Proposed Development Would Degrade Area Well-Known and Beloved for its Historical Value
To the Editor:
We are writing in support of an ad placed in the April 23 issue of Town Topics by six of this nation’s leading historians — Ken Burns, Harold Holzer, Jon Meacham, James McPherson, Sean Wilentz, and Brenda Wineapple — an ad expressing opposition to the current development plans for a site on Stockton Street sold several years ago by the Princeton Theological Seminary. We also oppose this proposed development, both from an historic preservation and present-day quality of life perspective.
This swath of land, which sits partially within the Mercer Hill Historic District, is in Princeton’s oldest continuously inhabited, by non-Indigenous persons, neighborhood, and is in one of the most historically important parts of town, an area that, for 300 years, has been characterized by low density, charming and historic dwellings — the kinds of old houses and buildings, of local, regional, and national historical significance, that have drawn people to this renowned university town for decades upon decades. It sits adjacent to the oldest house in Princeton, built around 1684, and is a stone’s throw from Morven, built in the 1750s by Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It is just up the road from the battlefield on Mercer Street, site of the Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777, and is just west of Nassau Hall, built in 1756 and damaged by fighting between the British and Continental Army during this engagement. British troops surrendered Nassau Hall to General Washington, a turning point in the American Revolutionary War. The Hun School was formerly located on this site, and more recently it served as part of the campus of the Princeton Theological Seminary, founded in 1812. Of other historical note, Thomas Mann’s brick Georgian house on Stockton Street is a close neighbor, as is Einstein’s former house around the corner on Mercer Street.
History, education, and beautiful old buildings are intrinsic parts of Princeton, distinguishing and irreplaceable features that make this town so special, and so desirable. Who wouldn’t want to live here? We fear, however, that this new, high density development, so centrally located, will permanently change and damage the historic and architecturally pleasing character of this part of town. It will also add to the already overloaded and busting-at-the seams infrastructure of Princeton. There are already way too many people living in the area. The roads, etc. cannot take more cars; none of us can tolerate yet more traffic in and around town. We wonder what steps, if any, the developers have taken to protect the historic and architectural integrity of this neighborhood. To disregard hundreds of years of recorded and visible, tangible history, still so remarkably extant here, would deprive future generations of a clear vision of our country in its earliest years. It would degrade an area well-known and beloved for its historical value.