Dining halls to keep Gothic feel

Responding to complaints raised by students last spring, University officials have scrapped renovation plans for Rockefeller and Mathey colleges' dining halls that would have replaced long tables with a more modern setup of round tables and booths.

While the current plans still call for an overhaul of the food serving area, the renovated dining spaces will retain their traditional Gothic look when students return next year.

Administrators went back to the drawing board after initial plans met with strong opposition from students who felt that the changes would detract from the halls' distinctly Gothic feel. Nearly 600 students, including 200 apiece from Rocky and Mathey, signed a petition opposing the changes.

"We like all the other renovations, including the new servery, but the new table setup would take away from the personality and overall experience of the colleges," Brendan Lyons '09, a Mathey College Council representative who organized the petition, told The Daily Princetonian at the time. He added that the proposed changes "would take away from the overall atmosphere, especially the Gothic aspect." Recent working copies of the floor plans for the dining halls given to the 'Prince' show long tables arranged along a center aisle with one additional 10-seat oval table in each hall.

Mathey College Master Antoine Kahn GS '75 said that the plans were redrawn so that "almost all the seating will be in the traditional long tables," with one or two round tables which would be "more appropriate to serve as language tables."

"The latest plans showed that the administration and planners took these concerns to heart," Lyons said in an e-mail this week. "With the changes in place, the new Mathey and Rocky dining halls should be incredible."

While the traditional layout of the dining halls will be preserved, there will be extensive changes made to the food serving areas. The serveries of Rocky and Mathey will be combined into one "market style" service area, with most of the food freshly prepared at stations dedicated to specific cuisines. This format, with entryways into both dining halls from the same servery, will "offer far more options," Kahn said. But Matthew Halgren '09, one of the original Rocky student protestors, said that he is "still skeptical of the plans for the renovated servery" because he is "afraid that at peak times like lunch, it will be difficult to prepare the food in time," leading to congestion. Halgren is also a member of the 'Prince' Editorial Board.

Chad Klaus, one of the University officials in charge of the renovation, said that there "could be queue areas, and it might take a few weeks to come to the right point."

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Large-scale chandeliers will "get rid of the gymnasium-style lighting we've all grown to hate," Klaus said, and carpets down the center aisle and absorbent banners along the walls will improve acoustics in the halls. The plans also call for lounges within each dining hall, which will include a coffee and espresso bar as well as individual chairs and couches.

The renovations, which will be funded out of the budget for the four-year residential college plan, are scheduled to take place over the summer.

"I think it's going to be an outstanding combined facility," Kahn said.

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