To the Editor:
After a lifetime on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, we moved to Princeton five years ago, to take care of my aging mother and her historic home on Mercer Street. In the years since, we have watched with shock and dismay as this lovely, historic town is overrun with development, construction, and traffic.
West 110th Street (our former home) was not nearly as congested as Mercer Street. We write today in support of the “Defend Historic Princeton” campaign, but our alarm extends far beyond the absurdly out-of-scale, proposed development on Stockton. It seems that both the University and the town are hell-bent on expanding no matter what the cost. All concerns for proportion, architectural beauty, and our natural environment have been wantonly jettisoned in favor of more, more, more.
America has precious few towns like Princeton. Once lost, they are gone forever. What a tragedy that would be for our own community, and for the nation. It is incumbent on all of us to protect our common heritage for future generations.