​Honor Abele with a landmark

In an email to the student body, President Richard Brodhead announced on Tuesday that West Campus’s main quadrangle would be named after Julian Abele. Approved on Sunday by the Board of Trustees, the naming of the quad is meant to honor a man who was relatively unknown until the 1980s but is nonetheless the black architect responsible for Duke’s iconic gothic architecture and original campus design. For years, students have sought recognition for Abele on campus, and as Brodhead’s email mentions, Abele’s accomplishments coincided with some of “the darkest days of racial segregation”. For years, students have asked for his recognition on campus with the most recent push coming from November’s community forum, which saw shortly afterwards the formation of an advisory group to research an appropriate honor for Abele.

Yet in spite of the Board’s awareness that Abele’s talent and vision can be seen throughout “the whole of the campus,” its facilities and environment committee still rejected the committee’s main proposal to honor Abele by renaming Chapel Drive to “Abele Drive.” Instead, Abele Quad will run from the steps to the Clocktower, Chapel and Davison quads. It seems like a poor fit to have Abele’s influence on our campus’s buildings commemorated by the ordinary quads between them that hardly define the University’s architecture. His contribution is of a different strain than those who donate to the University or who have led it significantly in the past.

Further, if the point is to allow knowledge of his legacy to be cemented into campus and to have his name spoken widely after so many years of being unknown, a quad falls short of the goal. The stubborn persistence of “Pitchforks” over “Cafe Edens” as the restaurant’s name is indicative of the difficulty of a name transition. Even if the name were to stick, the bus stop, surrounding dorm names and clocktower would continue to be more common locational references, not to mention that the use of a “main quad” features at every university save maybe the University of Virginia’s “Lawn.” As a building alternative, the West Union would have represented how the exterior and physical layout of Abele’s vision for the University have stayed constant for almost one hundred years as the interiors have been strengthened and been greatly improved over time, just as Duke has grown as a university.

It also stands to argue that the other proposals approved by the Board including an honorific inscription on the Chapel cornerstone, plaque inside the Chapel, publication of a biography and purchasing the Nasher’s mural of Abele are not mutually exclusive with a different choice of a building or Chapel Drive. Either would be more fitting in terms of architecture and common usage to honor the architect. It is certainly worth noting that Abele’s family “prefers the Chapel Drive renaming option.” While we understand the cost of the fourth proposal to place a statue in the West Campus traffic circle, it does not diminish that in order to more effectively represent the importance of Abele’s contribution and lasting impact on the university, a building or the well-known stretch of road leading up to West Campus bearing his name would be far more effective in establishing his importance. These alternatives make it so students and visitors alike cannot avoid his name, preventing his erasure from our University history.