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Pencil sketch showing gothic buildings with a chapel at the center and a large fountain in the foreground.
Pencil sketch showing gothic buildings with a chapel at the center and a large fountain in the foreground.

Building the Olmsted Record: Duke University’s Landscape Architecture

Project Lead(s): Kristin Love Huffman, Hannah L. Jacobs

2018 –

Building the Olmsted Record: Duke University’s Landscape Architecture documents the history of Duke’s landscape architecture from its early conception in the 1920s. The project has three main goals: first, to research and create a digital repository of documentary evidence, visual and written, about the conception of Duke and its cultivated and natural landscape; second, to combine and structure the wealth of documentation from the Olmsted Archives in Massachusetts along with other records in the Duke University Archives and the Library of Congress into a sharable platform within Airtable; and third, to interpret these documents and generate historical narratives in ArcGIS StoryMaps in addition to traditional scholarly essays.

As a subproject of Building Duke, Building the Olmsted Record expands our knowledge and understandings of Duke’s physical environment and re-establishes the Olmsted firm’s fundamental role in the original conception of the campus. Select people, including Robert Lee Flowers, A.C. Lee, and Percival Gallagher, working in tandem with institutional ambitions, collectively informed the present-day shape of Duke’s intertwined cultivated landscape and architectural elements. The stories of these central protagonists and the Olmsted Firm, with celebrated projects like New York City’s Central Park and closer to home Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Mansion, have become imprinted within the two campuses and specific spaces that collectively form Duke University.

Featured Image: Unrealized Project of a “Rainbow Fountain” Placed in View of Duke Chapel. Envisioned by the Olmsted Firm in 1925. Graphite on Tracing Paper, 14 inches by 25 inches. See 279735, job 07411, in the Olmsted Research Guide Online. Courtesy of the Olmsted Archives. Full version here.

Full color panoramic photograph of Duke's West Campus showing stone walks lined with oak trees and neogothic architecture on either side.
Panoramic View of West Campus. Photograph by Luca Vascon taken in 2018. Full version here.
Sketch of the road leading up to Duke Chapel with written annotations describing the landscape along the road.
Main Approach to West Campus as Envisioned by the Olmsted Firm in 1929. Section elevation with a scale of 20 feet to 1 inch in original document. See 279477, job 07411, in the Olmsted Research Guide Online. Courtesy of the Olmsted Archives. View full version.
Grading plan for Duke's West Campus. Building footprints drawn in brown with buildings colored in blue, surrounding roads sketched in, and a proposed lake colored in white in the bottom right.
Grading Plan of West Campus (Known as Men’s College). Created by the Olmsted Firm in 1930. Graphite and ink on paper, 70 3/4 inches by 41 3/4 inches. Plan with a scale of 60 feet to 1 inch. See 279611, job 07411, in the Olmsted Research Guide Online. Courtesy of the Olmsted Archives. Full version here.
Blueprint of Duke's East Campus buildings with plantings marked with numbers and circles.
East Campus (Known as Women’s College) Planting Plan of Trees, Shrubs, and Beds. Created by the Olmsted Firm in 1927 and reissued in 1929. Cyanotype negative print on graphite paper (blueprint), 29 1/2 inches by 49 inches. Blueprint plan with a scale of 30 feet to 1 inch. See 279430, job 07411, in the Olmsted Research Guide Online. Courtesy of the Olmsted Archives. Full version here.
Monochrome photograph showing Duke's East Campus under construction: A domed auditorium in the background with workers standing or walking in the foreground and trees sketched in pencil along the avenue leading to the auditorium.
Photographic View of East Campus toward Baldwin Auditorium with Penciled In Landscape Elements and Workers. Photograph generated by Percival Gallagher, taken and printed c. 1927. Photograph with graphite. See 1680, job 07411, in the Olmsted Research Guide Online. Courtesy of the Olmsted Archives. Full version here.

Past Collaborators

Dana Hogan (Doctoral Student Contributor & Undergraduate Mentor)
Amanda Lazarus (Doctoral Student Contributor & Undergraduate Mentor)
Andrew Lin (Undergraduate Student)
Kayla Marr (Undergraduate Student)
Holly Stam (Undergraduate Student)
Daniella Welton (Undergraduate Student)

Related Projects

Building Duke