Letters - July 7, 1999
As an architect and a Princetonian I found much of value in Catesby Leigh '79's detailed analysis and critique of architecture and context at Princeton (cover story, May 19), but I hope readers will understand that his viewpoint derives largely from a particular perspective. As indicated in the editor's note at the end of the article, he is associated with periodicals and institutions that advocate an essentially historical/Classicist approach for the architecture of our time.
Also, readers should remember "the cycle of taste" described by Princeton's great architectural historian, Donald Drew Egbert '24 -- we tend to react against the art of the recent past. Is the architecture of the '80s and '90s too recent for Leigh to like?
Robert Venturi '47 *50
Philadelphia, Penn.
In Catesby Leigh '79's visionary discussion of the surfaces of campus architecture, surely it is a printing oversight that his article repeatedly misspelled what must have been intended to be "Gothick." As director of design for The Hillier Group and the architect of Bowen Hall, I consider it as an honor to be criticized by Mr. Leigh; his erudition is exceeded only by his visual acuity. Do his class numerals stand for 1979 or 1879?
Alan Chimacoff
Princeton, N.J.
That Princeton has one of the most beautiful campuses in the world is well known, and I'm glad to agree with Catesby Leigh on this point, but I thought it was generally understood that one of the campus's finest characteristics is the quality and diversity of its buildings. Without doubt the campus' s collegiate-gothic dormitories and classroom buildings are extraordinarily beautiful, and the Whig-Clio set is a fine example of neoclassical architecture. But must all buildings imitate distant periods of human civilization? Should the world become a giant Disney theme park? I live in an older neighborhood where the new homes going up are built in a Victorian style. Their designers go to great trouble to make three-car garages, home theaters, computer work stations, and modern kitchens and baths look like they were built a century ago. It makes me wonder why my neighbors don't dress in period costume, including corsets. I am concerned that if we were to accede to Leigh's logic, in the name of historical continuity we might give up the very idea of authenticity in our own physical environment and, ultimately, in our intellectual lives.
The history of architecture is one of inventiveness and innovation in the face of evolving social needs and technological imperatives and possibilities. The classical column itself was an invention. As Leigh knows, it came from, and gave expression to, the unification of Egypt. In this respect it represents the human need to give expression to evolving circumstances as much as it represents a convention that exists, in Leigh's words, "above all, for the sake of beauty." Architecture doesn't reinvent itself; it gives figure to the culture that builds it. Beauty is always an issue.
The University of Notre Dame is well known as one of the world's leading and most ideologically prescriptive centers of neotraditional architecture. At Princeton I hope we can look forward to a continuing tradition of intellectual diversity and innovation in architecture as much as in any other discipline.
Thomas M. Colbert '76
Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Houston
Houston, Tex.
Why can't administrators contract with the likes of Demetri Porphyrios *80, whose beautiful and graceful gothic renditions at Oxford are shown on page 27 of your article on campus architecture? Instead we are made to suffer the gimmicky buildings like the Whig renovation and the add-on to Firestone Library, or the stark Marx Hall, which forever will be the poor twin to 1879 Hall beside it -- the former looking like it was designed with Home Depot thermopane windows.
I'm sorry, but please give us intelligent modernism, not a conglomeration of the latest fads in architecture -- which will look pathetic in 30 years.
Albert Lee '66
Rumford, R.I.
It is patently absurd for Catesby Leigh to hold up Demetri Porphyrios's design for the new quad at Magdalen College, Oxford, as a model for Princeton. The fact is that, at Magdalen, a pastiche has been placed next to an original. At Princeton, on the other hand, the author is suggesting we build pastiches next to existing pastiches. The original collegiate-gothic buildings by Ralph Adams Cram, however delightful, are of course themselves pastiches of English and French Gothic.
I worry about this kind of tunnelvision architectural criticism. It offers idiosyncratic reviews of façades but totally ignores planning, interiors, and functional issues.
I would suggest to the author that he go find a laptop computer with gargoyles, a microwave oven in the shape of an ogee arch, and a multiplex cinema held in place by flying buttresses.
Stephen A. Kliment *57
New York, N.Y.
Catesby Leigh's castigation of the campus's post-World War II architecture is the first significant look at it that I can remember in paw. He reminds me of two other writers on architecture: John Ruskin and Charles Windsor.
One of Leigh's architectural criteria is beauty. This is brave even in our own immediate present, when exhaustion with the pseudo-rationalism of modern and postmodern strategies is apparent.
The need for beauty was self-evident to Ruskin, who became a hero for making clear the relationship between great art and architecture and great culture. Ruskin noted the collapse of any purely indigenous tradition and the modern agony of choices. Much more recently, but in the same vein, Prince Charles has given a high profile to the lonely voices who have been saying that the ancient traditions of architecture must continue to please and move us. They are far from dead or outmoded. He also points out that the decline of arts and crafts associated with building is not only an aesthetic but a moral issue.
Tom Wolfe, in his book From Bauhaus to Our House, gleefully reveals the lack of grit and aesthetic sensibility in a whole generation of patrons who permitted architects to rule them. For many centuries it had been precisely the other way around. What happened? It remains, then, for Leigh to follow this "modest proposal for a return to traditional styles" with an examination of the system of patronage at Princeton.
Gary Walters '64
Uxbridge,Ontario
I appreciate Catesby Leigh's articulate and courageous article concerning the state of Princeton's architecture. Postmodernism, reductionism, and deconstructionism have run their course, failing to provide the enduring qualities of aesthetic beauty and also truth, if indeed beauty is a truth. I challenge Princeton to heed Oxford's example by creating buildings that inspire both our minds and our hearts.
Franklin Yau '92
Dallas, Tex.
An alumnus whose experience of Princeton causes him to care deeply about college architecture can only read sadly Leigh's attempt to make sense of what has happened to Princeton's green and pleasant environs in the past 30 years. His article epitomizes the problem: It is about buildings, good and bad. It is not about the spaces among them, and it is not about how these buildings hang together to form a campus through which faculty and students can move with ease and understanding.
But on a college campus it is the spaces among buildings -- the quadrangles, lawns, and secret corners, for example, of the upper, older campus -- that provide character, nobility, and a sense of place. Elegant spaces, alas, are nowhere to be found among the cacophony of Princeton's new structures, each cleverly and egotistically jostling for notice, while the occasional attempt to create an axis with the grace of a McCosh Walk is swiftly interdicted -- or "stitched together" -- by another structure.
Universities and colleges must grow and change, and their science buildings are big. But in obliterating the grace and logical flow of campus spaces and axes, they deny students a visual education and impose upon the last havens of reflectiveness the clutter, crudeness, and heedless energy of the city.
Stanford University did what Princeton has done. Thanks to the 1989 earthquake, enough of its clutter had to be taken down to justify unearthing Frederick Law Olmsted's original campus design. Princeton is seismically stable, but could not the modest muse of Beatrix Farrand, for many years the university's great landscape architect, be invoked for what space remains?
Bob Edwards '57
President, Bowdoin College
Brunswick, Maine
My friend Bob Edwards '57 has shown me a copy of his recent letter to paw regarding campus building over the last half century. I wholeheartedly agree with him regarding the planning objectives that he urges upon us. But from my perspective, including my tangential relationship to campus planning in recent years, I have a different assessment of what has been taking place.
For me, the greatest omission in Leigh's article was its virtually total failure to address the issue of planning (as distinct from the design of individual buildings) -- this is the subject to which Edwards so appropriately refers. As Edwards says, the most glorious feature of Princeton's older campus is its spaces, juxtapositions, vistas, and overall plan (albeit informal).
Like Edwards, I believe that during the enormous postwar expansion of the campus, attention to the relationships among buildings and to the creation of beautiful intervening spaces was regrettably insufficient.
But unlike Edwards, I believe that during the past quarter century or so, while Jon Hlafter '61 has been director of physical planning at the university, exactly those planning issues have been given a very high priority. The placement of new buildings and the choice of architects and materials have all been strongly influenced by issues of overall campus design. In a number of cases the result has been striking -- creating order, symmetry, and beauty where these were previously lacking. The construction of Wu Hall is an example of a courageous, difficult architectural intervention that brought order out of chaos. Similarly, the placements and designs of Clapp and 1927 Halls have created attractive courtyards and appealing symmetries where they did not previously exist. An archway is being cut through Patton Hall as part of its renovation to create a major East/West pedestrian artery that will rationalize and integrate important parts of the campus in appealing new ways. McCosh Walk is being extended to the east, and Goheen Walk is now an important parallel walk to the south. A constant pattern of brick construction has been followed along Washington Road, beginning with the extension of 1879 Hall (Marx Hall), through Palmer (to become the Frist Campus Center), Guyot, Shultz, Lewis Thomas, and now Scully Hall. The continuous use of brick along this border of campus is, of course, analogous to the line of gothic stone used earlier along the northwestern and western edge of campus. The elliptical arc envisioned for the southern campus edge is a powerful planning concept. These are only examples from a longer list.
Individual buildings constructed over the past quarter century will, of course, be viewed differently by each of us. Undoubtedly it is still too soon to know which of them will become beloved (even belatedly, like Alexander Hall) and which will not. But the overall attention paid to campus design in recent years has been, for me, a powerfully positive force.
Thomas H. Wright '62
Vice-President and Secretary
Princeton, N.J.
As a former resident of Feinberg Hall, I have a comment and question for the architect and university officials who planned and approved the building. Aesthetically, Feinberg's only plus is that it is slightly more attractive than most of the buildings in Wilson College. The interior left much to be desired. Our common room, dubbed the "elevator shaft," measured approximately 80-90 square feet and rose over three stories. (While visiting, my nephew set off rockets and never came close to hitting the ceiling.) Even more bizarre, the wall separating one bedroom from the common room did not meet the ceiling -- a gap of several feet allowed all noise and assorted flying objects to pass from one room to the other, and it was nearly impossible to study or sleep in the bedroom when the other occupants were at home. Planning?
In recent years, little consideration has been given to retaining in new buildings the architectural integrity and beauty of the old campus. With a few exemptions (Wu and Bowen Halls, and Princeton Stadium) the new buildings lack beauty, character, and at times functionality. Little wonder that, on graduation day, people take their photos in front of Nassau and Alexander Halls -- not Fine Hall, the E-Quad, or the School of Architecture. Everyone complains about the new buildings, but the trustees keep approving them.
Carmelita Welsh Reyes '98
San Antonio, Tex.
Editor's note: Catesby Leigh replies to his critics:
I chose to focus on the formal qualities of Princeton's architecture because they are the cardinal factors determining the appearance of the campus for good or ill. I think my choice is amply reinforced by Thomas Wright's letter. The university may have devoted more attention in recent years to the campus's spatial organization, but I fear the resulting "order, symmetry, beauty" is a figment of his imagination.
In reality, it is all but impossible to create elegant spaces and noble vistas while resorting to the stunted architectural idioms of Fine and Jadwin Halls, or Robertson Hall, or New New Quad, or Thomas and Wu Halls, or Wilson College, or Scully Hall. On the other hand, it is as easy to build an ugly building with red brick as with any other material, and if that building's neighbors happen to be brick as well, is this cause for celebration? What's more, the consistent use of materials is of little consequence compared with the stylistic cacophony mentioned by Bob Edwards. Unfortunately, projects recently completed or now underway at Princeton increase the volume of this cacophony considerably. For its part, the great elliptical arc envisioned by Wright is already doomed to swell the list of the university's architectural misadventures on account of Scully's weird southern elevation.
Wright suggests that the unpopularity of the new buildings on campus is merely a matter of individual or ephemeral tastes. But the architecture that has moved people most deeply across the ages, at Princeton as elsewhere, generally shares enduring, objective formal qualities I described in my article. Needless to say, Wright doesn't dispute my criteria. Like Venturi, he simply chooses to bank on the relativity of taste. Perhaps he is putting his eggs in the wrong basket.
A rich, figurative architectural idiom is the indispensable point of departure for satisfying spaces and vistas, and here the great building traditions, which have proved remarkably adaptable to the fulfillment of modern needs, point the way for us as they did for Ralph Adams Cram and his contemporaries. Indeed, the aesthetic power of the collegiate- gothic style contains the seeds of the coherence of much of the upper, older portion of the campus to which Edwards refers. That power dictated the style's prolonged employment at Princeton before it was discarded for essentially inartistic reasons. Coherence, stylistic as well as spatial, was the natural result.
If Edwards wants us to build on the best of Princeton's architectural and landscape design heritage, he should take stock of Porphyrios' s Grove Quadrangle project. I'm sure Beatrix Farrand would have been happy to collaborate with Porphyrios, though she might wish he made more generous use of ornament. But I seriously doubt she would feel that she and the architect of the Scully quadrangle were on the same wavelength.
As one who has struggled over the years to find appropriate words, written or spoken, with which to address some subject or issue, I was overwhelmed by the quiet beauty of William Zinsser '44's "The Healing Moment" (First Person, May 19). His 50th reunion occurred at the time of the anniversary of DDay; my Class of 1945's reunion coincided with the remembrance of the end of that war. Both events had exerted a monumental influence on each class. Both contributed to the depth of feeling experienced by the men and women who participated in those two reunions.
Zinsser brought to the surface unspoken responses, first to that tumultuous period in American history when we bewildered students waited to see what "Washington" would tell us what to do, and then the resulting alteration in college life that commenced almost overnight after December 7, 1941.
Fifty years later came the reunions; then the healing; then the time to meet with classmates we had never really known; then the widespread expressions of gratitude and the affirmations: Yes to President Dodds for his steady leadership -- and what seemed like almost personal guidance. Yes to wives and children and family for understanding and loving support. Yes to the manifold blessings of life itself. Yes to this opportunity to gather and sing and be quiet and not feel any need to hold back the tears. And yes to do all these things in a unique place called Princeton. How grateful I am to Zinsser's ability to bring forth these remembrances of a vital phase of my own personal history.
The Rev. Carleton Schaller '45
Littleton, N.H.
While I commend E. Cameron Scott '93 for expressing her views (Letters, May 19) and share her concern that sexual assault be given serious attention on campus and in paw, I did not coauthor her letter. When Ms. Scott contacted my office and asked that I lend my name to the letter, I expressed support and encouragement; however, I eventually declined to be a signatory. I did not feel I could sign because I did not agree with all of the views she expressed. Those were her words, not mine, and she should take the credit.
Janet Waronker
Director, SHARE
Princeton, N.J.
After reading Lee Minton '67's May 19 letter on Princeton's problematic financial relationship with Gordon Wu '58, I found myself increasingly disturbed by Minton's first, second, then third use of the unusual expression "Ah, so what?" Though I would prefer to think this was some kind of freak word usage, I had to conclude that Minton deliberately inserted "Ah so" into his letter three times in relation to Gordon Wu.
For those unfamiliar with the term "Ah so," it is a racial expression commonly used to denigrate people of Asian descent -- of which Gordon Wu is one. A long-time editor myself, I tried to find some other explanation for this peculiar word construction. But the repetition is strained; at best, it is a thin attempt at racial humor. As an Asian American, I found this to be upsetting, and I would hope that other Princetonians would also object. After many years of reading paw, I can't recall another incident where the race or ethnicity of any Princetonian was made the object of jokes, ridicule, or other incivility, let alone an alumnus as distinguished as Gordon Wu. Let's not begin now.
Helen Zia '73
Oakland, Calif.
Editor's note: We checked with Mr. Minton, and he assured us that no racial slur was intended. Paw apologizes to any reader who may have taken offense.
For the record
Readers who noticed the February 10 Notebook story on Professor Robert Hollander '55's Princeton Dante Project may wish to know that they can now access the project via the Web at www.TigerNet.princeton.edu/dante.
The Editors
I would like to correct the caption on the February 24 From the Archive Photo of Albert Einstein with Jewish students in 1947. The Student Hebrew Association was not established by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, the associate director of National Hillel, but by Jewish students who were dissatisfied with the compulsory Chapel requirement. As chairman of the SHA, I contacted National Hillel, in New York, to see if it could help us conduct Jewish services on campus. Rabbi Lelyveld agreed to come down himself every second Friday, and he eventually had Hillel appoint a part-time counselor to Jewish students, the late Horace Manacher, a Reform rabbi. He was suceeded by the first full-time Hillel director, Conservative Rabbi Saul Kraft.
Ernest Stock '49
Tel Aviv, Israel
The review of my film States of Control (In Review, March 24) left the impression that I had worked as director of photography for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining during a semester off from Princeton. In fact I was but a lowly assistant to that film's director of photography, John Alcott. Also, JoAnne Pawlowski '80 was producer of States of Control, not coproducer.
Zack Winestine '81
New York, N.Y.
A minor error in Deborah Strom Gibbons *79's April 7 account of being one of the Princeton's first female graduate students is her statement that the Kienbusch Memorial Ladies Room in McCormick Hall was endowed by the wife of the artist William A. Kienbusch '36. In fact, the room was a gift from his father, Carl Otto von Kienbusch '06, made in honor of his wife, Mildred Clarke Pressinger von Kienbusch.
David R. Coffin
Professor of Architecture, Emeritus
Princeton, N.J.
Re the April 21 From the Archives photo of the 150-pound crew winning the Thames Challenge Cup at the 1948 Henley Regatta, I must correct the name and class numerals of my dear friend, and former roommate and best man, the late Carleton McLain '47. Also, Jack Eiler -- the guy being thrown in the water -- is, as was Mac, a member of the great Class of 1947.
Robert M. Wilson '47
Glenview, Ill.
The April 21 cover story on Princeton myths states that Albert Einstein was a resident of Princeton from 1933 until his death in 1955. However, in my freshman year (1931-32), when I took Physics 101-102, Professor Joe Morris invited Einstein to speak to us. I clearly recall his pronunciation of the word "success" as "sucksiss." So unless he returned to Germany in the interim, he must have taken up residence in Princeton in late 1931 or early 1932, not 1933.
William F. Englis, Jr. '35
Mattituck, N.Y.
The May 19 memorial for Robert G. Lorndale '47 gave an incorrect name for his wife, Barbara, and misspelled the name of a daughter, Deidre. We regret these errors.
The Editors
This is my 170th and last issue as editor of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. It's been a great 10 years, and I've learned a lot. For their help and support I'd like to thank my staff, paw's trustees, and the class secretaries, whose columns are the heart and soul of the magazine. I'm also grateful to those members of the university community who have understood paw's venerable role as a reporter of the campus scene and as a forum for alumni opinion. Last but by no means least, I'd like to thank paw's readers -- no editor could ask for a better or more diverse and engaged group. I join with the rest of the magazine's staff in wishing you all a good summer. Our next issue will be dated September 8.
J.I. Merritt '66
Editor, PAW
Princeton, N.J.
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