A Short History of Princeton's Rowing Facilities

Lake Carnegie

from the papers of Howard Russell Butler 1876

I painted my first portrait of Andrew Carnegie as he sat in the library of his new house, after breakfast, reading his newspaper. This is the portrait which hangs in the center of his gallery, and which Mrs. Carnegie considers the best of all the many portraits which were painted of him.

I think it was during one of these sittings that he was bragging of the four lakes which he had built, and all of which I had seen. To make conversation, I told him of a scheme which I had had for a lake at Princeton. In my college days, as already told, I had been coxswain of the six-oar college barge. We rowed on the Delaware and Raritan Canal-a dangerous matter, for the canal was then filled with boats, many of them propelled by steam and it was not easy to pass them on half oar. So the idea of cleaning out the marshes which extended from the campus to Kingston, building a dam and flooding them, became a dream for all of us and often in the evenings we would sit toasting our toes at the open stove, a kind known as the Blushing Maiden, and discuss the great project. To my surprise Carnegie was very much interested. "Wouldn't it be a good place for the Students to curl?" he asked. A few days after he said he wanted to go to Princeton to call on Grover Cleveland; would I accompany him? We foolishly neglected to telegraph that we were coming, and Mr. Cleveland was not there. Mrs. Cleveland, however, received us, and Henry Van Dyke, who drove a two-seated vehicle, came over to see Mr. Carnegie and invited him to drive around the campus. I was not with them. But when returning on the train, as we passed over the trestle, Mr. Carnegie said, "I got Van Dyke to drive me down to see your marshes." I presume they went down Washington Road. I asked if he was really interested in the project of a lake for Princeton. He said he was. "Go ahead," he said, "and find out what it will cost." I immediately organized the Princeton Lake Committee: Moses Taylor Pyne as its chairman, and my brother, William Allen Butler, and Cornelius C. Cuyler. These three gentlemen advanced $1,000 and employed James J. R. Croes, President of the New York Society of Civil Engineers, to make surveys, plans and estimates. These were turned over to me by the committee, and I endorsed them, to Mr. Carnegie, stating "in my opinion the total cost (estimated at $118,000.) is not large considering the magnificent scale of the work. If attempted at all it should be done on the lines laid down in the accompanying reports.... I believe the estimate to be as reliable as one based on a preliminary survey can be. We were very fortunate in interesting so eminent an engineer." That the estimate was worthless never occurred to me.

On the back of this letter Mr. Carnegie wrote in pencil:

My dear Mr. Cleveland:-I should like to do something for Princeton. Two of its graduates here said this lake would be best of all. If you concur, I will do it through you. I am cautioned that the project must not be known, or the needed real estate could not be got. An option should be obtained upon it at once if the "loch" is desired. My regards to Mrs. Cleveland. Best wishes for you both always.

A. Carnegie. New York.

On this authority, I was leaving Carnegie's house when I encountered Dr. Woodrow Wilson, supported by Mr. John Aitken and Dr. Jaspar Garmany. President Wilson had come to ask Mr. Carnegie for a contribution to his preceptorial system. A servant came running out and asked me to return, "as Mr. Carnegie says that Princeton is in the house." My heart fell, as I feared it meant the loss of the Princeton lake. We sat around the fire. Mrs. Carnegie joined us. The conversation for a long time was general. But when President Wilson prepared to make his request, Mr. Carnegie stopped him, and turning to me, he said, "Butler, give me those papers." He waved them in his left hand in front of Dr. Wilson. "I am going to give a great gift to Princeton University," he said, "It's a lake."

This must have been a blow to Dr. Wilson, but he rose handsomely to the occasion, and said, if I remember correctly, "Mr. Carnegie, it is a fine gift, and in behalf of the University I accept it." The deed was done. Mr. Carnegie said, "Well, there is one condition, and that is that Howard Butler shall construct it." I had never built a lake,-if a lake can be built,-and hesitated, fearing that the task might be beyond me. "You will do anything for your Alma Mater, won't you?" asked Mr. Carnegie. "Of course," I replied, "I will do my best." The meeting broke up, and Mr. Carnegie retained the papers, ultimately returning them to me. They never reached ex-president Cleveland. I have them in my files.

Later, when unforeseen difficulties greatly augmented the cost, Mr. Carnegie claimed that he had only intended to give the amount of the original estimate. But neither in his written words to Mr. Cleveland or in anything I can remember his saying, was there the slightest allusion to such terms. Dr. Wilson could not have accepted a gift of money to be applied on account of the building of a lake.

Shortly after this Dr. Wilson, at an Alumni dinner, made an address in which he said, "We went to Andrew Carnegie to ask bread and he gave us cake." Now this remark could be interpreted two ways. Carnegie chose to regard it as asking for a necessity and only getting a luxury. I was worried that anything should have occurred to dampen his ardor but thought little about it at the time.

The year 1903 brought some letup in work and responsibilities and my health greatly improved. Princeton Lake became the important undertaking. I began to purchase the land included in the area to be flooded, as well as the strips along the shore. There were thirty-one pieces in all, the lake proper being three and five-eighths miles long and varying from 400 to 1,000 feet in width and a secondary lake extended up the Millstone River for half a mile.

There can be no way of condemning properties in a case like this and we were obliged to settle with the owners as best we could. Some of the firmer spots in the swamps had sold as high as $20. per acre, and the engineer in his estimates had predicted that all could be bought at that price. We kept the matter as quiet as possible but one morning I was startled to find it all in the first column of the front page of the New York Sun. I held seven options at the time and closed them at once over the phone. Thereafter, all the Jersey farmers of the neighborhood knew that Carnegie's money was behind the plan and they wanted all they could get. So did [one lady]. She owned the little white house, part of a row erected in 1838 for the workmen building the canal. We knew the price ($800.) at which her late husband held it, but she wanted $7,000. All we needed was the little lowland at the back of the house where she had a chicken coop, but she would not part with that separately. We could have built a dyke about this for about $4,000. and I think [she] got wind of this. We bought the next place, house and land, for $1,000. and made it the office of the engineers, as it was conveniently near the dam which we were building. [The lady] held out for two years. But one cold night, the engineers, having put too much wood in the stove, their house caught fire and burned to the ground. It is said that [the lady] stood, arms akimbo, watching the flames and was overheard saying to her son, "They've been trying to buy us out, now they're going to burn us out." She reduced her price suddenly to $3,500. and I immediately closed.

At first I used a real estate agent named Fielder in these bargains but on his death I secured the efficient services of Mr. Alexander R. Gulick. He was invaluable, both as bargainer and lawyer. He had many queer experiences. One was with a riparian owner who had eleven acres, hidden on which was an illicit distillery. We offered him $1,100., which he gladly agreed to accept and signed a contract of sale, on the strength of which he got married. Thinking it wise to have his wife's signature on the contract, Mr. Gulick sent or took it to his wife, but the owner, evidently having learned that Carnegie was behind the purchase, captured the contract and refused to return it. Our written demand was met by a reply from an attorney of New Brunswick which said that his client, being an uneducated man, had signed the contract under the misapprehension that he was getting eleven thousand dollars instead of eleven hundred,-a clever dodge, but not too much so for Gulick. For $200. he got the wife to sign a duplicate contract and then threatened jail proceedings for theft against the owner who got frightened and signed the deed.

Many of the titles were in bad shape. Years before a minister had bought a small piece, almost in the middle of the swamp, where he pastured a cow. He had died long before this and his heirs-in-law-of which there were about thirty-were scattered over the country, south and west. The lake was practically finished before all the necessary signatures had been secured.

The Gray farm of over a hundred acres, situated between Harrison Road and the Howe farm, had three acres of the needed swampland. Mr. Gray's widow refused to sell the three acres unless we bought the entire farm at $16,000. I was finally compelled to do this. Meeting Mr. Carnegie shortly afterwards, I told him that I had had to buy 100 acres of highlands in order to get 3 of lowlands. His reply was, "Well, I'll take the lowlands. You keep the highlands." Here my brother Will came to my assistance. He and Pyne and Cuyler secured eight other alumni and the eleven each put in $1,000. They called themselves the Gray Syndicate. There was a mortgage of $5,000. on the farm which my mother assumed. The new owners of the farm then presented the three acres to Carnegie.

When, three years later, the water was let into the lake, the value of riparian property rose and the Gray Syndicate valued their hundred acres at $50,000. Now this property adjoined the easterly edge of the campus and the advantage to the University of its acquisition was apparent. My mother offered to cancel the mortgage if the Syndicate would donate its shares. This my brother succeeded in bringing about. All but one gave their shares and another alumnus was found to assume and donate that share. So on the commencement day after the completion of the lake, a deed was executed to the University for 89 acres, a strip of the balance along the shore going to the Carnegie Lake Association. The land was accepted by the University and is named "The Butler Tract."

The same difficulty occurred when we attempted to buy [a farm] of about 121 acres. Fourteen of these extended into the swamp. [The owner] asked $18,000. for the entire farm, refusing to sell the lowland by itself. The purchase was made and again Carnegie refused to take the farm. He advised me to take it myself which I did on condition that he loan me $15,000 on it at 3%. This he agreed to and I held the farm for seven years. By that time it had cost me about $23,000. with interest on the mortgage, taxes and care, less what I received for rent. It was a very beautiful tract and included the interesting colonial house known as Castle Howard.

Perhaps the most important purchase was that of the Aqueduct Mill, near the place where the Millstone River enters the lake. For this we paid $5,000. It had a millpond with a dam, which had been in use for seventy-five years, having a lip elevation of +52.16 as referred to the bench level at the Raritan River. The right to maintain the Millstone at this level afterwards became a very valuable possession.

The Pennsylvania Railroad owned the D. & R. Canal and held a strip of marsh land bordering the towpath. This we needed and negotiated a contract to buy 110 acres for $2,200. When I touched on this to Carnegie, he bristled up with "You're not paying anything to the Pennsylvania Railroad, are you?" I told him of the contract. He called his secretary and dictated a letter to one of the executives of the Road. A few days later I got an official letter stating that the Railroad Company had concluded to donate the land. I knew that Carnegie had for years dominated the Pennsylvania and that he had held a club over it, but I did not know till then that the handle of the club was still in his hands.

The plans prepared by the engineers fixed the lake level at +54 and the specifications called for a channel 300 feet wide and four feet deep, beginning about 400 feet west of Washington Road and ending near the Aqueduct Bridge, where the valley level was +50. All the earth was to be transported to the campus, west of Washington Road.

Eleven firms bid for the excavation work and the contract was about to be let to the Hudson Water Lift Company at 47¢ a cubic yard, when it was discovered that the +54 level would cause a backwater flooding of many acres in the bottom lands of Bear Creek, which enters the Millstone two miles above the lake. The owners of this land saw an opportunity to coin money and made their prices exorbitant.

On a cold day in the late autumn, we ascended the Millstone in two rowboats and the engineers appalled me by pointing out the boundaries of the district that would be flooded by the +54 level. That they did not know of this before was due to errors in the government surveys on which they had relied. My mind was at once made up. Rising in the boat, I announced that we would abandon the + 54 level and adopt the level of the old Aqueduct Mill dam +52.16. This meant, if we maintained the depth of the channel, that we would have to dig down in the valley 22 inches deeper. The engineers demurred to this on the ground that it would cost $5,000. an inch. All, however, agreed that it would make a far safer lake, would eliminate all legal difficulties and would avoid the purchase of any more land. The old plans were accordingly discarded, amended plans were drawn and I was compelled to face Mr. Carnegie with the new proposition.

On November 30, 1904, Mr. Carnegie agreed, rather reluctantly, to the new level. He would not think of buying more land from "extortioners" as he called them, but he cut off six inches from the channel depth. The extra cost did not please Mr. Carnegie and with Dr. Wilson's remark about "cake" still in his mind, he was in no humor to receive John Cadwallader's report, as counsel for the University, viz.:-that the latter would be unable to accept the gift of the lake owing to provisions in its charter, which made it impossible to hold titles to a property of this kind. Therefore it became necessary to form a self-perpetuating corporation to hold titles. We proposed a Board of Trustees made up of ten alumni of the University and one representative of Mr. Carnegie. Carnegie was forced to agree to this and the Carnegie Lake Association was incorporated. This plan assured the benefits to the University as well as if it were the owner, but removed from it all liability.

Following this difficulty came another. There were people in Princeton who did not think that the lake would be a good thing for the town. Some thought there was not sufficient flow from the Millstone and Stony Brook to keep it full; that the banks would be exposed and muddy; that it would breed mosquitoes, etc.; even my dear old friend Cyrus Brackett disapproved of the scheme. Then there were those who considered it vandalism to cut down the trees. About 100 acres of swamp land were thickly grown over with water birch, with here and there heavy timber. It was a big undertaking to remove these, dynamiting out the stumps. This subcontract cost about $32,000.-the contractors getting the wood. Of course it had to be done, notwithstanding the objections of tree lovers. Princeton is daft on the subject of trees, with a consequence that there are far too many in most parts of the town, preventing the free passage of air and greatly increasing the dampness. It would be good for Princeton if every other tree were removed, especially on Bayard Lane and Library Place. The magnificent trees,-Tulip, Pine, Elm and Magnolia, of which Princeton has many fine examples,-would stand out to greater advantage if judicious elimination of other trees were made.

Then another trouble arose. The engineers had advocated two 400 foot bridges of cantilever type for the two driveways which would have to cross the lake-Washington Road and Harrison Street. It was planned to make these similar in construction to many other bridges in Mercer County but these were far longer than any previously built and the Selectmen of the County refused to accept bridges of this type having so great a length, claiming that their maintenance (painting and replenishing of flooring planks) would be a heavy expense to the county. They demanded that Mr. Carnegie either put up bonds to maintain the bridges or build self-sustaining bridges. This also annoyed Mr. Carnegie but when I presented two plans, one for the beautiful bridge now faced with stone, but then planned to have a cement facing, for Washington Road, and another graceful design for Harrison Street, both with stone piers and cement floorings, he gave in and O.K.'d them.

Everything seemed to lead to greater expense but I did succeed in securing one reduction. Carnegie had appointed me as landscape architect, as well as his attorney-in-fact. I found that the +52.16 level would make a very much more picturesque lake. I held as much as possible to the natural shoreline, marked all the trees that would overhang the water, that could be retained, and called for bids for removal of all the excavated land east of Washington Road, with a haul not greater than 600 feet,-the haul in the original specifications having averaged three-quarters of a mile. The Hudson Water Lift Company again secured the contract at 25¢ a cubic yard, a reduction of 22¢. The earth now had to be deposited in spots and so we built Margaret Carnegie Island and the island across from it, near the towpath, the embankment at Harrison Street and the road leading from Harrison Street to the Howe Farm. This new plan not only saved money but added greatly to the picturesqueness of the lake but did not appease Mr. Carnegie's wrath to any great extent. That he was down on me for having suggested the lake was becoming very apparent, but that he was going to visit his wrath on me personally, I then had no suspicion.

The next few interviews with Mr. Carnegie were far from agreeable. After each interview I made notes of our conversations. "You got me into all that trouble in Princeton. That is why I ended with you. It was the worst thing I ever got into. It cost me $440,000. when you said $134,000. I always thought I was giving it to the college. Woodrow Wilson didn't want it and tried to get something else instead. I supposed I was to give the money first asked for, and the college would do the rest. I want a man who can carry things through for me." I might have referred him to his estimate of my abilities which he had penned for Triumphant Democracy, or to some of the statements which I understood he had made in Pittsburgh about finding just the man he needed for his New York interests.

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