Institute of Advanced Study to continue construction despite battlefield’s history

The Institute for Advanced Study is moving forward with plans to build housing on land immediately adjacent to Princeton Battlefield State Park.

The Institute will go before the Princeton Regional Planning Board on Dec. 1 with a proposal for a 7.3-acre residential complex. The proposed project site lies directly between the Institute and the Battlefield State Park on land owned privately by the Institute.

The proposal is the culmination of a decade-long effort by the Institute to build on the site, which it has owned since the 1930s. The project stalled in recent years as the Institute worked to meet local zoning ordinances and environmental standards, but it is now fully compliant.

The Institute, which has hosted luminaries like Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Alan Turing, is looking to establish affordable housing for its members and faculty in an area where real estate prices have been rising steadily for the last three decades.

IAS director Peter Goddard says the proposed housing is vital to maintaining the Institute’s character as a community of scholars.

“Princeton is a fine and friendly place, but the Institute is more intimate. We all know each other,” Goddard said. “We’re trying to recover the full version of the residential community of scholars that we enjoyed three decades ago.”

The Institute hosts 28 permanent faculty, who are given lifetime appointments, and 190 members, who stay for roughly a year. The Institute charges no fees or tuition, and faculty are paid by salary. Members are typically provided with a stipend.

Thirty years ago, 60 percent of the Institute’s scholars lived in the area around Mercer and Springdale Streets, said John Masten, associate director of finance and administration for the IAS. Today, that figure has fallen to just 28 percent.

“The irony of it is that it’s the presence of the University and the Institute that has made this neighborhood an attractive area,” Masten said. “And making it attractive has made it unaffordable.”

The proposal has come under fire from preservationists who see the Institute’s plan as encroachment on a piece of historically valuable land.

“More of the battle was fought [on the Institute’s site] than we initially predicted,” Jerry Hurwitz, president of the Princeton Battlefield Area Preservation Society, told The Daily Princetonian last October. “We ought not to permit the desecration of hallowed ground.”

The Battlefield Park was established in 1946 — on land partially rented from the Institute, Goddard noted — to commemorate the Battle of Princeton. It was made a historical landmark in 1961, and in a 2008 report to Congress the National Park Service named Princeton Battlefield on its list of the top 29 endangered battlefields from the Revolutionary War.

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The Institute plans to build seven single-family residences and eight townhouse units on a tract east of the Battlefield State Park. Current plans provide for an additional 200-foot buffer zone and a “dense hedgerow” between the “low-profile” homes and the battlefield.

Musket balls, broken bayonets and grapeshot ammunition from the 18th century were found in a 2003 archaeological survey survey of the battlefield site.

“In no uncertain terms, the land that the IAS wants to build on was crucial and is critical to the battle itself,” said Brian Kovacs, spokesperson for the Society.

Historians have not, however, reached a consensus on the importance of the Institute’s site to the 1776 battle.

A 2007 cultural impact survey conducted by the Louis Berger consulting group at the Institute’s request found that the Institute’s project would cause minimal historical damage. But a 2009 report conducted by John Milner Associates, an independent historical preservation firm, at the Society’s request found that the climax of the battle, a counterattack led by George Washington, occurred on the project site.

Bob Selig, a historian who worked on the Milner Report, spoke with the ‘Prince’ last October. “We now have a very good idea of where [the counterattack] was,” he said. “It goes across the property where the Institute wants to build dormitories.”

The Institute, however, had three leading historians assess the Milner Report, all of whom concluded that there is no reason to believe the Institute’s site was the center of the battle.

“The case is not proven,” Masten said. “The location of the back road that the Continental troops followed remains uncertain. We also think the physical evidence isn’t there.”

“The battle ranged all over this town,” Goddard said. “It’s likely that troops moved across this land, of course, as they did over much of southwestern Princeton, but studies indicate there were not high levels of military activity on this land.”

Over the years the Institute has made efforts to conserve the lands around the battlefield, Goddard noted. The Institute Woods, a 600-acre tract of woodland and wetland to the south of the battlefield, is maintained on the public’s behalf by the Institute. When the state was negotiating with the Institute for lands that would become part of the Battlefield State Park, the Institute agreed to sell some of their lands “so we had stability in knowing we had this parcel,” Goddard said.

The Institute indicated that it intends to build in seven of the 21 acres on its parcel, “effectively preserving 14 acres in perpetuity,” Goddard said.

“The Institute has done its best to look after its own needs and objectives while still respecting the historical record, but you can’t reverse history and reconstitute every blade of grass on which somebody might have fought,” Goddard said.