PACKET EDITORIAL, Sept. 29
By: Packet Editorial
It’s hard to believe the Princeton Shopping Center is 50 years old.
Then again, when you take a close look at it and compare it to what other suburban shopping centers have morphed into over the past 50 years it’s actually quite easy to believe it’s 50 years old.
And that, in our opinion, is not a bad thing.
No, the Princeton Shopping Center is not home to every fast-food franchise with a recognizable logo, every national brand-name outfitter, every worldwide chain of bookstores, computer stores, camera stores, jewelry stores and specialty stores that seem to occupy every suburban mega-mall that’s been built in the past half-century.
No, the Princeton Shopping Center doesn’t have a second level reached by sleek escalators or glass-enclosed elevators overlooking giant ferns nourished by rushing artificial waterfalls. It doesn’t have a food court, or a big department store anchored at one end, or a 12- or 18-screen movie theater at the other.
No, the Princeton Shopping Center isn’t where teenagers go to hang out.
The Princeton Shopping Center was a marvel when it was built in the 1950s. It was one of the first places in the country where the look and feel of a center of town were re-created in a suburban setting. It was, in many ways, the forerunner of the behemoth malls that started sprouting up soon thereafter, and grew like wildflowers at the edges and intersections of major highways from coast to coast.
But the Princeton Shopping Center didn’t go in for that makeover. Instead, it remained true to its design and its origins. True, the occupants changed sometimes with alarming swiftness. The bank and the pharmacy got gobbled up by a bigger bank and a bigger pharmacy, then by bigger ones yet again. Restaurants changed ownership and names but not necessarily cuisine. Supermarkets came and went, and came again.
Bamberger’s was there in the beginning. We remember it as a very popular department store until it went out of business. Then Epstein’s came along. It, too, was popular until it went out of business. McCaffery’s now occupies that space at the north end of the shopping center and it, perhaps more than any other store in Princeton, is where friends and neighbors are apt to bump into each other, in the aisles or at the deli counter, and exchange pleasantries over a shopping cart.
If Palmer Square and Nassau Street are the heart of Princeton, the shopping center may be its soul. If it seems oh-so plain and old-fashioned to the on-the-go consumer who prefers the flashier Route 1 experience, it is quaint and comfortable to the more sedate shopper who doesn’t. If it doesn’t have something for everyone, it does have enough to meet most of the community’s basic needs.
And the setting, off north Harrison Street, is both convenient and pleasant. Where else can you pause for a few moments outside the hardware store to watch a Little League game? Where else can you take a good power walk outdoors in the rain and not get wet? Where else can you enjoy an outdoor concert on a Thursday evening in the summer while doing your banking at an ATM, picking up a prescription or a pizza, or ordering a birthday cake at the supermarket?
Folks who go in for everything that’s sleek and modern and high-tech may think of the Princeton Shopping Center as a dinosaur something time left behind as it marched toward the 21st century. But as far as we’re concerned, the place is very much alive, and richly deserving of the 50th-anniversary celebration coming up on Saturday. We hope lots of Princetonians will drop by to mark the occasion and visit an old familiar friend.

