[19] The precursor to the school of engineering dates back to 1851, when Duke was known as Normal College and located in Randolph County, North Carolina.

At that time, engineering courses were limited to such fields as architecture and surveying until 1924, when Trinity College was renamed Duke University.

Duke's Board of Trustees created the College of Engineering in 1939, with William H. Hall its first dean.

Pratt's faculty, labs, and courses can be found in Hudson Hall, the Nello L. Teer Engineering Building, the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (also known as FCIEMAS), Gross Hall, the North Building, the Levine Science Research Center (also known as the LSRC) and in The Chesterfield, a former cigarette factory near downtown Durham that has been redeveloped into academic and industry research space.

[23] This 150,000-square-foot building opened for classes in early 2021 with new spaces for education and research related to interdisciplinary themes of improving human health, advancing computing and intelligent systems, and sustainability.

The building's name recognizes lifetime philanthropic and service contributions of Duke Engineering alumnus Jerry C. Wilkinson and family.

[25] The Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (FCIEMAS) opened in August 2004.

The building houses numerous wet bench laboratories (highlighted by a world-class nanotechnology research wing), offices, teaching spaces, and a café.

When it was opened in 1994, the LSRC was the largest single-site interdisciplinary research facility in the U.S. Its classrooms are shared by several departments, but the majority of its offices and laboratories are utilized by the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Pratt School of Engineering, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Developmental and the departments of Computer Science, Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and Cell and Molecular Biology.