Butler blunders

Sadly, the design for the new Butler College is here to stay. Though it will doubtless be an improvement over its pest-ridden and pessimism-breeding predecessor, surely Princeton can do better.

The current Butler College website is a masterwork of architectural propaganda that euphemizes Butler's most egregious structural and aesthetic flaws of which no Princetonian is unaware: "Made of brown brick over reinforced concrete, the tight scale and undulating surfaces and bays create a modern interpretation of the Gothic look." The part about brick and concrete is true, but "tight scale" is really just code for cramped and congested. Undulating is hardly the word that should be used to describe the square, rigid facades of the quad.

Maybe there is a method behind this madness. Some say the quad was designed to resemble a gulag. Besides its obvious aesthetic similarities, this conjecture is further corroborated by the fact that several of the buildings are named after years in the Second World War. Another theory: The quad was built in the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. Perhaps Butler's architecture was merely Princeton's attempt to prepare privileged, upper-class youth for the bleak future of global Soviet hegemony.

Architects in the original Gothic style, on the other hand, constructed cathedrals on a massive scale, with vaulted ceilings reaching toward the sky and enormous windows that allowed the sun to penetrate and illuminate the sanctuary. These qualities, they believed, would instill a sense of divine awe in people and bring them closer to God.

Regardless, we can all agree that the architecture and design of Butler was a mistake. But can't this error be corrected? Indeed, the University has correctly, albeit belatedly, decided that the old Butler must go. But what of its reincarnation? Will it resemble the other Gothic colleges, the neo-Jacobean 1915 Hall or its neighbor Bloomberg? Apparently not. The facade of Frist could have served as a model for the new Butler to imitate.

But, alas. The cries of generations of Butlerites have fallen upon deaf ears.