Douglas M. and Grace Knight House

In 1963, University President Douglas Knight commissioned Alden B. Dow to design an official residence.[1] Built in the Modernist style, the home was completed in 1966.[1][2] The landscaping was designed by Dick Bell, who also designed Pullen Park in Raleigh, North Carolina.[2][3] The house takes its name from Douglas Knight, who served as president during the construction of the home, and was the first university president to live there.[3][4][5] University presidents Terry Sanford and Nannerl O. Keohane also lived at Knight House.[4] Knight House is 10,655 square feet, and cost $379,971 to build.[3] The house is a low-slung home with ribbed copper roof caps.[3] The interior pannelling in the house is made from bald cypress.[3]

Located along Academy Road and Pinecrest Road, near the Duke golf course, the house sits on 436 acres in the Duke Forest, near Duke University West Campus.[2][3] It served as an official residence for university presidents from 1966 until 2004, when the original official residence, the J. Deryl Hart House, was renovated for Richard H. Brodhead.[4][3] The house is now used as a guest house, conference facility, and event space by the university.[2][4][6]

On April 6, 1968 the Silent Vigil at Duke University, a week-long silent demonstration following the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., kicked-off with 450 students marching two miles from campus to Knight House to deliver a list of demands to Douglas Knight for a restructuring of Duke University, so that the institution would be less threatening to African-American students and employees.[7][8] The demands included that Knight publish an advertisement in the Durham Morning Herald calling for a day of mourning for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that he raise the minimum wage to $1.60 for university employees, and that he resign from the then-segregated Hope Valley Country Club.[7] The students also demanded that Knight appoint a committee of students, faculty, and workers to make recommendations concerning collective bargaining and union recognition at Duke.[7] Knight received the students during the protest, and invited them into the house, spending the entire night negotiating the terms of their demands.[7]

On September 15, 2012, the house was featured in Modernism in Duke Forest, a tour of six modernist houses in the Duke Forest neighborhood hosted by Triangle Modernist Houses and the Durham Preservation Society.[9]

35°59′11″N 78°56′33″W