Community development mandates cohesive plans in order to avoid chaos. Likewise, development of the campus community calls for planning that takes into account the older buildings when conceiving of the new. Originally, master plans were established as a ground-up building plan for a newly created university. Soon though, whether new universities were being founded or older universities were expanding or moving, many started seeking planning strategies that would both set out the pattern for the present campus being developed as well as establish a trend for future development. Schools such as Stanford, Columbia, University of Chicago, and California Berkeley all developed such master planning strategies for their upstart or relocating Universities. They all had different methods for picking a plan; some, like Berkeley, held a contest to design the campus, open to anyone, while others such as University of Chicago went with an architect with whom they had connections.
As more and more institutions began developing planning strategies for campus development, the role of a master plan evolved into a defined entity. Gone were the days of helter-skelter arrangements of buildings on a single campus. Reception of a master plan meant accepting a model for not only current expansions but future ones as well. With the unifying power of the master plan, the trustees of a University now had contextual guidelines for long range development. Master plans set out the theme for a campus, be it Gothic Revival, Spanish Colonial, or what have you. They provided flexibility as well. The future the plan set out was truly only a guide for future architects to keep in mind. Master plans done well gave the campus buildings a place of purpose, a role to play in the composition of the greater plan. It was in this vain that Princeton set out to be the first established University to undertake a master plan.
In the early years of the College of New Jersey, Nassau Hall was the lone facility with the President's house situated nearby. Later, as East and West Colleges and other buildings were built, a naturally symmetric front and back campus began to form. In 1836, physics professor, namesake of the unit of inductance, and the first director of the Smithsonian, Joseph Henry developed a plan for the College of New Jersey's existing campus that rearranged then-present buildings and proposed new buildings in an effort to take advantage of and straighten out the natural near-symmetry. Appendix A is fairly straight forward in its legend. In his plan, Professor Henry mapped out the current buildings and their locations. He also included the not-yet-built Society Halls, a proposed site for a chapel, and a relocation of the two houses on either side of Nassau Hall, all in the name of symmetry and aesthetic taste. When he brought his plan before the Trustees in 1836, his proposal was turned away on the grounds that the Board of Trustees was neither ready to consider such a plan for new building and arrangement nor were they interested in having such a guide for the future (Breese 143). It is ironic to note that while Joseph Henry's amateur master plan was voted down, it is the only plan in Princeton's history to be carried out so near to fruition.
The years from 1868 to 1888 saw the McCosh administration's impact on the existing campus. Under President McCosh, the College of New Jersey adopted a development strategy not of the strict symmetry that Joseph Henry envisioned, but rather of the park-like, picturesque placement of buildings that James McCosh was fond of. With the haphazard placement of buildings such as Witherspoon, Edwards, Dod, and Brown Halls, the McCosh administration established a meandering back campus with wandering lines. The building enacted during the McCosh term presented a challenge to future planners but was as important in characterizing the soon-to-be University as the master plans are to characterizing the modern Princeton.
In 1893, the College of New Jersey hired the prominent architect Frederick Law Olmstead to build a model of the present campus in order to display the growing "Princeton College" at the Columbian World's Exposition in Chicago. In Appendix B, the results of twenty years of a "go-as-you-please" style of building is evidenced by the traipsing pattern of buildings across the vast amounts of land. Mr. Olmstead went beyond cataloging the present campus in the architectural model. He also gave form to buildings that had only just been proposed or considered. A careful look at the Olmstead model reveals the faint outlines of new dorms planned west and south of Whig and Clio as well as more dorms between Clio and Witherspoon and the anticipated wing additions to the art museum. Here was the embodiment of the first Trustee-sanctioned plan for the future of the College of New Jersey ready for display in Chicago under the name "Princeton College".
Just across the way from the exposition hall that the university-bound Princeton College was showing off their campus in booth 82, another university with a freshly built campus and a highly-touted master plan was displaying its adopted Gothic heritage for all the world to see. The "Gray City" of University of Chicago's newly constructed campus juxtaposed against the "White City" of the Exposition caught more than a few eyes. From the Ferris wheel at the Expo, a couple could look out and see the University of Chicago unfold before them. With Cobb Hall the center of the academics and several dormitories for undergraduate, graduate, and divinity school men as well as a set of dorms for undergraduate women and a museum of natural history all designed in Collegiate Gothic by Henry Ives Cobb, the University of Chicago's execution of its master plan was quite a success (Block 78).
Soon after the `93 Exposition Princeton both became a full-fledged University and started a critical period of building. The firm of Walter Cope and John Stewardson, who had just completed a fine example of Collegiate Gothic at Bryn Mawr, was hired by the University to build Blair and then Little Hall. With these assignments, Cope & Stewardson also submitted a tentative master plan which is rendered in Appendix C. The plan acted more as a guide to current projects. It did not plot out a long-term future plan for the University. After the construction of the Pyne Library, Blair and Little, Princeton was left with a newly dominant style of architecture, Collegiate Gothic. Later on, Cram would describe this defining moment in Princeton's architectural life perfectly.
After Collegiate Gothic there was really no going back. These buildings had done their educational work, and so effectively, that the authorities voted that for the future art in Princeton should be a duty and not a variety show, and that anything done hereafter should be in the style revealed by the Library and Blair and Little; the style fixed forever by Oxford and Cambridge, Winchester and Eton; the style that education and learning had made their own and held for two centuries a bulwark against the tide of the secular Renaissance; the style hewn out and perfected by our own ancestors and become ours by uncontested inheritance. (Cram 22-23)So, through the powerful sentiment that rang through the Collegiate Gothic medium and all it represented, a major hurdle was surpassed as the Trustees decided upon the style for all future construction and expansion.
As the decision was being made to incorporate the spirit of the College of New Jersey into the new Collegiate Gothic forms that were starting to be planned for the future, another master plan was proposed and rejected. Howard Russell Butler's master plan provided only general suggestions for building on campus. He stressed the development of pathways utilizing a judicious association of gridiron paths with diagonal roads from radial centers. He also suggested that the University acquire all the land between University Place and the First Presbyterian Church, remove Reunion, West College, the Old Gymnasium, the University Hotel, and the Kresge House and build a centrally located recitation hall. Cram's agenda also included the science buildings being connected and quads or other enclosed spaces in the style of Scholastic Gothic being built to replace the removed buildings. Finally, his plan accented the importance of liberal landscaping and a need for more spaciousness in the central campus. In his plan, Butler managed to incorporate both the lauded gothic architecture and the need to imbibe the new buildings with the spirit of the "walled city against materialism" through the use of his proposed quads and inward-looking campus focusing on the central recitation hall. Although Butler's plan was rejected, the details he incorporated into it illustrate a trend forming. Like-minded others would soon follow as Princeton prepared to develop its master plan.
Princeton crossed the threshold between contemplation and taking action in 1907 when the University hired Ralph Adams Cram to fill the newly created post of Supervising Architect. In taking such an action, Princeton set a national precedent by being one of the first schools with an existing campus to initiate the post of Supervising Architect. Previously, only schools starting from scratch or relocating their campuses had this position. By establishing a Supervising Architect, Princeton demonstrated its commitment to foresight, future planning, and architectural consistency. By hiring Ralph Adams Cram, Princeton hired a professional architect and a master campus planner, as Cram and his firm had just proved with their recent completion of gothic West Point. An internationally renowned expert in church design, Cram was decidedly pro-gothic, which suited his new role at the decidedly pro-gothic Princeton. His architectural philosophy fit in well with the recent decisions that had arisen in the ten years before he got to Princeton. He saw in the university a need to "tie the anarchy of the past into the order of the present, `plant out' by carefully placed new work the aesthetic indiscretions of a munificent but misguided ancestry, and above all give through its unity and coordination a visible showing of the same qualities in the regenerated educational system" (Cram 23). Now an employee of Princeton University, his role was to apply his creative as well as his organizational powers to developing a comprehensive plan for the University's physical future that combined "stylistic unity and consistency" (Cram 23). In his twenty years with the University, Cram produced three official master plans and oversaw an inordinate amount of campus growth.
Before drawing up plans for Princeton, Cram set out objectives for the master plan. The objectives reflected both his personal opinions about campus planning and the wishes of the Trustees. His ideological contributions to the master plans came in that he firmly believed that "concentration should supersede diffusion" and he believed in accentuating the pre-existing, shifting vistas that were so characteristic of Princeton's campus, "the revelation of the unexpected" (Cram 25). Cram also wrote fondly of the importance of a "way out", a wide open vista leading "clear to a blue distance of hilly horizon" (Cram 25). Although he brought his own unique views to Princeton, Cram was invited to the University because of the ideological similarities he had with what Princeton saw as its future. Like Princeton's administration at the time, Cram believed in the importance of a connection between buildings of the same function, in many cases a physical connection forming quads (Cram 25). Ultimately though, the belief that was most central to the kinship between Cram and Princeton was the belief that Princeton needed to obtain the "scholastic suggestions, the evocative impulse of Oxford and Cambridge, the sense of unshaken tradition, one with that of the great universities of our own blood and temper" (Cram 25). With this in mind, Cram set out to design a suitable campus for the extended, prestigious lineage of Princeton.
Ralph Adams Cram's first plan was developed and submitted in 1908 (Appendix D). An analysis of the plan reveals that Cram changes very little of the old campus. Minor changes along the lines of cosmetic destruction of West College's mansard roof, a Georgian portico on the front of Nassau Hall and a replacement of Reunion constitute his only changes of the old College of New Jersey (Cram 25). The vista leading from Cannon Green in between Whig and Clio and heading south towards Lake Carnegie provides Cram's essential "way out" (Cram 25). This vista would be lined by "double rows of English elms" and would stretch across an university park to Lake Carnegie (Cram 25). At the base of the way out would be a set of wide marble steps with a statue "that shall symbolize the University in its personal relation to every alumnus" (Cram 25). The way out, or main axis, is bordered on the east by a built up art building with wing additions and a large quad built on. On the west of the main axis, Cram's pet peeve receives its just dessert; Cram moves Dod west forty feet, sinks it one story, deprives it of its roof, yellow chimneys and scaffolding of fire escapes, and joins it to Edwards in a line tracing the natural ridge on the west side of Little. Cornering on the main axis and the secondary, transverse axis, Cram's pet chapel would be large enough to accommodate the entire student body and faculty. Acting as the focus of both the chapel and thus the entire group, a great central tower would rise out of the chapel. It was Cram's belief, and Princeton's Presbyterian forefathers' before him, that neither "character nor culture reach their full fruition except when religion plays its due and potent part" hence the chapel was not only the focus of its grouping with the built up art museum but was also at the crossroads of the two main axes and at the geographical center of campus (Cram 25).
Cram's plan also included a series of buildings fronting Nassau Street and connected to the School of Science. The University campus breaks its bounds in Cram's drawing by pressing across Washington Road. Also unique in the 1908 plan is the location of the Graduate College located between McCosh Hall and Palmer Physical Laboratory. One of nine controversial locations planned for the Graduate College (Appendix E), Cram was continually having to reconsider its placement throughout the power struggle between President McCosh and Dean West.
Cram begins his mission of connecting up individual buildings with his first plan. Through an intermediate building, Dodge Hall is connected to Pyne Library, Witherspoon is connected across a street to a building built to mirror the Dodge connection building and the aforementioned Dod and Edwards are joined and added to. Various cloisters connect buildings such as West College and Stanhope and the two sides of Holder courtyard.
Cram's use of open spaces operates in degrees. Large expanses of lawn narrow into smaller lawns bordered by buildings in close proximity to each other which likewise narrow into interior courtyards with entrances and exits only through the frame of an arch or narrow walkway. Through this judicious use of space, Cram preserves and creates his ideal that "the whole setting out should not reveal itself at once and from any spot, but gradually through narrowed and intensified vistas" (Cram 25). Similarly, this preservation of open ranges of lawn harkens back to the park-like attitude the campus had during the McCosh years. It also provides for an open, airy feeling without a "loss of light and air" (Cram 25). By 1911, however, many things had changed, the location of the graduate school in particular, and Cram developed a new master plan to reflect.
By 1911 the graduate school issue was laid to rest with its placement beyond the golf course. With the site between McCosh and Palmer free, 1879 Hall owned its own lawn opening onto Prospect House. Another set of dormitories were also drawn out on the opposite side of campus from 1879 on the old location of the train station (See Appendix F). Following in the manner of quads, the proposed dorms were open quadrangles opening onto a small expanse of land and fronting a building across the lawn. Continuing down Cram's way out, an addition is drawn onto the Gymnasium to mirror a section of Patton across the main axis. Another building is added to Patton as well to create a symmetric rectangle with the Gymnasium. Overall though, the 1911 plan is mostly just a slight revision of the 1908 plan. Most of the building proposed in the first plan still remain in the new plan, including proposed changes to existing buildings. Dod is still moved into its divined location. Buildings and cloisters still connect Murray-Dodge to Pyne Library and join the series of science buildings spread across the lawn on the corner of Nassau Street and Washington Road, creating an open-ended, sheltered green. Holder is slightly altered as is the detail of landscaping. Cram delineates his paths with more trees in the 1911 plan. Tennis courts are also added in place of an university park. The train station, as well, has been moved. With numerous revisions made to his first master plan only three years later, Cram waited a good while before compiling his third plan. Cram's final master plan came fourteen years later, toward the end of his career.
In 1925, Cram produced his final master plan for Princeton's campus (See Appendix G). This final master plan make striking revisions on the first two since the campus had changed drastically in the past decade. Gone were the planned connected science builds; gone as well were nearly any connections between pre-existing buildings. Cram also crosses Washington Road again to map out a new engineering school, chemistry building and a proposed University Club consisting of a group of dining halls for upperclassmen, the Triangle Club Theater, Triangle's offices, an office building for the Athletic Board of Control and undergraduate publications, and offices for the many undergraduate activities. Cram relocates his chapel after Marquand and Dickinson were destroyed by fire. Without the Chapel as the focus of the Art Museum grouping, the proposed complex became considerably smaller, but the Art Museum retained a semblance of the originally planned wing additions. Holder is once again altered, this time to house the Commons which were erected in 1916. Chancellor Green is set for a facelift to make it more akin to its Siamese sibling, Pyne Library. McCosh infirmary appears in the drawing, eliminating a wing from Palmer. More construction on the old railroad yards produced new dormitories bordering University Place in an entirely different configuration and with a smaller footprint than had been anticipated in the 1911 plan. Possibly the most significant of all the revisions Cram applies to the 1925 plan is the fact that he leaves Dod alone. In his final of three plans, Cram does not move, sink, strip or slash what he calls "the interloper," Dod Hall (Cram 23). It is interesting to note though, that although his final plan left Dod where it originated, he cited moving Dod and the resistance he inferred about that prospect in his letter of resignation in 1929. With Cram gone, the University turned to the one architect with almost as much experience as Cram had with the architecture at Princeton, Charles Z. Klauder.
One of the important features of a master plan, long-term forward thinking, may have been best exemplified by the western expansion of Klauder's plan. By placing the entire configuration of buildings within the narrow strip of land between University Avenue and Alexander Road, Klauder established a guide for future expansion that would not necessarily increase the surface area of the campus too dramatically. The issue of physical size is an important one that is addressed continually in later years of planning. While Klauder made serious attempts in opening up the central campus, he may have felt that the need for increased capacity precluded large, open expanses and designed the denser, courtyard-oriented buildings to alleviate the burden of building from the park-like old campus.
In his attempts to preserve the park-like nature of the original campus, Klauder also made interesting attempts at restoring the central campus to the symmetry of which Joseph Henry was so fond. In achieving this end, Klauder foresaw a rotation of Pine Library using Chancellor Green as a pivot. From there, Chancellor Green would be added onto to mirror the product of the fusion of Stanhope and Reunion. In striving for symmetry, an interesting prospect arises-it appears that Klauder recreates East College. The resurrection of East College combined with the construction/placement of a mirror-image to Maclean House creates a line directly through Nassau Hall, between Whig and Clio and continuing as Klauder's way out upon which one side of the old campus is nearly perfectly reflected on the other side. Klauder applies this mirroring strategy along McCosh walk as well by drawing a mirror to McCosh Hall. Klauder's ideas, while creative, took shape in his master plan near the end of his association with Princeton. Soon building would all but halt until long after the war. Klauder's grand scheme fell by the wayside and smaller scale operations became the focus of the University.
Jean Labatut devised a plan in 1934 to deal with the constant burden of traffic through the University. Labatut felt that relieving the traffic problem necessitated building reorganization. His plan demonstrated that evidently Ralph Adams Cram was not the only person plagued by Dod Hall's placement. Like Cram and Klauder, Labatut forced Dod to the west to both frame Whig and Clio from the south and to redirect traffic through campus. Unlike his predecessors though, Labatut also turns Edwards ninety degrees to create a small open gateway to the campus road. Labatut also conceived of an Art grouping much like previous plans. His grouping was less grand than previous plans but, combined with the relocated Dod, provided another campus, or field. There was now a front, middle, and back campus each of similar size and form. The addition of another campus gave the central campus a new feeling of formula and openness.
Labatut's major goal was not campus reorganization though. Instead his focus was the problem of traffic. To this end, he drew up plans for auto traffic to run in two very straight and rigid, perpendicular paths when north of Whig and Clio, but once through the gateway formed by Dod and Edwards, traffic followed the curves of the Gymnasium out to a circle intersection at the bottom of campus. While not a grand scale master plan, Labatut's designs dealt seriously with the central campus and was evidently influenced by previous master plans. Although not a primary plan in the chronology of Princeton's master plans, Labatut's 1934 plan is a role player and evidences attitudes of the time. The next true master plan came after the construction of the massive new Firestone Library and on the eve of a period of massive building and fundraising efforts.
In 1954, the University hired Douglas Orr as the new as the consulting architect-a title that replaced the post of supervising architect and illustrated a change in the University's building priorities-to develop a new master plan that took into account the changing needs and resources of the University since the last master plan. According to Edgar Gemmell in his address before the Nassau Club in 1957, Mr. Orr brought to Princeton "a rare combination of elements, including extensive experience in relating educational facilities to each other not so much for the achievement of architectural harmony as for their curricular affinities" (Gemmell). After having completed several projects at Yale with various firms, he was hired to construct a general outline plan for the future of Princeton's educational, residential and recreational needs, Mr. Orr's assignment was not however to develop a specific master plan. A change in attitudes about campus planning arose with the arrival of Douglas Orr. Whereas a mere fifty years earlier, Mr. Orr's predecessor Ralph Adams Cram stated that "Princeton has always held (in contradistinction to some others) that neither character nor culture reach their full fruition except when religion plays its due and potent part" (Cram 25) and emphasized the role of the chapel at the center of two of his three master plans, Gemmell states that the primary assumption of the administration and Orr was that "the library is the heart of a university campus" (Gemmell). This change in focus only illustrates the divergence Princeton's building projects would take under Orr from the previous sixty years of planning and building philosophy.
Orr's plan represents an unique stage in the evolution of Princeton's master plans. The plan is more fluid than previous plan in that while immediate, short-term goals are spelled out clearly, intermediate and long range plans lack a carnal entity and even immediate concerns are reevaluated consistently. The plan elucidated in 1955 consisted of 3 stages-immediate, intermediate, and long term-of which the latter two were merely philosophy rather than planning. Immediate concerns such as a new home for the architecture department, a teaching art museum, an engineering quadrangle, a new field house, an addition to Guyot, a Music building, new Junior faculty housing, new service buildings, and undergraduate dorms were laid out with both location and design. Intermediate and long range goals received only direction though, like the path of future expansion and the ideal extent of the campus. Potential infill buildings were not planned out unless a department was in demand of it, and the newly formed office of physical planning worked constantly with the various departments to get a feel for the immediate and potential needs of each. In order to keep track of the demands by different departments and circles within Princeton, Orr's plan divided the campus into zones: "Academic and Administration, Clubs, Residential Faculty Area, Athletic Areas, Service Areas and Residences for Faculty along Lake Carnegie" (Breese 148) (see Appendix J for a zoning example). While no copy is available of the 1955 Orr plan's immediate concerns, Gemmell divulges several details of the plan in his fundraising speech to the Nassau Club.
The three which appear to be firmly fixed are: the Engineering Quadrangle on the land just this side of University Field, the new teaching Art Museum connected to McCormick Hall, and the new University Store on University Place. The two locations which, after intensive study over many, many months, appear to be reasonably well pinned down now, are the School of Architecture to the west of 1879 Hall and the Department of Music to the north of the closed end of Palmer Stadium. ...Just where a new building for Biology will be located is certainly not decided. Just where the first of the new dormitories will be spotted in the general area which has been set aside for dormitories is certainly not decided. Where the much-needed housing for graduate students, both bachelors and married students, is to be, is not decided, and the location of a field house and new cage is not decided. (Gemmell)
Evidently, Orr's first plan was a master plan in the loosest terms. It indeed set the tone for future development as well as defining immediate concerns. However, it was much less solidified than any previous plan. An explanation for the amorphousness of Orr's plan may have been the lack of funding. The University actually used the guidelines established by the Orr plan as an incentive to donors to give to the $53 million campaign a few years later. Once gifts began flowing into the University, Orr collaborated with Michael Rupuano, a landscape consultant, and John P. Moran, Director of the Division of Physical Planning, to solidify a master plan for the impending building boom.
The result of this collaboration is displayed in Appendix K. One of the most important results that came out of the 1963 plan was the retaining of the overall size of the campus. It was of the utmost importance to the planners and the administration that the "ten-minute walk" between classes be preserved at all cost (Breese 151). To this end, Orr and the Division of Physical Planning prepared a plan that took advantage of some of the larger unused expanses of lawn on the preexisting campus and planned infill projects. The ten-minute walk was most likely instrumental in the decision to change the site of the Music building from the original location of just north of Palmer Stadium to the lawn between 1879 Hall and Prospect House. Along with the declaration of size that the 1963 plan boldly made, the plan made another bold, controversial statement about style-Princeton would now abandon the Collegiate Gothic in favor for modern architecture.
The decision to lay Gothic architecture by the wayside was so steeped in argument that the University prepared a list of responses to the most frequently asked questions and most posted complaints. When asked about the discontinued use of Gothic on campus, the University representative would refer to the prepared answer that "It is costly in today's labor market, and there are neither the architects nor the artisans who can successfully produce good Gothic architecture today" (Some Typical 24). What the representative neglected to mention would be that it was not necessarily that no one could do Collegiate Gothic but that the popular sentiment of the times was that it was a betrayal of the art to design in a dead style. Most prominent architects felt that it was an attack on their artistic integrity to be asked to design in Gothic, an impractical, non-indigenous, ancient style. The unwillingness on behalf of contemporary architects to design gothic buildings combined with soaring costs of materials and the changing tastes of the times resulted in a crop of modern architecture designed by architects who tended to get their commission not on merit but based on their connections with Princeton.
While many architects believed that they should have free reign over their design-that the building itself was the ultimate consideration, not the environment in which it is placed, leading architects like Eero Saarinen believed in the importance of sensitive architecture. In describing his philosophy, he states, "the architect must make a conscientious effort to develop a mass which is sympathetic and enhancing to the total mass developed by the older buildings" (One in Spirit 118). Unfortunately, as a group of concerned alumni vocalized, the buildings planned and built at Princeton as part of the $53 million campaign did not follow that philosophy. It is rumored that visiting professor Enrico Peressutti left Princeton in 1960 citing that his fundamental ideas as a teacher of architecture were being "misshaped and completely reversed by actual developments on the campus" (Poor Princeton Society). Likewise, the aforementioned group of concerned alumni consisting of prominent architects across the country sent letters to alumni asking to donate money with a stipulation that the architecture return to something more esteemed and classic. The building boom of the 1960's has been considered by many to be the greatest architectural travesty in the history of the campus. While award-winning work like Yamasaki's Woodrow Wilson School were built during that time-period, the general uproar caught the attention of the administrators. According to the Director of the Division of Physical Planning, John Hlafter, near the end of the decade it was decided that master plans were no longer in the interest of the University. Instead, any and all new projects would consist of strategic plans.
After the enormous building explosion of the early 1960's Princeton changed its focus. For the next twenty years, Princeton would do away with the concept of master plans. Instead, when new buildings needed to be constructed, the Division of Physical Planning would ask the architects to draw up a strategic plan, a localized master plan, for the immediate area around the building. The first such strategic plan attempted was by the office of I.M. Pei and Partners. They were commissioned to develop a set of residential apartments and continued on with a proposal for development of the area around McCarter theater and the train station (see Appendix L for the original Pei strategic plan). When the final strategic plan was completed, Spelman was in its present design, but included with the Spelman arrangement, Pei and Partners designed social and dining halls near Pyne Hall, a relocated University Store, retail shops, office space, a parking garage bridging University Place, and a workshop theater and fine arts center on the west side of University Place. This was to be the trend for the next twenty years with the planning office and the Trustees deciding what, if any, parts of the strategic plan to implement. Such was the story with Venturri and the series of buildings his firm designed-Wu Hall, Lewis Thomas Laboratory, and the Fischer-Bendheim Halls. Machado & Silvetti followed the same formula when they were commissioned to do the parking facility near the Engineering Quad. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, the trend for building was centered around small infill projects that would not influence the broader future. Recently, however, the tide is starting to turn.
Closely following the completion of the parking facility, the Division of Physical Planning was faced with the prospect of quite a fair amount of building projects in the near future and a strategic plan to accompany each. The major concerns for the future of the Princeton campus lay in the renovation of the Music Building, the creation of a Student/Campus Center, and the examination of traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, through and around campus (Hlafter). Different studies carried out by the Boston firm of Machado and Silvetti give recommendations for path renovation, Campus/Student Center site feasibility, and future directions for growth.
Whereas campus traffic is concerned, Washington Road presents great problems. To alleviate confrontation between students and vehicles, Machado & Silvetti drew up two plans (See Appendix M page 1). One plan entails tunneling the road under a pedestrian plaza. The plaza would stretch from Guyot north to the north end of Dickinson. Pedestrian crossing would be eliminated, though, south of Guyot and between Dickinson and Nassau Street. Another option their firm proposed is a series of five highly identifiable crosswalks with grated road surfaces like the currently under-construction McCosh Walk crossing. Added to the five crosswalks could also be a pedestrian overpass stretching from Palmer across Washington Road. Upkeep or redirection of current paths on campus also figure in heavily with the study of campus traffic problems.
When the Student/Campus Center issue is approached, two different sites have been recommended. If the need at Princeton is understood to be that of a smaller facility of which students would be the primary inhabitants, a site just south of Dillon Gym has been recommended by the firm. They have drawn up several options working with the same theme. An example is shown on page 2 of Appendix M. For a Campus Center, one that would be used by all-faculty, staff, under-graduate, and graduate students-the Palmer site provides the much needed space. The firm created plans for this facility as well as the immediately surrounding areas.
Finally, the firm of Machado & Silvetti established a set of plans dictating the next direction in expansion for the University. As a restraining ridge against further expansion, they proposed a semi-elliptical arrangement of dormitories and a science building at the southern edge of the campus, bordering a rearrangement set of playing fields (page 3 of Appendix M). Further expansion would be limited to infill building between Washington Road and Broadmead. Academic Quads, additions, and parking garages are on the agenda for the next wave of building in that area (page 4 of Appendix M).
With such a series of all-encompassing strategic plans, a logical step would be to consolidate them. The various Machado & Silvetti strategic plans discussed above are photographed in Appendix M, culminating on the final page with the compilation of the individual studies onto one board. It is the hope of the Division of Physical Planning that at one of the next few Trustees meetings, the Machado & Silvetti compilation board will become a master plan recognized by the University (Hlafter).
In the ninety years since the first official master plan, Princeton has survived two world wars, several administrations, numerous supervising and consulting architects, and as numerous schools of thought. Throughout it all, the decisions set forth by the Patton administration in the transition from the College of New Jersey to Princeton University have guided Princeton's development. Their conscious effort to keep the University consistently Collegiate Gothic and to consistently try to express the spirit of the University as "a place where the community life and spirit were supreme, the rest secondary; a citadel of learning and culture and scholarship, at the same time inclusive and exclusive, containing within itself all necessary influences towards the making of character, repelling all those that work against the same; a walled city against materialism" lived on as the backbone of every consecutive master plan. Even in the much debated Orr plans, while the architecture was not necessarily consistent, the spirit of the University was the ultimate consideration. The buildings were especially designed for the University's unique curricula; this was Orr's specialty. Although the days of Gothic may be gone, Machado & Silvetti seem promising in their ability to design what Saarinen would describe as sympathetic masses. Master plans have a unique and permanent role in the life of Princeton University, and it is assuredly safe in Princeton's future as buildings age and departmental demand for space and new technology increases in order to keep the campus from chaos.
Block, Jean F. The Uses of Gothic: Planning and Building the Campus of the University of Chicago, 1892-1932. Chicago; The University of Chicago Library, 1983.
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