Butler complex to make way for new facility
By: Olivia Tattory
With frustration mounting and made evident in recent student satisfaction surveys, Princeton University students are getting what they wanted.
Waffle style concrete ceilings that made the rooms feel dark and small, poor floor layout and at least one exposed brick wall that simply did not accept wall hangings, are just a few of the reasons for the demolition and reconstruction of five Butler College dormitories, said Mark Burstein, executive vice president.
"We’ve seen in the past few years that students have ranked the Butler dorms very low in housing that is offered," said Mr. Burstein.
Demolition of the five dormitories, Lourie-Love, 1922, 1940, 1941 and 1942 halls, located on the south end of campus, east of Elm Drive and north of Bloomberg and Scully halls, began on Friday.
Built in 1964, the dormitories make up Butler College along with 1915 Hall built in 1949 and Wu Hall built in 1983, which will remain.
The university has selected Pei Cobb Freed & Partners of New York to serve as architects for the replacement dormitories. Henry Cobb, a founding partner of the firm, designed the new dormitories. Mr. Cobb was also the architect for the university’s Friend Center for Engineering Education that opened in 2001.
The new dormitories, with construction costs topping $65.7 million, will have two, three and four stories and be slightly larger, encompassing 112,000 square feet compared to 100,000 square feet of the dorms being demolished.
And while the square footage has increased, the number of students inside will drop from the previous 375 to 289. Constructed of a lighter red brick, the architects current renderings also show horizontal stripes of limestone. The original closed-in courtyards of the halls will be replaced with open courtyards providing longer walkways seen throughout Princeton’s campus.
The plans for the new buildings are complete and have been submitted to the Regional Planning Board of Princeton, said Mr. Burstein. The review and approval process for this project is slightly more complicated than other projects since 15,000 square feet are in Princeton Borough and 97,000 square feet are in Princeton Township.
While original plans were to just renovate the dormitories, the extensive cost of renovation proved to be equal to the cost of reconstruction, explained Mr. Burstein. The new set of buildings are slated for completion by fall of 2009 available to students in September of that year. Butler, one of Princeton’s five two-year residential colleges that serves as a center of residential life and an important focus of academic activities, will remain so but with even more attention to the social space for students by adding more common areas, study space and seminar rooms.
The architects plan on connecting the separate buildings at the basement level, something that is not usually seen in a college dormitory setting. This space will have large windows looking out at the courtyards, quite a difference from the average dormitory basement.
Mr. Burstein said the reconstruction will not only enable the architects to change the way the buildings are laid out in relation to surrounding structures, but will also allow for the project to be approached in a sustainable manner.
"More than 50 percent of the buildings will be two-stories planted with ‘green roofs,’" said Mr. Burstein. "The environmentally friendly roof will, hopefully, decrease the amount of water runoff."
The roof will also serve as a means to promote the cooling of the buildings and lessen the need for heating in the winter months. The materials used are also more environmentally friendly.
"We will also be recycling water from runoff to feed the landscape," added Mr. Burstein.
Robert Geddes, dean of the school of architecture at Princeton from 1965 to 1982, believes the reconstruction is "the way in which the buildings make possible social interactions and create a sense of community for the students."