J.B. Duke’s priorities and interests at Duke Farms were focused on the land and agricultural buildings, rather than on his personal residence. The buildings he constructed on his estate can best be understood as elements of the landscape.

After her father’s death, Doris Duke would make various architectural additions to the estate, some in collaboration with her mother and first husband, but most of her own design.

J.B. Duke

By 1899, Duke’s assembly of the parcels that constitute the heart of the estate was complete, and he began constructing buildings set within the landscape he had created.

Duke retained the Boston architectural firm of Kendall, Taylor & Stevens, which designed the resort town of Pinehurst, North Carolina. From their experience designing self-contained communities, Kendall, Taylor & Stevens possessed the expertise required to implement the necessary infrastructure of roads and water distribution on the estate and to incorporate the latest technology in the Duke Farms buildings.

Duke’s first buildings included the Coach Barn, Hay Barn, and Orchid Range. These buildings, devoted to agriculture and horticultural production, fit squarely within the country estate ideal of the time.

In contrast with the messy reality of barns, stables and truck gardens, these highly ordered, high-style buildings proclaimed their association with the pursuit of leisure rather than having to make a living from the land. Their expensive finish – stone walls, copper detailing, expansive slate roofs – indicate the importance of these buildings to Duke and the status his wealth provided.

Major projects from 1905-1911 included construction of the Farm Barn complex and significant alterations to the residence (now known as the Country Manor). Horace Trumbauer, a Philadelphia architect, appears to have become the architect of record for Duke Farms after 1909.

From 1911-1917, the first phase of construction began for a new greenhouse complex, which Doris Duke would later transform into indoor display gardens.

Doris Duke

In 1935, Doris Duke married James Cromwell, who was considering elected office in New Jersey. Deferred maintenance at Duke Farms, high unemployment, and her husband’s desire to establish a New Jersey beachhead contributed to the climate for work at Duke Farms in the 1930s – including the addition of the Hollywood Wing to the residence. The estate employed more than 400 people during the Depression.

Also in the 1930s, Doris Duke constructed the Japanese gardens near the residence and remodeled the Mermaid Pool. She later conducted a major remodeling of the Elmendorf/Voorhees House, showing an early interest in the colonial revival that would eventually drive her preservation work in Newport, Rhode Island. She also constructed an aviary for exotic birds and pheasants behind the Coach Barn.

Then, after a decade of relative inactivity, Doris Duke took a renewed interest in Duke Farms in the 1950s. In 1958, she reworked the New Greenhouse into an indoor display gardens, which were open to the public from 1964-2008.