A Mysterious Signature Found in the Library’s Rafters Sparks a Deep Dive into Campus History

A signature shown on an old steel beam rafter

The below is a summary of a story that originally appeared on the Duke University Libraries website. 

The renovation of Lilly Library on Duke’s East Campus recently reached a major milestone: the “topping-out ceremony,” when the last steel beam is placed at the highest point.

While getting photos of the event, participants noticed something unusual. High up in the rafters, an exposed steel beam dating from the library’s original construction appeared to bear a signature. Next to it was written the year 1926.

Whose signature was it? The two initial capital C’s and two o’s in the last name offered a clue. But the rest of the letters were hard to decipher. 

Never able to pass up a mystery, Duke library staff dove into the archives, starting with the records of every laborer who worked in campus construction nearly a century ago—still preserved in the stacks of the Rubenstein Library. By looking for someone with a first and last name starting with C, they hoped they could narrow the search.

But none of the names they could find in the historical records matched the signature on the beam. However, one library sleuth noticed a striking similarity to a well-known autograph of the same age—that of Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, whose tenure in the White House (1923–1929) overlapped with the period when the East Campus library was built. 

There was just one problem. The signature couldn’t possibly belong to Coolidge, because he never visited Durham. So how did “Silent Cal’s” presidential penmanship turn up on a beam in Duke’s oldest library? Was it the real thing, or some kind of hoax? 

For the full story about the mystery of the steel beam, and a practical joke a century in the making, go to the Duke University Libraries website.