By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A coalition of nine organizations including the state chapter of the Sierra Club this week urged the Institute for Advanced Study to end its plan to turn a section of the Princeton Battlefield into faculty housing.
The group, known as SAVE Princeton Coalition, sent to the head of the IAS board of trustees a letter urging the IAS to reconsider the Civil War Trust’s “goodwill offer” of $4.5 million for the property. The Trust, one of the nine organizations, has been rebuffed so far.
“The Princeton Battlefield is an indelible part of our history, its ground hallowed by American and British blood, and it cannot be moved or replaced,” the leaders of those organizations wrote in a March 1 letter to IAS board chairman Charles Simonyi.
The IAS is intending to build 15 units of faculty housing on its property, located next to Princeton Battlefield State Park. In the letter, SAVE Princeton Coalition says the site is where George Washington launched a counterattack against British forces during the battle on Jan. 3, 1777.
“It is hard to imagine such a seminal moment in American history being bulldozed for faculty housing, but that is exactly the situation confronting us today,” the two-page letter read.
In response, the IAS released a statement Friday afternoon that said the letter “materially misstates facts, implies that the Institute is acting irresponsibly, paying no heed to preservationist concerns. This is simply not the case.”
According to the statement, the Institute has long supported the Battlefield Park. More than 40 years ago, the Institute sold 32 acres of its own land to the State of New Jersey, enlarging the Park by 60 percent; over the course of the development of the project, the Institute listened carefully to concerns of the public and incorporated extensive changes to the faculty housing site plans.
“Many were suggested by historian David Hackett Fischer, who is quoted in the objectors’ letter, and included moving the project further away from the Park, adjusting the profiles and materials of the housing units, and enhancing the landscaped screen between the site and the Park,” the IAS statement read. “Our faculty housing occupies only 7 acres of the 21-acre field on our campus, and by easement we will perpetually preserve the remaining 14 acres adjacent to the Park, all at no cost to the public.”
Finally, the IAS pointed to a New York Times article regarding the project that was published on Feb. 16, 2016, where several experts made clear that the quality and conclusions of the Milner Report — on which the objectors rely regarding the location of the central events of the Battle of Princeton — is far from universally accepted.
“The Institute has received all the necessary regulatory approvals to proceed. Preservation issues and the Institute’s accommodation of them have been thoroughly vetted. The letter from the project’s opponents is clearly part of a PR campaign by the Civil War Trust and the Princeton Battlefield Society to repeat misstatements that have been unequivocally rejected by the courts,” the statement read.
In addition to the Civil War Trust, the organizations forming the coalition include: American Association for State and Local History; American Revolutionary Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati; The Cultural Landscape Foundation; National Coalition for History; National Trust for Historic Preservation; Princeton Battlefield Society; the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club; and National Parks Conservation Association.
