Chapter two case Studies

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

sought to liberate Princeton from what he described as its ‘pleasure park’ appearance, a random coalition of buildings of varied styles and little cohesion which resulted from donors’ freedom to dictate location and style, to be replaced by a homogenous university, unified both in its architecture and layout. Following the lead of Cope and Stewardson, Cram’s plan recommended ranges of buildings that served as boundaries along the campus edge. Buildings were planned to create a delicate network of partially enclosed quadrangles, organized around a framework of axes and vistas. He wrote of his plan that it conceived the university as ‘a citadel of learning and culture…a walled city against materialism and all its works’.⁴⁷ The success of his plan comes from the interplay between enclosed spaces and openings from which unexpected vistas extend. The design, he wrote,

Should not reveal itself at once and from any spot, but gradually, through narrowed and intensified vistas, the unforeseen opening out of unanticipated paths and quadrangles, the surprise of retirement, the revelation of the unexpected.⁴⁸

More than any other individual, it was Cram who shaped Princeton’s environment. As supervising architect, he oversaw the construction of approximately 25 buildings, designing four of them himself. The Graduate School was one such commission. Built in 1913 and distanced 1.6 kilometres south-west of campus, it is a highly developed academic complex structured around an irregular, picturesque arrangement of quadrangles that cultivate an aura of scholarly erudition. Its masterly siting upon a hill marked by the profile of Cleveland Tower, inspired one twentieth-century art historian to describe it as ‘the finest example of Collegiate Gothic architecture in America’.

The architectural firm Day & Klauder also assumed the Collegiate Gothic baton, producing a series of masterful, inventive interpretations of the style. The firm was responsible for the dormitory grouping at the north-west corner of campus envisaged in Cram’s 1907 master plan, Holder and Hamilton Halls (1910). The complex assumed the form of two enclosed courts, anchored by the elegant silhouette of a 43-metre tall tower which echoed that of Canterbury Cathedral. Alive to the rich language of Gothic, the ensemble revels in its rhythm of gables, rectilinear tracery and pointed archways, extending even to the inclusion of a monastic cloister.⁴⁹

Gothic reigned dominant until the mid-twentieth century, but in the second half of the century, Princeton cautiously began to experiment with modernism. The focus for this was the development of the eastern precinct, which housed the athletic facilities, eating clubs and science facilities. Robertson Hall (1965) stands in a conspicuous location as a western gateway to the precinct (Figure 2.35). Designed by Minoru Yamasaki, it is an elegant yet curious edifice that blends the strikingly modern with echoes of Antiquity. Intentionally reminiscent of a Greek temple, the building is wrapped by a ribbon of slender, tapering, concrete columns that march in locked step around its perimeter. Brilliantly white in sunlight, at night light luminously spills out from its soaring vertical expanses of plate glass. Further to the east, the massive Engineering complex terminates the boundary of the precinct. The Engineering Quadrangle (1962) and the adjoining Von Neumann Engineering Research Laboratory (1979) are ranked amongst the least successful elements of Princeton’s environment. Incongruous to Princeton’s campus, this is a soberingly utilitarian series of buildings. Although at its heart lays a surprisingly attractive, landscaped garden, even this glimmer of cheer is illogically hidden within the esoteric distribution of buildings. The Engineering Quadrangle illustrates the problematic nature of this precinct. No overall plan guided its growth and buildings rarely have any accord with their neighbours, the result being an inharmonious scattering of structures with no unifying focus.⁵⁰

The second half of the twentieth century also saw an expansion of the south campus. Contemporaneous to the Engineering Quadrangle, the Architecture School was built in 1963. Its rectilinear forms, sparse ornamentation, flat roofs and regular patterning of windows mark it out as a product of its time, but its design is far more compelling than that of the Engineering Quadrangle, and is integrated into its surroundings. Volumes are broken up into human-scale spaces; it utilized the red brick and limestone trim vocabulary of its neighbours; and incorporates a string-course in deference to its neighbour, 1879 Hall. Post-modernism was introduced onto south campus with the Thomas Molecular Laboratory (1986) and the George LaVie Schultz Laboratory (1993) by Venturi, Scott Brown Associates (Figure 1.44). The long, rectangular forms of the buildings are relieved by interplay of colour and patterns in brick and limestone, alluding to the brick and limestone façades that populate this area of campus, such as

2.35 Robertson Hall, Princeton University

Photo: Janice Hazeldine/Alamy

Guyot Hall (1909). The entrance façade of the Thomas Molecular Laboratory whispers of Princeton’s Gothic Revival heritage, with its ogee-like arch drawing focus to its main door. Similarly, the windows of the Schultz Laboratory are divided into panes, reminiscent of the leaded mullions of this tradition. Venturi’s buildings thus enter into the spirit of the campus, responding to its neo-Gothic architectural legacy yet not descending into parody.⁵¹

As these modern science facilities illustrate, the Collegiate Gothic is an essential ingredient of the campus’s persona, indistinguishable from the identity of the college itself. Much aided by generous endowments, Princeton has attracted designers with innate grasps of the expressive qualities of Collegiate Gothic. President Wilson addressed alumni in 1902:

We have added a thousand years to the history of Princeton by merely putting those lines in our buildings which point every man’s imagination to the historic traditions of learning in the English-speaking race.⁵²

Princeton was one of countless American universities of the period to enlist Collegiate Gothic as a device to invest their settings with venerability and permanence by championing the medieval ancestry of their educational ideals. Blair Arch, Holder Tower, and Cleveland Tower have all become entrenched as landmarks of a campus steeped in tradition. The university’s crenellated towers, elegant oriels and characterful grotesques are indelibly imprinted in the minds of its students, professors, alumni and visitors as ‘being Princeton’. The historical decision in 1896 to remodel the campus marked the beginning of an aesthetic and ideological commitment to the style still important to the modern university, as the recent Whitman College (2007) demonstrates (Figure 2.36). This sprawling residential complex on south campus utilized not only the Gothic vocabulary, but also traditional load-bering masonry construction. Designed by classicist Demetri Porphyrios, ranges of buildings are arranged to evoke the irregular walled towns of the Middle Ages, guarded on its western side by a tree-planted moat. A bridge leads through an arched gateway into the large open courtyard. The variety and intricacy of Whitman’s massing and scale, combined with the extravagantly high quality of build, leave the visitor with the sense that Whitman’s walls will last, and be enjoyed, for centuries to come. The issue of how its campus architecture should represent its values and identity has been well prioritized at Princeton. The university has predominantly followed a policy that cultivates a spirit of its permanence, heritage and gravity.