About

James Buchanan Duke established Duke University in 1924 as a tribute to his father, Washington Duke. The Dukes, a Durham family who established a global financial hegemony in the production of tobacco goods and expanded the generation of electricity in the Carolinas, have long had an interest in Trinity College. Trinity can trace its roots back to 1838, when the local Methodist and Quaker groups founded Union Institute in neighbouring Randolph County. In 1892, the institution, then known as Trinity College, relocated to Durham, where Benjamin Newton Duke acted as its main sponsor and point of contact with the Duke family up until his passing in 1929. The Duke Endowment was established in December 1924 according to the terms of an indenture signed by Benjamin Duke's brother, James B. Duke, which allowed for the conversion of Trinity College into Duke University.

Trinity underwent both physical and scholarly expansion as a result of the Duke bequest. When the old Durham campus was rebuilt in regal Georgian style, it became known as East Campus. The 210-foot-tall Duke Chapel tower stands out prominently on the Gothic-style West Campus, which was built in 1930. Before the men's and women's undergraduate colleges combined in 1972, Duke University's Woman's College was housed on East Campus. Both the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and the Pratt School of Engineering currently accept undergraduate applications from both men and women. East Campus started serving as the residence for all first-year students in 1995.