Compromise sought over IAS historical build site

The battle over the Institute for Advanced Study’s plans to build housing on land immediately adjacent to the Princeton Battlefield is reaching fever pitch.

Armed with a housing plan fully compliant with zoning requirements and environmental standards, the Institute went to the Princeton Regional Planning Board on Dec. 1 seeking approval for the project. After four hours of testimonies, cross-examination of expert witnesses, presentations and public comment, the board agreed to extend discussion to a Dec. 8 session. When the clock ran out on that session, too, before all witnesses had been called, the Board agreed to extend the discussion again to another public hearing on Jan. 26.

The Institute has been trying for nearly a decade to build additional faculty housing on a 7.3-acre lot situated directly between the Institute’s main campus and the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The Institute’s first proposal before the board in 2003 was rejected because of a disagreement over the size of a buffer zone between the park and the houses. The buffer zone has since been enlarged, but concerns over zoning ordinances, environmental protection and historical preservation have stalled the project.

Much of the discussion has centered on the historical consequences of building on top of land that may have been critical to the Battle of Princeton, a battle that, along with the earlier Battle of Trenton, many historians agree was a turning point in the Revolutionary War. Historians and preservationists led most vocally by the Princeton Battlefield Area Preservation Society have been working to make a case against construction.

Some experts contend that the Institute’s proposed lot was the site of then-Gen. George Washington’s crucial counterattack.

A 2009 report commissioned by the Society and conducted by John Milner Associates, an independent historical preservation firm, analyzed soldier’s diaries and topographical maps in conjunction with earlier archaeological digs. Robert Selig, a historian who worked on the Milner Report, spoke with the ‘Prince’ in October 2010. “We now have a very good idea of where [the counterattack] was,” he said at the time. “It goes across the property where the Institute wants to build dormitories.”

The Institute, however, disagrees with the findings of the Milner Report. Mark Peterson, a history professor at UC Berkeley, analyzed the report on behalf of the Institute and found that it misrepresented the location of Saw Mill Road, the line Washington’s troops followed on their counterattack. He presented his findings at the Dec. 8 meeting.

The debate attracted the attention of James McPherson, a Civil War historian and history professor emeritus, and David Hackett Fischer ’57, a Revolutionary War specialist and a current professor at Brandeis. Fischer won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2005 for “Washington’s Crossing,” a book on Washington’s winter 1776 campaign, a campaign that included the battles at Trenton and Princeton.

McPherson says that the right flank of the American counterattack “probably took place, to the best we can determine from contemporary maps and archaeological evidence,” on the Institute’s proposed site. He estimates the Institute’s lot is one-eighth of the area where the climax of the counterattack occurred.

McPherson and Fischer worked with the Institute over the last year and a half on a compromise plan that McPherson presented at the Dec. 8 hearing.

Under the compromise, the Institute would set up a screen of trees on the immediate west side of the housing and allow public access to the land between the housing and the park under a permanent conservation easement that would preserve 14 acres in perpetuity. McPherson’s plan also advocates that the Institute put up a walking path with interpretive signage, in effect adding those 14 acres to the Battlefield Park.

“In the end, while we were not entirely happy with the decision to go ahead and build, we signed off on the compromise because of what appeared to us to be a willingness to compromise as far as they could consistent with their needs,” McPherson said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“In a perfect world, we would’ve liked to preserve almost all of the land, but this was the best deal we could get, and we thought it was a pretty good deal,” he added.

For some, though, memorializing the battle with a monument or marked pathway is not enough.

“It is now pretty much universally held that the way one commemorates a battle is to preserve the battlefield land, not just put up a monument,” said Jerry Hurwitz, president of the Princeton Battlefield Area Preservation Society.

“The idea is to be able to walk the battlefield and see the way things happened, to really be there in the moment. You can’t do that when you put up housing and root up tons of dirt to level the land.”

Hurwitz says the extended process has hurt his organization’s case. The Society has two experts with “intimate knowledge of the situation at the battlefield,” Hurwitz says, but because of confidentiality agreements, neither can be called to testify without a Board-issued subpoena that has yet to be issued. Some of the Society’s key witnesses had also expected to speak at the Dec. 1 hearing and scheduled flights accordingly. When time ran out on Dec. 1 and the Board decided to extend, these witnesses had not yet spoken and were unavailable for the next hearing.

Still, Hurwitz remains confident that the Board will block the Institute’s plan. “I don’t think the Institute is going to be able to build where they want to build,” he said. “Of course we are motivated by historical concerns, but we’re going to show evidence that it doesn’t conform to zoning standards either. It’s not a great site to begin with.”

“We believe the Institute has other alternatives, for example the Einstein Circle,” Hurwitz said. “It’s ironic — they say they can’t build there because it’s part of their historic district.”

While the Institute has worked to preserve battlefield land in the past, it does not believe historical factors are “strictly relevant to the current application in front of the Board,” IAS spokeswoman Christine Ferrara said in an email.

“The Institute has done its best to look after its own needs and objectives while still respecting the historical record,” IAS director Peter Goddard told the ‘Prince’ in November. “But you can’t reverse history and reconstitute every blade of grass on which somebody might have fought.”