First-years flocking to East Campus will find two mainstay dorms closed for the 2018-19 school year while Trinity House opens to welcome its inaugural first-year class.
Southgate and Epworth—Duke’s oldest dorm—will shutter their doors for the year as central air conditioning and sprinklers are installed. Instead, students will live in Trinity House, which opened in January 2017.
Joe Gonzalez, assistant vice president of student affairs and dean for residential life, explained that Trinity would serve as swing space as needed renovations occur.
“We’ll continue to use Jarvis and East," Gonzalez told The Chronicle in May. "Trinity is intended to replace Epworth, Jarvis and East, but we’re going to go ahead and use those buildings for a couple years as we get some of these large projects done.”
Trinity was designed to replace Epworth, East and Jarvis dorms. In January 2017, doors opened to students returning from study-away programs, complete with a movie theater, game room and arcade on the $25 million price tag for the dorm’s construction. Capable of housing 250 students, Trinity is the largest dorm on East Campus.
On the other hand, Epworth is Duke's smallest and oldest dorm, opening in 1892 and housing approximately 50 students. In October 2016, exterminators were called into the dorm during Fall Break in response to repeated cockroach sightings. Southgate, which will also be closed this academic year, opened in 1921 and is normally home to around 140 students.
No other major housing projects on East are slated to take place this year, Gonzalez wrote in an email to The Chronicle in August.
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