Interested in Duke’s campus history? There’s an app for that.

Have you ever toured the Duke Chapel and wondered just how many stained-glass windows there are or why one of the 10 niches remains empty?

Have you ever visited the East Duke Parlors and pondered about the three women whose portraits are displayed?

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The answers to these questions and many lesser-known facts about Duke’s history are now available through the Duke Campus History Tour in the Duke Explore app. The Duke Campus History Tour consists of three separate tours—West Campus (10 stops), East Campus (eight stops), and Athletics History (four stops)—and offers an immersive, self-guided experience through campus for members of the Duke community and visitors alike.

“There are things we pass by every day—photos of people who we don’t know their stories, and they can really come to life through a tour like this,” said Todd Stabley, OIT Senior Media Engineer. “I think, even for people who feel like in some ways they know Duke, there are all these layers that can be added through a resource like this.”

In support of members of the Centennial planning team, the Office of the Provost, the Office of Special Events, and University Archives, the Office of Information Technology helped launch the Duke Campus History Tour in August to help celebrate Duke’s Centennial.  

“One of the goals of the Centennial is to deepen the understanding of our history,” said Jill Boy, Executive Director of the Centennial. “We were trying to figure out what we could do to elevate the history of the physical campus, and we proposed the idea of an app that would help people not only know where there are historical places on campus but to provide a way to easily access the information.”

In a rather serendipitous moment, Boy was exploring options for the tour when she attended a meeting in which Stephen Toback, OIT’s Media Architect and Senior Producer for Academic Media Production, discussed the Duke Explore app.

A plan was quickly set in place to use an existing Duke resource to tell its campus history.

By downloading the Duke Explore app, users can choose from one of the three Duke Campus History Tour options and follow along the tour, stopping at each location to learn its history. Each location offers a description, audio narration, relevant photos, and links with fun facts and additional learning.

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Along with these resources, a few unique features include:

• A scalable map that shows each stop’s location on the Duke University campus
• Downloadable tours that can be later accessed without Wi-Fi or cellular data
• Geolocation technology to guide users between locations when accessing the tour in person
• The ability to access the tour from anywhere                                                                                                                                                                 

“For someone who’s visiting campus, [the Duke Campus History Tour] helps make the Centennial that we talk about physically real,” said Toback. “You can actually visit spots that you may have passed 100 times and not know what its role was in the history at Duke.”

The Duke Campus History Tour was created using the Duke Explore app through the software platform, Stqry. The Duke Explore app is available on Android and iPhone iOS and contains multiple tours throughout Duke and Durham.

Inspired to create your own tour? Members of the Duke community with a unique story to tell about the physicality of their space can create their own walking or bicycle tour at no cost on the Duke Explore app, using the Stqry platform. For more information, visit https://oit.duke.edu/service/stqry-app/.