Those Were the Days

The Historical Society of Princeton re-creates an era — ‘Lost Princeton’ takes viewers back in time to see magnificent buildings lost to fire or the wrecking ball.

By: Ilene Dube

Above, Upper Pyne Building on Nassau Street was torn down and replaced in 1964 with the building that is now home to PNC Bank.

   The good old days: Were they really as idyllic as the old songs say?
   Old photos capture the hazy feeling of eras gone by — parasol-carrying women wearing frilly white dresses and grand feathered hats; men with splendid mustaches and eyebrows, golden watch chains slung over their waistcoats. Architecture of the past was embellished with more handcrafted detail and seemed designed with beauty in mind.
   As a new exhibit shows, many of those magnificent old buildings had a tendency to burn down or deteriorate due to structural inferiority.
   Lost Princeton, on view at the Historical Society of Princeton, brings back the days when Princeton residents went to Renwick’s on Nassau Street for a chocolate malt or to "The Balt" for a BLT. With vintage photos, film clips, oral history and artifacts, the exhibit re-creates Princeton’s farms, country estates, schools and trolleys.
   Several years back, the historical society presented Moved Buildings in Princeton. The present exhibit continues along that theme, only this time it is removed buildings in Princeton. At the entryway is a re-created demolition of Thomson Hall. Built in 1826 for Sen. John Renshaw Thomson, it was demolished in 1973. In front of a life-size photo of people dismantling the stately colonial building are the architectural remains — two old columns, a fanlight, a door lintel and mantel — all preserved by the historical society.

Farr’s Hardware Store, above, is now Monument Park at Mercer, Nassau and Stockton streets.

   A slide show, "Gone But Not Forgotten: Princeton’s Lost Buildings," includes the Railroad Hotel along the Delaware & Raritan Canal, demolished in 1992; the Benson Building, burned in a fire in 1977; the Princeton Railroad Station when it was located at the foot of Blair Hall on the university campus in the late 19th century, as described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise; and the former spring on Spring Street that gave it its name.
   A "Bird’s Eye View" of Princeton from 1874 shows mostly green patches dotted with trees and a smattering of farm houses. Nassau Hall and a few other Princeton University buildings were the skyscrapers of the era. Side by side is an aerial photo of contemporary Princeton by photographer Jessica Stearns, depicting greater building density and much less greenery.
   Although this might at first seem like a sorrowful tribute to great old architecture, the story has a happy ending, having much to do with historic preservation efforts. After viewing the exhibit, it is refreshing to walk around and see how much remains from Princeton’s past.

The old Nassau Inn, above, was demolished to build Palmer Square in the 1930s.

   Marisa Morigi, collections curator and curator of Lost Princeton, says the idea for the exhibit was to show how Princeton has changed. "We wanted to do an exhibit people could relate to," she says. "We wanted to show places where they used to have coffee or meet people, or the trolley lines that were active until 1940." The exhibit took more than a year to prepare and was designed by Steve Tucker, who has designed past historical society exhibits. Mr. Tucker has learned to maximize the space with the rich resources of the historical society, making it lively and interactive.
   One section is devoted to schools of Princeton’s past, and includes a book on "University Blazes" — Princeton University buildings destroyed by fire. Reunion Hall, a marvel of gothic architecture, was razed because it was a fire hazard. A quaint observatory from 1877 stood where the soaring modern Robertson Hall stands today on Prospect and Washington.
   "Sometimes it’s sad to see them taken down," says Ms. Morigi. "There are probably some that could have been adaptively reused, but historic preservation wasn’t in their radar at the time." And sometimes it was more cost effective to take down an old building and put up a new one.
   A film clip from Miss Fine’s School shows girls parading in their white dresses and bonnets and boys in costumes dancing round the Maypole on May Day. Miss Fine’s School, a predecessor of Princeton Day School, took form in 1899 to prepare children of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary professors. The school inhabited the former Princeton Inn, torn down in 1965 to make way for Borough Hall. The Princeton Inn can be seen behind the Maypole in the film.
   There is much to feel nostalgic for in Princeton, such as the original 18th-century Nassau Inn on Nassau Street, removed along with thriving African-American businesses to make way for Palmer Square. The historical society has preserved a brick from the original Nassau Inn.

Above, the Trenton-Princeton trolley on Witherspoon Street at the corner of Spring Street.

   One of the real ironies is that of the Princeton Playhouse. Jackson Street, a critical thoroughfare in Princeton’s African-American residential neighborhood, was removed in 1937 in order to build the then state-of-the-art theater with 1,224 seats. But the Playhouse was taken down in 1980 to make way for a subsequent phase of Palmer Square. What were they thinking?
   "Palmer Square is interesting to many people because they may not have known what was there before, or because they were here at the time," says Ms. Morigi. "This section of the exhibit gets at the real issue. People were upset that the Old Nassau Inn, in poor condition, was torn down to make way for imitation 18th-century buildings.
   "But a lot of people like Palmer Square because it beautifies the town," she continues. "There are always people on both sides in any building project."
   Even Monument Park at the junction of Mercer, Stockton and Nassau streets required the demolition of several buildings, including Farr’s Hardware Store. By the mid-to-late 20th century, Princeton Borough and Township established historic preservation committees to preserve what remains, using managed growth, restoration, renovation and adaptive reuse.

Pierson’s Dairy at 253 Witherspoon St., above, is now the site of the University Medical Center at Princeton.

   For those still mourning the loss of the famed Mercer Oak, there is a cross-section of the tree under which Gen. Hugh Mercer, wounded during the Battle of Princeton in 1777, laid to rest before he died. The tree, which died of old age in 2000, is shown in photographs taken during its days of glory. With its amazing breadth, the tree’s image was used as the symbol for Princeton Township.
   Other relics from Princeton’s past include tickets to the Dartmouth-Princeton football game in Palmer Stadium Nov. 23, 1996 — the final game before the stadium was torn down.
   Interesting tidbit: Stanworth apartments on Bayard Lane was once an estate, bought by the university and used as reunion headquarters for the Class of 1903. The university sold it to the New York Life Insurance Co. in 1946, which demolished the house to build the existing garden apartments. The university owns it once again.
   Many late-19th- and 20th-century grand estates on hundreds of acres that included small farms, outbuildings, servants quarters, ponds and tennis courts once made up Princeton. What was once the 275-acre Edgerstoune estate has become (on a dwindled-down 45 acres) the Hun School.
   Guernsey Hall, built in 1852 on 30 acres near Lovers Lane, was bought by art history professor Allan Marquand in 1887. Rare and native trees were brought in to create an arboretum. The land was given to the borough in 1953 and is now Marquand Park, with 17 acres of specimen trees. The original building, an Italianate villa, has been turned into apartments by architect William Short, thanks to a group of citizens who fought to save it from the wrecking ball. Minton tiles from Guernsey Hall’s floor are on display.

The Bickford Building on Nassau Street, 1919, above.

   Born in 1900, Mary Marquand Hochschild has recollections of growing up in Guernsey Hall. In an audio tape, read by McCarter Theatre Artistic Director Emily Mann, she recalls the smell of cows, the clop of horses, the crowing of the chickens, the trolley bells and the chug-chug of the train. Delivery wagons brought food, and on hot days they took a dip in the Stony Brook and ate ice cream made of pure cream. She knew every passerby on the street, and when she learned that Nassau Street would be paved, "It meant the end of the mud forever."
   One of Princeton’s more recent losses is that of the Princeton Public Library, built by architect Thaddeus Longstreth in the 1960s and torn down just last year to make way for the new library. In these very pages, noted architect and Princeton resident Robert Geddes lamented:
   "The Princeton Public Library had a brief but beautiful life.
   "The public library was downtown Princeton’s best modern building. Thaddeus Longstreth’s design combined avant-garde European modernism and sunny California optimism. Modernism was evident in the cubist composition of vertical and horizontal planes, floating above the ground. California was in the breezy open porch, the sky-lit atrium and the slow spiral stairway. It was serious architecture, and most important, it was a joyful place for all of us.
   "Good-bye, friend!"
Lost Princeton is on view at the Historical Society of Princeton, Bainbridge House, 158 Nassau St., Princeton. Hours: Tues.-Sun. noon-4 p.m. For information, call (609) 921-6748.