Building Princeton upon Princeton

Like the city of Paris, Princeton is built upon Princeton.

We enjoy one of the world’s most beautiful campuses. The core of its beauty is experienced in the original front lawn, defined by the architecture of Nassau Hall (1756), Stanhope Hall (1803) and Chancellor Green (1873). Interestingly, in order to create the site for Chancellor Green, the college had to demolish Philosophical Hall (1804), the original “twin” to Stanhope Hall. The decision to demolish the building was made to create a library that would advance the mission of the college and serve Princeton until the creation of Firestone Library in 1947. And it’s worth noting that the site for Firestone Library was created by demolishing the Class of 1877 Biology Laboratory, a beautiful Romanesque building designed by A. Page Brown, the architect of Whig and Clio halls. Princeton is indeed built upon Princeton.

Today we are involved in a project to expand the School of Engineering and Applied Science and create the new Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. The Andlinger Center will be the locus for solving problems of energy and the environment — translating fundamental knowledge into innovative technologies and practical solutions.

The Andlinger Center is a large and sophisticated building, with roughly 127,000 square feet of new construction providing state-of-the-art clean room facilities, faculty research labs and offices for faculty and graduate students. It also will include a lecture hall and meeting rooms that will become the center for discourse on issues of energy and environment on the Princeton campus.

All of this needs to be built on a small and challenging site, one that lacks the space and beauty that typifies Princeton. This includes the site of 86 Olden St. that has been the subject of a news article and editorial in The Daily Princetonian. Fortunately, we are working with the extraordinarily talented architectural team of Tod Williams ’65 GS ’67 and Billie Tsien and with the landscape architectural firm of Michael Van Valkenburgh. The architects have conceived of the Andlinger Center as a series of gardens, an expression of the beauties of the natural world for a facility dedicated to solutions for the environment. The concept of the gardens preserves and gives new life to the historic wall that used to form part of the athletic facilities and the Ferris Thompson Gateway constructed nearly 100 years ago fronting the decades-gone University Field.

Recognizing its historical connection to the Fields Center and to athletics, we began the project with the intention of incorporating 86 Olden St. into the design. As we have confronted the demands of the program and the limits of the site, we have determined that it is not possible to save or re-use 86 Olden St. We also have studied relocating the house, but locations that look like they are available today are indeed the sites for the next generation of facilities that will serve Princeton. We have concluded that we will demolish 86 Olden St. in order to create conditions that will allow the Andlinger Center to thrive and the beauties of the campus to expand.

I have received several letters from distinguished alumni conveying their concern for the preservation of 86 Olden St. One of these letters is particularly meaningful to me, as it comes from Robert Venturi ’47 GS ’50 and Denise Scott Brown, who designed five major buildings on campus between 1983 and 1999, including Wu Hall and Fisher and Bendheim halls. Venturi and Scott Brown were my mentors for many years, and they are two of the wisest architects of our generation. I know they would prefer to save 86 Olden St., but I also know that as architects themselves, they have confronted the tension between preservation and progress. They have designed new buildings on the footprints of old. Like Grumbach, Venturi understands the history of cities, having once written, “Remember: Each Renaissance masterpiece you revere within a city like Florence replaced a Gothic or Romanesque structure” (in his 1996 book “Iconography and Electronics Upon a Generic Architecture: A View from the Drafting Room”).

Finally, I would reassure our faculty, students and alumni that we are incredibly aware of our responsibilities as stewards for this beautiful campus. We have a very thoughtful campus plan — designed around the principles of preserving our heritage — that guides our next generation of growth. We will continue to preserve and restore the historic buildings that define our character, and we will grow in ways that refresh and renew the beauties of the Princeton campus.