A mysterious signature found high in the library’s rafters sparks a deep dive into the archives and campus history
Last week, the Lilly Library renovation and expansion project officially reached its pinnacle.
On a gravel lot near the building site, nearly a hundred construction workers and contractors mingled with librarians and representatives from Duke Facilities Management for a “topping-out ceremony” organized by LeChase Construction Services, the construction manager overseeing the project for Duke.
Traditionally, topping-out is when the last steel beam is placed at the highest point of a structure. It’s a time-honored milestone in major construction projects, marking the completion of the building’s frame. Often construction workers and key individuals are invited to sign the beam before it is placed.
In this case, since the steel framing on the new Lilly addition had already been completed, the topping-out ceremony was to be marked by an air handling unit hoisted by crane onto the library’s roof.
As things turned out, construction work was running ahead of schedule and the air handler had been installed the day before the formal photo-op. But no matter—everyone could agree that for this long overdue library renovation, it was good to be ahead of the game for once.
At the celebration, Joseph Salem, Duke University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs, thanked the architects, engineers, contractors, and many skilled laborers who have put in hundreds of hours on the project, acknowledging the effort and teamwork it took to get to this point.
“This is a once-in-a-generation project for Duke,” said Salem, noting that the new and improved Lilly Library will provide Duke students and faculty with a vibrant destination for collaboration, research, and study for generations to come.
Even with no steel beam to sign or air handling unit to watch gliding through the air, the topping-out did offer a high point of a completely different and unexpected kind.
LeChase had brought in a local marketing agency, Brasco, to document the construction project and conduct video interviews with key players. While getting B-roll video footage and photos inside Lilly, the Brasco and LeChase teams noticed something unusual. High up in the rafters, an exposed steel beam dating from the library’s original construction appeared to bear someone’s signature. Next to it was written the year 1926.
Could this be evidence of Lilly’s very first topping-out ceremony? It seemed plausible. But whose signature was it? The two initial capital C’s and two o’s in the last name offered a clue. But the rest of the letters were hard to decipher. And why did only one person sign the beam?
Never able to pass up an historical mystery, Duke library staff dove into the archives with the help of Assistant University Archivist Rebecca Pattillo. Among the first sources we consulted were the Office of the University Treasurer Records, which contain historical pay ledgers listing the names, job titles, and wages of every laborer who worked in campus construction nearly a century ago, still preserved in the stacks of the Rubenstein Library. By looking for someone with a first and last name starting with C, we hoped we could narrow the search.
A team of Duke students used these same pay ledgers for a summer research project years ago, unearthing the names of over four hundred workers and craftsmen who gave Duke’s West Campus its iconic Gothic Wonderland buildings. Their project—Stone by Stone: Who Built Duke’s Chapel and West Campus?—is available online and brings to life the stories of individual stonemasons, carpenters, and laborers who were employed in the construction of campus.
Alas, none of the names in the pay ledgers seemed to match the signature on the beam. However, after much enthusiastic debate, one of Pattillo’s astute colleagues noticed a striking similarity with a well-known autograph of the same age—that of Calvin Coolidge, thirtieth president of the United States, whose tenure in the White House (1923–1929) neatly overlapped with the period when the East Campus library was built. (Yes, this is actually what it’s like working with Duke archivists and librarians on a daily basis. Once they activate the hive-mind, tangled threads begin to unravel and puzzle pieces snap into place.)
When compared side-by-side, the resemblance was remarkable.
As exciting as this discovery initially was, it didn’t make sense for the signature to belong to Coolidge, who never visited Durham during his presidency, Pattillo explained. Even for a man as tight-lipped and publicity-shy as “Silent Cal,” any visit by a sitting U.S. president to Duke’s campus would surely have made headlines in the Chronicle, as well as the local newspapers. But a survey of the contemporary historical sources revealed no trace of President Coolidge in Durham in 1926, for the simple reason that he was never here.
And yet it clearly looks like his signature, right down to the tell-tale C’s and the flourish of the lowercase g at the end. Could Coolidge have possibly signed the beam before it made its way to Durham? Highly unlikely, and again that would have made good press for the fledgling university to promote.
At the end of the day, the simplest and most likely explanation is that we’ve been had. To make it look like the President of the United States personally had a hand in building this library really made some wise guy’s day in 1926. And ninety-nine years later, it really made ours.
We’ll probably never know the prankster’s identity, or how much work it took to get the swoop of those C’s just right. But as professional custodians of history, we respect the guy’s long game. Libraries and archives are full of untold stories just waiting to be discovered by the right person. But a practical joke a century in the making, hidden above all our heads, by a shadowy human face winking at us from across all that time? It’s hard to top that.
