Local historian portrays a Princeton before university’s arrival

Town had stengths even before the academic invasion

By: Ross Kenneth Urken
   Wanda Gunning, a historian and chairwoman of the Regional Planning Board of Princeton, mapped out pre-university Princeton in a time-travel speech Thursday evening as part of a celebration of the 250th Anniversary of Princeton University in Princeton.
   In taking the audience in the Faculty Room of Nassau Hall back in time, Ms. Gunning painted the portrait of Princeton as a "little village" and beckoned the audience to arrest any notions of Princeton as it now stands.
   "I hope all of you are prepared to imagine the buildings and space surrounding Nassau Hall and Maclean House … in 1756," said Ms. Gunning, author of "Morven: Memory, Myth & Reality" and former president of the Historical Society of Princeton.
   The imagination process proves difficult because, as she said, "very little of the physical village remains," attributing the loss of pre-university Princeton to fires, termites and ants.
   And with destruction came development that changed the face of Princeton even more.
   Twenty years before the American Colonies declared their independence from Britain, the College of New Jersey — now Princeton University — moved from Newark to Princeton to reside in newly constructed Nassau Hall and Maclean House.
   Even with drastic physical changes in Princeton, Ms. Gunning took on the ambitious task of painting a portrait of the town before the university’s 1756 move.
   The inland village of "Prince-Town," according to Ms. Gunning, became popular because of its views to treeless hills and its numerous apple and cherry trees. Its allure manifested in a small settlement by the end of the 17th century, she said. But the true potential for growth did not arrive until a few decades later.
   More development came because of Princeton’s central location between New York and Philadelphia, said Ms. Gunning. It was a three-day trip from Princeton to either metropolis in the mid-18th century, and traffic from travelers brought added income and capital for growth.
   Ms. Gunning used the development of streets as a method by which to measure the growth of the town.
   Nassau Street in those times was a dirt road and had the consistency of chocolate pudding, according to the primary sources Ms. Gunning has investigated. Property lines ran directly up to the main street, and none of the familiar intersecting streets, such as Chambers, Witherspoon or Vandeventer, existed.
   By the end of the 1750s, a street grid was drawn up to incorporate roads perpendicular to Nassau Street. Paved roads at this time accommodated greater traffic, allowing more businesses to survive, Ms. Gunning said.
   Ms. Gunning noted specific families and people who helped make the Princeton of yore a more palpable (and imaginable) reality.
   The Fitz-Randolph family, for example, owned a home where Prospect House now stands, and its family graveyard was where the Holder Hall tower is located.
   Ms. Gunning has made note of the many brooks and rivers in the area during the mid-18th century and teased that a stream that ran along Witherspoon Street reappeared to pose problems during the construction of the Spring Street Garage.
   Springdale Golf Course was once Springdale Farm, Ms. Gunning said, illustrating how drastically the shape and function of Princeton’s land has changed.
   Going beyond mere geography and layout, Ms. Gunning sought to address some of the customs of Princeton in the mid-18th century. Alcohol was banned and, for horse theft, the punishment was hanging.
   "Princeton must have been pretty healthy, because the only doctor died in 1747," Ms. Gunning said, in an effort to demonstrate how provincial Princeton was. Yale’s Dr. Thomas Wiggins, though, soon filled the necessary position.
   In continuation of Princeton’s development, a tannery arose in the 1730s to become the village’s one attempt at industry, Ms. Gunning noted. The tannery and private fortunes helped the town fight off financial troubles from the French and Indian War. And in the realm of education, only one small schoolhouse stood at the corner where Vandeventer Avenue and Nassau Street now meet.
   When the university moved to Princeton in 1756, many students lived with local families or in Nassau Hall. And with the university in town and growth on the rise, Princeton became more financially secure and middle-class, according to Ms. Gunning.
   "I am an archaeologist every place I go that has a history," Ms. Gunning said in an interview after her talk. "And Princeton has such a rich history." She said she spends her time poring over site documentation and feels fortunate that because of the university’s existence, a lot of the town’s history and clues to its past have been preserved.