With each swoop of an excavator, an old brick home tumbled down Thursday afternoon.
The house, which butted up against Campus Drive, had begun to stick out through the years as the area behind it became the Nasher Art Museum and the space across the street turned into the Rubenstein Arts Center, which officially opened earlier this year. It was the final home to be occupied by a resident when its last occupant died in July 2017.
In a strategy that had been tried before with houses when the University needed to clear room to build the Rubenstein Arts Center, 2021 Campus Drive was put up for sale at an astonishing price—$1. The catch with the unbelievably good price tag was that the buyer would have to pay to have it moved, although Duke would contribute $10,000 to the cost, according to a Duke Today article on the offering.
"We tried to find someone interested in moving it, but couldn’t," Executive Vice President Tallman Trask wrote in an email, adding that the space will become a landscaped garden area.
The home was a bit too intrusive for its neighbors' comfort. Its garage was replaced years ago when the original one was removed to make room for the Nasher, Trask told The Chronicle in 2017.
The house was built in the early 1930s as the University created a series of homes along the road to provide housing for faculty and administrators.
The last resident of the home, Eleanore Jantz, died in July 2017 at the age of 104. She was the last in the 80-plus-year history of occupants living in the homes along the road.
Jantz came to Duke when her husband Harold Jantz, an assistant professor of German at Antioch College and a leading Goethe scholar, took a position at the University. They moved into the home in 1978, and she lived there alone after his death in 1987.
Now, the homes along Campus Drive have been either removed—like the one at 2021 Campus Drive—or re-imagined as office space. The Graduate School's offices are based out of a large home closer to Chapel Drive, and the Admissions Office inhabits one near the Graduate School.
Tom Hadzor, associate university librarian for development and a friend of Eleanore Jantz, wrote in an email Friday that he had not realized the house was coming down this week.
"I drove Campus Drive this morning and was surprised to see the house razed," he wrote. "I knew that was the plan. I just didn’t know the timing."
Hadzor noted the family's contributions to the Duke Libraries, including Harold Jantz's donation of his 10,000-work collection that is now known as the Jantz collection.
"Dr. Elli Jantz was a psychologist and great donor during her lifetime and through her estate. A legacy she leaves is in the form of two library endowments," Hadzor wrote. "One endowed fund will support the maintenance and growth of the Jantz Collection and the other will provide for the support of graduate student interns in the Rubenstein Library. Elli took pride in the major support she was providing for the Libraries. And I am grateful for the friendship we developed during our conversations about philanthropy and about Duke."
The home, known as House 12, had been occupied by a two law school deans, an assistant dean for first-years and a Duke Chapel pastor before the Jantzes took up residence there.
"There are interesting plans to connect the Nasher Museum and Rubenstein Arts Center," Hadzor wrote. "The University history of this home is important to remember, though."
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Bre is a senior political science major from South Carolina, and she is the current video editor, special projects editor and recruitment chair for The Chronicle. She is also an associate photography editor and an investigations editor. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief and local and national news department head.
Twitter: @brebradham
Email: breanna.bradham@duke.edu