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ECO-FRIENDLY PARKING GARAGE A 1,920-space garage will open near Erwin Road and Research Drive in January, giving employees more options.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE
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COMPLETE BENEFITS PACKAGE Personalized benefits statements will arrive soon. Hear from employees about the value of working at Duke.
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SUSTAINABLE DUKE Duke is exploring carbon offsets to become carbon neutral, improve North Carolina’s environment and create renewable energy sources.
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April 2009
Growing In Troubled Times DESPITE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 1930S, DUKE PERSEVERED
The Chapel capped a massive seven-year building spree that created the new Duke University. At slightly more than $21 As markets crashed in the early 1930s, the Chapel rose, completing a $21 million building boom at Duke and million (the equivalent of more than $250 million today), the setting the stage for a decade of growth. renovation of the Trinity campus and creation of the new gothic campus was the largest construction project undertaken n times of economic turmoil, Duke in the South up to that time. has survived – and even thrived. Duke’s quick growth gained national Five years after James B. Duke created The most attention. A TIME article in 1931 noted The Duke Endowment in 1924, formally prodigious “31 separate structures” and described the establishing “an institution of learning to be new educational campus as “the most prodigious new educational known as Duke University,” the Great project in the land this century – Duke Depression hit. project in the land University, now nearly complete though little During the 1930s, Duke made sacrifices, this century” is how grass yet grows on its sandy campus, no ivy on its but it also completed its transformation from TIME magazine neo-Gothic walls of soft-colored fieldstone.” the small, regional Trinity College of the “All is modern, thoroughly equipped, early 20th century to a world-renowned described the Duke efficient,” the magazine said. “In the students’ research university, complete with a new campus and its union are shiny dish-washing and potato-peeling hospital, new schools of medicine, nursing, construction boom. machines. In the theatre is the latest cinema for engineering and forestry, and expanded 150. The stadium seats 35,000.” schools of religion and law. Nanaline Duke, widow of James B. The construction of the campus provided work The economic insecurity of that time Duke and the only woman trustee for for Durham residents, and many trained stonemasons didn’t derail Duke from its pursuit of Duke University, is featured on the from Italy. These construction jobs were a boon when excellence, a standard President Richard H. the North Carolina Commissioner of Labor estimated Brodhead has touched on in recent months. cover, at right, in April 1931. that total unemployment in North Carolina had He has encouraged faculty and staff to regard reached 22 percent. the current economic downturn as “a time of After the completion of the Chapel, even more challenge, not of retreat.” buildings rose. Baker House opened to house nursing students; Duke “I think President Brodhead is echoing what President Few felt during Gardens took shape; and Few Quad was built to provide housing for the the 30s,” said Tim Pyatt, Duke University archivist. “President Few had a influx of graduate students. vision that even during hard times, higher education had the opportunity “The construction of Duke was a huge effort during a time when most to keep things moving and expanding.” of the country was not building,” Pyatt said.
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National Attention
The unquenchable optimism of Duke in the 1930s is captured in an iconic picture taken nearly two years after the 1929 stock market crash: Duke Chapel rising on the west end of the quad.
2008 Gold Medal, Internal Periodical Staff Writing 2007 Bronze Medal, Print Internal Audience Tabloids/Newsletters
>> See GROWING IN TROUBLED TIMES, PAGE 5
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