomas Jefferson's design for the University of Virginia established Georgian architecture as one of the leading models for collegiate buildings in this country and represented a traditional quality desired by the founders of Duke. The buildings on East Quad reflect the attributes of simplicity, symmetry and geometry that define Georgian architecture.

Towers 

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of Duke's architecture, old and new, is the abundance of tower elements, beginning most obviously with Duke Chapel. 

Duke Stone 

The most identifiable element in the architecture of Duke's West Campus is the local stone used for the original Gothic, and many of the new, campus buildings. Quarries from nearby Hillsborough, NC, the stone displays a rich palette of blues, grays, tans and rust colors that give the buildings a richness and warmth that otherwise would have been difficult to achieve. The stone has become increasingly expensive (costing the Universtiy over $400 per ton just to provide the material to masons) and has in the recent years been used more sparingly in building in combination with the standard "Duke brick" blend, and effectively as a landscape element to provide consistency across West Campus. 

While the joint work remains fairly consistent on Duke stone building walls, site walls display much more variety in how they are laid and capped, which adds interest while at the same establishing a consistent character across campus.