Community Corner

Watch Duke Family Enjoy Hillsborough Estate in the 1920s

Doris Duke Foundation posts video of family roaming Hillsborough estate and more.

A video posted online by the Doris Duke Foundation shows a young Doris Duke riding a horse-drawn carriage by a fountain at Duke Farms in the early 1920s.

The carriage stops beside a fountain, and the curly-haired girl jumps from the carriage to run to her mother and father—Nanaline and James B. Duke—for a stroll beside one of the estate's lakes on a breezy Hillsborough day. She takes her father's hand and the family walks on.

Later in the video, scenes of Doris Duke and a friend dancing in 1929, and Doris playing with her dogs at the estate in the mid-1930s and later.

You've seen Duke Farms, but probably never like it was when James B. Duke wandered the grounds—the estate had more manicured lawns then, and the fountains and water works were new and lively.

Later, she scampers down stairs and across bridges, goes for a ride in a boat and more.

Footage from the 22-minute family movie called "I Know a Garden" features these scenes, as well as others of the family traveling and working on other properties besides the Hillsborough estate.

The video is part of a collection in the the Doris Duke Foundation Historical Archives, housed at Duke University Libraries' Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.


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