Editor’s Journal (07.05.07)

Live in Lawrenceville? Likely not, but who cares?

By: John Dunphy
   Potato, potahto. Tomato, tomahto. Lawrence, Lawrenceville. These are the great questions for those of us with too much time on our hands.
   While I have grown to love this town I have covered for almost a year (this July 27, to be exact. Send gifts), there has been one bugaboo of mine that has not ceased to irritate me since I took the job.
   Do you live in Lawrenceville? Likely not. For you see, Lawrenceville, really, is only about a square-mile-speck on the map, encompassing the downtown area of Route 206. If you’ve hit Carter Road on one end, Rider University on the other, you’ve gone too far and have found yourself in, gasp, Lawrence Township.
   According to Wikipedia, that take-with-a-grain-of-salt Web site that is the junk food equivalent for information addicts (myself included), this whole name discrepancy actually is the fault of the Postal Service, which the site states requests residents to list their mail as Lawrenceville, not Lawrence. Mail a letter to a friend, whether on Slack Avenue in Lawrence Township or Gordon Avenue in, yes, Lawrenceville, and you write Lawrenceville on the envelope. But thanks to the intrepid sleuthing of Ledger reporter Lea Kahn, who knows more about this town than I think almost anyone in it does, we can now pinpoint the time frame of when all this mess began.
   If you did not read her article last week, I will summarize: a Lawrence (mind you, I did not say Lawrenceville) resident from the south end of town wants not to have his address read Trenton, as many of the south Lawrence residents addresses do. While the article presents it as more of an issue of confusion and a call for convenience (really, when you live in Lawrence, which is known as Lawrenceville, yet your mail is addressed to Trenton, things can get a little murky), this individual and others also are probably feeling a little town pride.
   Why not — Lawrence is a nice place. On the other hand, Trenton has for years been steeped in a not entirely undeserving bad reputation.
   It was in the early 1970s when Lawrence Township agreed to give themselves their own designation, as Lawrenceville, but mail in the north would still be addressed as Princeton, in the south as Trenton. At the time, Lawrence’s smaller population was such as to warrant such a procedure. Originally, the plan had been for the entire town to be Lawrenceville (or Lawrence. Man, I’m so confused), but those in sparsely populated north Lawrence replied to a survey given by the town, indicating what would come as no surprise: they liked their Princeton address, thank you very much. So, came the compromise.
   But Lawrence Township has grown in 30-plus years. It’s home to many interesting people (one of them, underwater photographer Jeff Rotman, is featured in this week’s paper, in fact) and numerous interesting destinations. It’s certainly deserving of its own identity.
   So, if this name switcheroo does end up happening, what then? Will all 22.2 (according to Wikipedia) square miles become Lawrence? Or would those with "exclusive" (to quote the parlance of many an obnoxious real estate advertisement) Princeton addresses fight to the death to keep said exclusivity? Curiouser still, if the change is made, would it say Lawrenceville, despite about 95 percent of the town not living there?
   Growing up on the south end of Middletown, in Monmouth County, my neighbors and I always had Red Bank mailing addresses, despite not actually living in that neighboring borough. In the 1990s, when writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy, etc., etc.) mania was in full flower, I grew fond of telling people I lived in Red Bank, where his View Askew studio and comic book store were located (well, I wasn’t totally lying, was I?). Then, when all that died down, I reverted to Middletown.
   Growing up, we always referred to the Lincroft section of Middletown simply as Lincroft, because that’s what we had grown up to know it as. And when I moved to this area, I, yes I, without a hint of irony, smiled a bit when I found out ours was the very last house in Princeton before Montgomery Township and would get the benefit of that "exclusive" Princeton address. Even I can fall victim to a little snobbery once in a while.
   Curiouser and curiouser still … who cares? Well, apparently, I do. We are bred as newspaper folk to get things right, or at least the way we think is right, which explains why I always change Skillman to Montgomery, Mercerville to Hamilton and, yes, Lawrenceville to Lawrence.
   But, really, in the end, a potato’s still a potato, and a tomato’s still a tomato whether you live in Lawrence, Lawrenceville, Trenton or Princeton.
   Let’s call the whole thing off.
John Dunphy, of Princeton, formerly of Red Bank, I mean, Middletown, is managing editor of The Lawrenceville Ledger, I mean The Lawrence Ledger. He can be reached at [email protected].