J. Robert
Hillier ’59 *61 has renovated Princeton’s former
Witherspoon School for Colored Children, right, as an apartment
building. (Photos courtesy Hillier Architecture)
Reviving
a historic landmark
Architect J. Robert Hillier ’59 *61 leaves his mark on
Princeton
J.. Robert Hillier ’59 *61, founder of the
ninth-largest architectural firm in the U.S. with 285 architects
working on projects around the globe, has never forgotten his roots.
A Princeton native, he has overseen the renovation of the Princeton
public schools and designed the town’s new public library
and Bowen Hall. Now he is breathing new life into the former Witherspoon
School for Colored Children, where Princeton’s African-American
children were educated during segregation.
Located in Princeton’s John-Witherspoon neighborhood, the
97-year-old school building had been “botched up,” says
Hillier, when it was converted into a nursing home after the school
closed in 1968. Ceilings had been lowered and the large windows
had been cut down. He bought the building in 2002, ripped out the
ceilings, restored the windows, and converted the school into an
apartment building housing 34 units. Each classroom has become a
single apartment. Three of them are designated affordable housing
units and another five, priced 20 percent under market value and
subsidized by a foundation Hillier established, are reserved for
people who have lived in the John Witherspoon neighborhood for at
least 10 years. The building was completed last November.
In recent years, Hillier has become increasingly involved in downtown
revitalization projects like the former Witherspoon school. He also
has converted an old auto-repair shop in downtown Princeton and
an old office building in Philadelphia into condominiums. He sees
a growing desire, particularly among baby boomers, to live downtown
so they can walk to restaurants, libraries, and shopping. “People
are tired of traffic. They are tired of mowing the lawn. They are
tired of the cost of maintaining a single-family home,” says
Hillier. “People want to walk.”
Although Hillier’s firm, Hillier Architecture, doesn’t
have the name recognition that firms headed by high-profile architects
do, Hillier has enjoyed enormous success. His firm, with five offices
in the U.S. including one in Princeton, designs a wide range of
projects, including corporate campuses, hospitals, and private houses,
and has restored the U.S. Supreme Court building and the Virginia
State Capitol. He shares his business acumen with Princeton architecture
students in a graduate-level course on the business of architectural
practice. He instructs them on marketing, public relations, and
how to build and manage a company. “The students call the
course ‘Bob’s reality check,’ because the [architecture]
school, as it should be, is all about thoughtful design,”
says Hillier. “But at the end of the day [architects] have
to go out and make a living. I teach them how to do that.”
Hillier hadn’t always intended to pursue architecture. He
entered Princeton planning to major in sociology or economics and
become a labor lawyer. But his grades slipped during freshman year
when he started building decorations for the prom. “My grades
were getting worse and worse because I was having so much fun building
dance decorations,” he says. His adviser suggested he try
architecture. He did. Five years after earning a master’s
degree in architecture, he started his own firm. Some 40 years later,
Hillier is still going strong. “Retire,” he says, is
not in his vocabulary.
