What These Four Walls Can Tell

A redesigned boat house on the Historical Society of Princeton’s House Tour embodies the history of Carnegie Lake.

By: Christian Kirkpatrick
   Roland Machold sits above Lake Carnegie, tracking an eagle as it flies to its nest. Most of his house on Prospect Avenue looks out onto the water, but the back alcove actually floats on top of it. Surely this room is the most serene place in Princeton.
   In 2002, when Mr. Machold and his wife, Pamela, bought the property, it was hardly idyllic. Much of it had rotted from water that, during rainstorms, poured downhill into the house. The lake had flooded the basement during Hurricane Floyd and without adequate controls would do so again. The house was also a little small, and the Macholds planned to enlarge it.
   The couple engaged Michael Farewell of Farewell Mills Gatsch Architects and Andrew Ward of Princeton Construction Group to oversee the renovation, which soon became a reconstruction when everyone realized that little of the current structure could be saved. Nevertheless, by October 2004, the Macholds had what they wanted: a spacious house that meets their needs and takes full advantage of its location.
   This is a home worthy of the Nov. 4 Historical Society of Princeton’s house tour — not, obviously, because of its age, but because of the property’s association with the lake, the historical artifacts it displays and the creative way in which the Macholds have integrated their home with its environment.
   The structure that originally stood here was built in the mid-1850s by William Gulick to house tenant farmers working his land, which lay east and west of Route 27 from Harry’s Brook down toward Castle Howard and Snowden Lane. This house was next to a large, swampy piece of ground.
   In 1902, Andrew Carnegie passed this wetland when taking the Dinky to Princeton to visit former President Grover Cleveland. He was accompanied by Howard Russell Baker (Princeton University class of 1876). As the train approached the trestle at Stony Brook, Mr. Baker remarked that the university had once considered turning this marsh into a lake. It had long needed one, for without a suitable body of water to practice on, the university’s boating club had been forced to disband.
   The steel magnate decided to put a lake there and created Lake Carnegie Association, headed by Mr. Baker, to oversee the project. Later Mr. Baker stepped down and Alexander Reading Gulick took his place.
   The association purchased and flooded more than 1,200 acres, 19 of which had belonged to Mr. Gulick. It built the Washington Road and Harrison Street bridges to cross the planned lake and then dammed the confluence of the Millstone River and Stony Brook. During Mr. Gulick’s tenure, it also decided the height of the lake, 53 feet above sea level — just beneath the lower doorsill of his tenant house.
   With this decision, the poor tenant house became a waterfront property. Mr. Gulick accordingly added retaining walls and a deck, for which the steel beams came from the Harrison Street bridge construction. After Carnegie Lake was completed, he and a partner went on to develop other residences along its shore.
   Today the house is a capacious retirement home for the Macholds, with a separate apartment for their son, who visits them regularly. Special features include an indoor SwimEx pool, an elevator and two solar panels that meet 70 percent of the couple’s electrical needs.
   Outside, the house is a simple, shingled structure. Inside, it is airy and comfortable, with a minimum of trim and an emphasis on natural materials, particularly wood and stone, which link the house’s interior with its lakeside views.
   Art dominates most of the downstairs rooms. The front parlor is filled with watercolors and prints by Ms. Machold and the couple’s friends. An egg tempura by Princeton-based artist Gennady Spirin was created for them and has many personal associations. In the living room/library is a portrait of their daughter painted by Aaron Schickler, whose likeness of Jacqueline Kennedy hangs in the White House.
   In the dining room are paintings of some of Mr. Machold’s ancestors. A stroll past them is a refresher course in American history. Here are representatives of the Shippen, Morris and Wistar families, which helped to shape Colonial Philadelphia. Also represented are Stephen Decatur, a collateral relative who was a hero of the Barbary Wars and War of 1812, and Major Levi Twiggs, a direct ancestor who led the assault against Chapultepec Castle during the Mexican-American War. Two prints of Commodore Perry landing in Japan came from Roland Morris, Mr. Machold’s grandfather who served as ambassador to Japan from 1917 to 1921.
   Mr. Machold proudly points out that the long sideboard was purchased at a flea market for $8.75, but the rest of the furniture in the dining room has been inherited and is as pedigreed as the portraits.
   More family pieces are scattered throughout the house. A table in the front parlor survived the War of 1812, during which it was purported to have been savaged by British bayonets. Nineteenth-century pieces serve upstairs in the master bedroom, and nearby in a hall stands a Federal chest that seems too beautiful to use.
   Despite these storied antiques, however, the Machold house preserves the casual, un-fussy character of a boathouse. It is a carefree place where people can enjoy each other, nature and even the occasional regatta as it rows by.
   Five other properties will be on display during the Historical Society of Princeton’s 2006 Historic House Tour, including the home the Gulick family lived in for almost 100 years, from the late 1820s or early 1830s to 1925. It is a Greek Revival in the style of Charles Steadman, Princeton’s best-known architect and builder of the time.
   In honor of the 250th anniversary of the relocation of The College of New Jersey to Princeton, two of the institution’s oldest structures, Nassau Hall and Maclean House, will also be on view.
   When it was built in 1756, Nassau Hall contained the entire college and was the biggest academic building in the colonies. It was briefly the capital of New Jersey, and for much of 1777 it served as the nation’s capital while the Continental Congress met there. Today it houses administrative offices.
   The Maclean House was built to house the university’s president, which it did until 1878, when Prospect House was acquired. George Washington, John Adams, Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay have all visited the house and would probably recognize it today, for little in this charming structure has been changed since it was built in 1756.
   Other houses on the tour include a Tudor Revival and a property that was owned by the Olden family for seven generations before the Institute for Advanced Study acquired it in 1936. Since then many notable figures have lived there, including J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The Historical Society of Princeton’s 2006 Historic House Tour will be held
Nov. 4, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tickets cost $30, $25 advance, and may purchased at the
society’s headquarters, Bainbridge House, 158 Nassau St., Princeton, Tues.-Sun.
noon-4 p.m. For information, call 921-6748. On the Web: www.princetonhistory.org