The bridge that joins Trenton, NJ with Morrisville, PA, crossing over the Delaware River, reads in big block letters: Trenton Makes The World Takes.
Trenton, located a mere 20 minutes from the town of Princeton, became an “industrial powerhouse” in the 19th century, manufacturing goods such as rubber, pottery, aspirin, markers, mattresses, and bricks.
“Honest to God, anything you could imagine, they made it in Trenton,” Trenton native Ida Beth Malloy told The Daily Princetonian.
“When resources started leaving [Trenton], it just basically left a huge hole in the city,” Malloy said.
Trenton thrived in the 1920s. But due to mechanization, the period also saw fewer jobs, ailing unions, and the beginnings of a mass exodus of companies from Trenton. According to Malloy, the migration destabilized the tax base, which in turn affected several government services that rely on the tax base to function.
In spite of the city’s decline, Trenton still has a devoted set of residents dedicated to preserving its community — Malloy among them.
Malloy works with Kingsbury Corporation and hosts a community book club in her backyard called Trenton Reads. Her community involvement extends to Princeton as well — she served as a Community Partner in Residence in the University’s Pace Center for Civic Engagement from September through December 2023.
Through people like Malloy, a bridge between Princeton and Trenton is forming — not across the Delaware River, but along the ten miles of Route 1 that separate Old Nassau from the capital of the Garden State.
‘Princeton could have a heck of a great impact here’
Malloy said she doesn’t think Princeton students have an accurate understanding of Trenton.
“It’s a place that they’re told about,” she explained. “But if you don't live there, it’s not your lived experience and the misconception is that it’s unsafe, and that the people are poor.”
“I think it’s important that we know people’s story and not decide what their story is,” Malloy said. “Because if you ride down the street in Trenton, you see abandoned houses, you see people on the corner, you see trash, you see a lot of things. All of a sudden, our biases kick in, [and] our stereotypes kick in. And we decide that the people who live here don’t care, that they’re probably poorly educated, that they want little or nothing out of life.”
These stereotypes extend outside of New Jersey. Jennifer Williams serves as the city councilwoman for Trenton's North Ward. She recalled how on her second day at Tulane University’s MBA program in Louisiana, the class was asked to share where they were from.
“When I said I was from Trenton, this student next to me tapped me on the arm and said to me, ‘And you got out alive?’”
According to Williams, Trenton never quite recovered from the 1968 riots, which occurred in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4th, 1968.
“We always had the specter of this ghost,” Williams added. “Eventually we had to shake off that ghost from us and say, ‘Okay, we’re stepping into the future, we’re going to be a better Trenton, a stronger Trenton’ … we have to rebuild and build a new Trenton.”
“It is a good city,” Williams stressed, despite being “economically depressed and suppressed.”
The city also lacks certain establishments that are prevalent in suburbs. The city only has one Starbucks, two supermarkets, and by June 2024, will have only one hospital, according to Williams. There is only one university in Trenton, Thomas Edison State University.
“When you have a university in your town, you have [a] supply of internships, for students to help local organizations, whether the nonprofit or for profit, be able to look at different issues with it from an academic standpoint, and try to find solutions,” Williams said. “You have a vitality.”
Councilwoman Jennifer Williams, among other things, advocates for Princeton and Trenton engagement and relationships.
Williams wants Princeton to interact more with the city of Trenton in a manner that is not “patronizing,” and that helps Trenton “build up” into “a strong and vital town who can take care of itself.”
“Princeton [both the town and University] could have a heck of a great impact here,” she said. “And we certainly need it, but I think we could be great partners.”
“I think we could bring a lot of enrichment to a student’s education based on … the students I’ve interacted with in the last year,” she added.
Williams recalls a trip that Princeton students and documentary filmmaker Purcell Carson — creator of The Trenton Project, a documentary project — took to the city. In that interaction, a Trenton native came up to the group, telling students “I just want you to know that we’re a good city. We have good people living here. And yeah, we have some issues. But this is a really good city, and I hope you come back.”
For Williams, this experience “hit it on the head.” She said she wonders how future Princeton students will conceptualize Trenton, especially considering the “image” of Trenton as “unsafe.”
“It just was a head scratcher for me that we didn't have more of a direct connection, particularly given the history here,” Williams stated. For her, Trenton could function as a “laboratory” for Princeton students to learn about the city and “find solutions” to issues within Trenton.
“We are finally really digging deep on trying to find solutions [on] how we can rebuild our economy and create an economy here on our own without state workers without the state government being such a major influence. And that’s where we need Princeton.”
Williams provided an example to the ‘Prince’, which she had shared with the New York Times in fall 2023.
“If we could get 1000 Princeton families to shop in Trenton once a month, the effect that that would possibly have on our economy would be … massive.”
The ‘suitcase of privilege’
The reality of how Princeton University should engage with Trenton remains an ongoing conversation.
University initiatives and programs that focus on fostering relationships between Trenton and Princeton include the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES) courses, Trenton Arts at Princeton, the University’s Preparatory Program, partnerships with Princeton’s athletics departments, and more. There is clear and demonstrated interest in cultivation of partnerships with Trenton students and residents.
Benjamin Thornton, a Trenton native, has been the Assistant Director of Community Partnerships at the Pace Center for Civic Engagement for approximately one year. Before coming to Princeton, Thornton worked with Anchor House, a Trenton nonprofit that focuses on providing “safe housing, crisis intervention, community outreach, and supportive services” for at-risk youth. Thornton maintained a strong community partnership with Princeton University during his time there.
For Thornton, the “suitcase of privilege” that many students are burdened with when they become a Princetonian is erroneous and damaging.
“There [are] students who come from places that privilege is the last word you would use. Yet they're here, and they’re taking on this idea of privilege that you don't have any reference for. And in some ways that’s a little unfair,” Thornton said. “[The privilege] just comes with the Princeton name and the legacy of Princeton.”
“I would challenge any and everybody on that, that whenever you use the word privilege, to try and replace that with the word responsibility,” Thornton said. “Certainly, it’s a privilege to be in these spaces, in that way, but this suitcase of privilege that people carry … I can see how it’s very conflicting to be in it, but not of it in that way.”
He recommends changing the mindset of privilege to a “to whom much is given, much is required, kind of philosophy.”
Thornton said that he believes Princetonians perpetuate “the vestiges of the harm that the University may have caused in the past … when we double down on this privilege idea.”
“[The idea of ‘privilege’] carries with it a connotation that there’s something different about you than the person that you’re in conversation with.”
Princetonians in Trenton: ‘The world is right here’
Students also play an integral role in coordinating community engagement between Princeton and Trenton. Thia Bian ’25, the Community Connections Chair of the Student Volunteers Council (SVC) and Anna Simon ’25, a Co-Chair of the Student Volunteers Council Board, spoke to the ‘Prince’ about community engagement with Trenton initiated by students at the Pace Center.
Bian and Simon echoed Thornton’s ideas on privilege and engagement and reflected on their own experiences in partnership with Trenton communities as Princeton students.
“Especially because a lot of us don’t come from Princeton, [and] don’t come from Trenton,” Bian said, “we don’t have roots in these communities in the same way. So then listening becomes so incredibly important in this context and being able to understand ‘how are we going to be able to do this work in a way that both gives us something, but is also meaningful and reciprocal for the community that we’re engaging with[?]’”
Bian stated that she “think[s] we have such a responsibility to learn and to grow and to better ourselves and to do right by the communities that shaped us and nurture us.”
“One of our core values,” Bian noted, “is understanding that we are engaging reciprocally.” In service, Bian wants students to avoid entering and exiting these opportunities with a goal of benefiting themselves or making themselves feel ‘good.’
Simon notes the relationship between the University and the surrounding communities, specifically through her experience growing up in New Haven, where Yale University is located.
“It’s so much easier to see the issues that come up with college students coming to a town, and the socio-historical-economic context of the town, and the clashing and the problematic relationship that can come from that,” she said.
“Coming to Princeton, I was pretty aware that Princeton was an Orange Bubble, and that there was Trenton somewhere in New Jersey,” Simon added. She values the opportunities that SVC provides for students to exit the Orange Bubble and host people from other communities at Princeton.
Bian noted the juxtaposition between the wealth of the University and the diversity of areas such as Princeton’s historically Black Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood.
Bian gets “irritate[d]” by the term ‘Orange Bubble.’
“The world is right here,” she emphasized. “I don’t know that there is so much of a bubble that exists so much [as] a bubble that we're creating.”
Looking forward: Princeton and Trenton as created constructs
“What is Trenton? And what is Princeton?” Thornton questioned. “We didn’t draw those lines on the map. They're actually not there.”
Although Thornton acknowledges that municipal lines play a role in governance, he finds that these constructs can be limiting. For Thornton, Princeton and Trenton are simply “communities of people” that work together, and emphasizing the differences is not helpful.
“As we have those conversations, we should realize that we’re all greater Trenton, that we’re all Mercer County, and then beyond those labels, we’re all sharing the same land that people shared centuries ago,” Thornton noted.
“I’m very hopeful,” he concluded. “All of the conversations are in the right direction to dash those lines and restore the beauty of that relationship between the capital city and Princeton, and being the greater Trenton to that that is designed to be.”
Princeton’s informal slogan is “Princeton in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.” According to Councilwoman Williams, Trenton needs Princeton “to come back to that original mission.”
“Whatever happened before, that was before. We have to look at what can become the possibilities of now, and that’s what I'm trying to focus on.”
Mira Eashwaran is a staff Features writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please direct any corrections requests to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Correction: This piece previously stated erroneously Trenton does not have a university. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error.
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