The building committee formed by Whig in 1835 was composed of graduates and professors. These included William C. Alexander, Class of 1824, Chairman; Louis P. Smith of the Princeton Bank, Treasurer; Professor Charles Hodge, Class of 1815; Professor John Breckinridge, Class of 1818; Professor James W. Alexander, Class of 1820; Captain R. F. Stockton, Hon. Class of 1820; R. S. Field, Class of 1821; Professor Stephen Alexander; John Crowell, Class of 1834; A. M. Jerome, Class of 1836; S. H. Porter, Class of 1837; J. W. Gibbs, Class of 1838; G. C. Bush, Class of 1839; and Professor Joseph Henry.
In the summer of 1836, a circular was prepared and sent to Whig alumni and other supporters. The project was pitched not only as a means of securing a permanent and prominent home for Whig, but also as part of the general improvements in the College. Included on the lithographed circular, was Professor Henry's plan.
The subscribers, members of the American Whig Society residing in Princeton, respectfully join in soliciting your aid to effect the object set forth in the above appeal. The project of erecting a new Hall is not only of vital importance to the Society itself, but also forms an essential part of a system of improvements commenced by the Alumni, and intended to render our College not inferior to any institution of the kind in this country. These improvements relate to the College grounds, the Edifices, the Philosophical and Chemical apparatus; the Mineralogical and Geological collections: the formation of a cabinet of Drawings, Casts and Models for the illustration of Classical literature and the fine arts; in short the furnishing of the Institution with all the implements and facilities for a liberal and extended course of instruction. The erection of the new Halls is intimately connected with the improvement of the College grounds, as these edifices can be so placed in reference to the buildings now erected as to form with the latter a convenient and beautiful architectural arrangement. The plan of the disposition of the whole will readily be understood by a reference to the annexed Map [the Henry plan]. It will be seen that the buildings occupy the three sides of a parallelogram with the old College (Nassau Hall) in the middle.The new identical buildings were modeled on two Greek temples. In the Appendix of the Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the College of New Jersey, 1836 & 1837, the Clio building is described as already begun. Both buildings are,
... In the Ionic style, sixty-two feet long, forty-one feet wide, and two stories high. The columns of the hexastyle porticos are copied from those of a temple on the Ilissus, near the fountain of Calirrhoe in Athens. The splendid temple of Dionysus (Bacchus) in the Ionian city of Teos, situated on a peninsular of Asia Minor, is a model of the buildings in other respects.
These two temples were not randomly selected. These were two especially popular exemplars of Greek architecture, the Temple of Dionysus having been illustrated in Ionian Antiquities (1769) published by the Dilettanti Society. Sir Robert Smirke, for example, had probably drawn his inspiration for the 1821-3 plans for the British Museum from the same source. That two small societies in a basically provincial college should have been aware of the developments in a major metropolitan project in Europe and felt themselves connected to the same movement attests both to the growth of the architectural press, and the freedom with which American architects and builders quoted not only from pattern books (now becoming more archaeologically accurate) of ancient buildings but also from more illustrious contemporary practitioners.
In any event, the Greek Revival temples were an astounding departure from the Georgian Colonial Nassau Hall, Federal Geological and Philosophical Halls, and the "Neo-Colonial" East and West Colleges. The sole recommendation to the grouping was their symmetry and their erudite impressiveness. Their distinctiveness, while not subordinate to the stately Nassau Hall, lent the campus an air of refinement, learning, and elegance, the actual materials of their consturction not withstanding.