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E-PrinceThe fate of 86 Olden St. — the former site of the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Understanding — has recently become the subject of concern for some alumni who fear that the University will demolish the 19th-century building to ...(back to the article)
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uhh don't you mean pre-20th century? pre-19th cent would mean the building was constructed in the 1700s.
Oh, please, not another big dull expensive building to crowd the campus! This isn't MIT South. Yet. We need green space, and smaller classes (my English precept looks like the New York subways), and more actual teaching from actual senior profs.
not many other prestigious schools can do better than us in terms of green space, smaller classes, and actual teaching from sr profs
It would be a tragic mistake to destroy this beautiful building. Also W. Barksdale Maynard runs things.
DONT tear it down.
Either: 1) PICK IT UP AND MOVE IT (a much more interesting and demanding feat of engineering, one more resonant with the supposedly greater intelligence of the Ivy League); or,
2) Incorporate the existing old building within the proposed new one, altering and emending the architectural style and plans of the new building to harmonize with the style and proportions of the old.
either way, everybody wins.
It would have been nice if this article had actually researched the history of this building, beyond its past as a football club. If you knew what year it was built, you might do better at telling us what century.
Princeton tore down the old butler buildings and no one protested. There is known to have been a East College that once completed the symmetrical quadrangle around Canon Green. This was torn down to build East Pyne. Before the current buildings for Whig and Clio Halls were built, there used to be smaller, wooden buildings in the same location. Buildings preserve memories because they are so long-lasting. But sometimes it is good to let go because that is a tangible confirmation of change that has occurred.
I think the building should be torn down. I do not understand why Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown would want to preserve it. Venturi himself transformed the Palmer Physical Laboratory into the new Frist Campus Center in 2000. The only thing that remains of it is the north facade and the 300-level lecture hall where Albert Einstein taught.
It is ironic, however, that it must be torn down to build the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, a building that aims to be "sustainable." The truth is, the most sustainable thing to do is to not build, and to renovate old buildings.
That said, I like celticfury's ideas!
Waqas, why do you think the building should be torn down? Because it's not of enough historical or cultural value to merit preservation? Because sometimes we have to let go of tangible remnants of the past in order to move forward as a culture? The reasoning makes sense - every issue of preservation ends up being a judgment call about whether something is worth keeping around.
I think you might be a bit quick to jump to the conclusion that it should be torn down. I think cities and campuses are immensely more interesting when they can, whenever possible, incorporate remnants of the old into the new. Of course sometimes we have to let go of something (i.e. East College) in order to move forward. But wouldn't the new Butler College have been a lot better, more powerful, more poignant, more memorable, more valuable if it has used the old college as a starting point - rather than razing it - and there had been some sort of radical renovation / reinvention of it? We as a campus had judged Butler architecturally not worth preserving (preserving as an artifact in its original state, in the typical sense of the term preservation) but we could totally have reused a lot of it and transformed it into something much better - and perhaps only recognizable as Butler in fleeting moments here and there or to those who intimately new the old Butler. Instead, decades of memories are simply gone because we chose to take a tabula rasa approach and replaced something mediocre with something even more mediocre. Ugh!
Here is more info on Osborn Clubhouse, from my forthcoming book on the history of the Princeton campus: In the 1890s, football was king. H-Y-P were the most important teams in the nation, with crowds of 35,000 watching their much-hyped contests in New York City. Locally, the Tigers played at University Field off Prospect Avenue, where Woodrow Wilson and President Theodore Roosevelt later watched the Army-Navy Game together. Here Osborn Clubhouse was built in 1891-92 to serve the team--a gift of Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, heir to a railroad fortune, who had just left for Columbia University (he would later head the American Museum of Natural History). A commanding figure, Osborn believed in the strenuous life--he would turn his museum into a shrine to Teddy Roosevelt--and he wanted to encourage young gridiron warriors. ORANJE BOVEN read the motto above the Roman-brick Romanesque arch of the fireplace in the trophy room: Orange Above All, old battle-cry of the Prince of Orange and Nassau. Architect Thomas Speir was a young athlete-alumnus who accidentally shot himself one month before the building opened. The football team used Osborn Clubhouse for nearly eighty years (long after University Field closed), until the school gave it to minority students in the 1960s as the Third World Center.
Thanks for that info WBM'88, that's really great. I wish the author of the article had done adequate research into the building's history as well!