Duke Endowment helped build a great university in Durham

James Buchanan “Buck” Duke became a very wealthy North Carolinian. He also held a deep religious conviction to the Methodist Church. Many people remember his wry sense of humor and his stellar performance as a philanthropist.

 

James Duke once confessed: “I am going to give a good part of what I make to the Lord, but I can make better interest for Him by keeping it while I live.”

 

James Duke was still very much alive, however, in 1924 when he set aside $40 million from his personal fortune to create The Duke Endowment. He may have mellowed a bit, but yet he gave the foundation trustees very specific orders about how to spend his money. 

Per his instructions: 46% is earmarked for higher education; 32% goes to nonprofit hospitals; 12% is reserved for rural Methodist churches as well as pensions for their retired ministers; and 10% is devoted to orphan care. 

Washington Duke, who was James Duke’s father, was largely responsible for moving Trinity College from Randolph County to Durham in the early 1890s, but the school remained a small Methodist college well into the 1920s. 

“I want it to become a great university,” James Duke confided in Judge William Robertson Perkins, his personal legal counselor. 

With funding from The Duke Endowment, Trinity College was renamed Duke University in 1924, as a lasting tribute to Washington Duke.

 

Judge Perkins said his client had some thoughts about the curriculum. “I advise that the courses of this institution be arranged, first with special reference to the training of preachers, teachers, lawyers and physicians, because these are most in the public eye, and by precept and example can do most to uplift mankind,” James Duke said. 

James Duke and Dr. William Preston Few, the college president, saw eye to eye on the academic mission, so James Duke delved into designing the physical aspects of a new campus.

 

Dr. Few

He hired a famous architect to design the new buildings of Duke University – Horace Trumbauer of Philadelphia, Pa.

 

Horace Trumbauer

James Duke’s dream was for Duke University to be perceived “as one of the nation’s elite institutions,” reported Stephen Schramm, a senior writer at Duke. 

As such, Duke University “needed to echo the older, more well-known northeastern universities that featured Gothic buildings of earthy, multi-hued stone,” James Duke stated. 

But James Duke was frugal. He didn’t want to pay the freight to transport stones from quarries several states away, Schramm reported. That would be too expensive.

James Duke tasked one of the college professors – Dr. Frank Clyde Brown – to “find a more reasonable” source for “Duke’s stones.”

Dr. Brown

 

Dr. Brown’s area of expertise wasn’t geology. He taught English literature and “excelled as an interpreter of Shakespeare to generations of students,” Schramm said. 

As a rock hound, Dr. Brown became a quick learner. He was led to find the ideal stones on the hillside of a 72-acre farm near Hillsborough, about 14 miles away from the campus site. 

“James Duke was thrilled with the appearance of the stone, its proximity to campus and the price of obtaining it – around $3.50 a ton, roughly a fifth of the cost of the stone used at Princeton (N.J.) University,” Schramm noted. 

Dr. Brown boasted that the Duke stone is “very much more attractive” than the stone used by Princeton. 

A smiling James Duke responded by buying the entire parcel with its prized quarry for $4,000 from farmer Patrick L. Clayton. A railroad line was quickly built to transport the stones to the Durham campus site.