What to See in Princeton - Top Sights and Attractions

Art gallery in Princeton, New Jersey. The Princeton University Art Museum is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1882, it now houses over 92,000 works of art ranging from antiquity to the contemporary period. The Princeton University Art Museum dedicates itself to supporting and enhancing the University's goals of teaching, research, and service in fields of art and culture, as well as to serving regional communities and visitors from around the world. Its collections concentrate on the Mediterranean region, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America.

The museum has a large collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including ceramics, marbles, bronzes, and Roman mosaics from Princeton University's excavations in Antioch. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art. Photographic holdings are a particular strength, numbering over 27,000 works from the invention of daguerreotype in 1839 to the present. The museum is also noted for its Asian art gallery, which includes a wide collection of Chinese calligraphy, painting, ancient bronze works, jade carvings, as well as porcelain selections. In addition to its collections, the museum mounts regular temporary exhibitions featuring works from its own holdings as well as loans made from public and private collections around the world.

Admission is free and the museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, Thursday, 10:00 am to 9:00 pm, and Sunday 12:00 to 5:00 pm.

A new building for the museum will be constructed on the same site over the course of three years starting in 2020 with David Adjaye serving as architect.

The Princeton University Art Museum is part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched in 2021 by the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. Several "monuments men" are alumnus of Princeton University.^[1]

Mall in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Forrestal Village is a 720,000-square-foot, 52-acre mixed-use retail and office complex in Plainsboro Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey, along Route 1. Despite being in Plainsboro it has a Princeton address. It is just north of Princeton University's Forrestal campus and is named for James Forrestal. The center is anchored by Can Do Fitness and a Westin hotel. In recent years, it has suffered a sharp decline, turning into a dead mall. Renovations and rebranding as an "office" complex are underway to bring customers back. The center has spawned some development in the area, including an adjacent office complex and several apartment and condo communities, including Princeton Windrows, which is right across the street.^[2]

Chapel in Princeton, New Jersey. The Princeton University Chapel is located on that university's main campus in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It replaces an older chapel that burned down in 1920. Designed in 1921 by Ralph Adams Cram in his signature Collegiate Gothic style, it was built by the university between 1924 and 1928 at a cost of $2.3 million. The chapel was rededicated in an interfaith ceremony in 2002 following a major two-year restoration.

Its size and design evoke a small cathedral of the English Middle Ages. The only university chapel of its size at the time it was built was King's College Chapel at the University of Cambridge. The foundation is poured concrete, and the superstructure is sandstone and limestone. The main sanctuary consists of a narthex, a gallery, a nave, two transepts joined by a crossing, and an elevated choir. The chapel's extensive iconography consists of stained glass, stonemasonry, and wood carvings. Among the stained glass are four "great windows", one facing each cardinal direction, and four "Christian epic" windows in the walls of the choir. The iconography was planned by Albert M. Friend, a faculty member in Princeton's Department of Art and Archaeology, with the goal of portraying, in one scholar's words, a "synthesis between Christian faith and modern thought."

The chapel seats almost 2,000 people. A nondenominational chapel, it hosts weekly ecumenical Christian services and daily Catholic Masses. It also hosts several annual special events, such as baccalaureate services and commencements.^[3]

School in Princeton, New Jersey. The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive coursework in the fields of international development, foreign policy, science and technology, and economics and finance through its undergraduate degrees, graduate Master of Public Affairs, Master of Public Policy, and PhD degrees. The school is consistently ranked as one of the best institutions for the study of international relations and public affairs in the country and in the world. Foreign Policy ranks the Princeton School as No. 2 in the world for International Relations at the undergraduate and No. 4 at the graduate level, behind the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.^[18]

Museum. Drumthwacket is the official residence of the governor of New Jersey. The mansion sits at 354 Stockton Street in Princeton, near the state capital of Trenton. It is one of only four official governor's residences in the country not located within their respective state capitals; the others are in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Built in 1835 and expanded in 1893 and 1900, Drumthwacket was sold with its surrounding land to the state in 1966. Drumthwacket was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 10, 1975, for its significance in agriculture, architecture, commerce, landscape architecture, and politics. It was designated the governor's mansion in 1982.

The estate is administered by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. In addition to being an executive residence, the house is also a historic house museum.^[20]

The Princeton Historic District is a 370-acre historic district located in Princeton, New Jersey that was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1975. It stretches from Marquand Park in the west to the Eating Clubs in the East, from the Princeton Cemetery in the north to the Graduate College in the south. The district encompasses the core parts of the campuses of the Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University. It also includes the business district centered on Nassau Street and many historic homes, both mansions in the western section and more humble dwellings in the Witherspoon/Jackson neighborhood. Notable churches within the district include Nassau Presbyterian Church, Trinity Episcopal, Nassau Christian Center, and the Princeton University Chapel. The district is home to seven of Princeton's nine, and New Jersey's fifty-eight, National Historic Landmarks, the largest concentration of such sites in the state.^[22]

FitzRandolph Gate is a wrought-iron structure that serves as the official entrance of Princeton University, standing in front of Nassau Hall on Nassau Street in Princeton, New Jersey. The gate was funded by a bequest of Augustus Van Wickle in honor of his great-grandfather, Nathaniel FitzRandolph, who had donated to the university the land on which Nassau Hall sits. The gate was completed in 1905 and was designed by McKim, Mead & White. The gate remained closed and locked apart from graduation and the P-rade until 1970, when that graduating class ensured that it would always remain open, "in a symbol of the University's openness to the local and worldwide community."

At commencement each year the graduating seniors process out of the gates to mark the completion of their time at Princeton. A widespread legend exists on campus that students who walk out of the gates before graduation will not finish their degree. In 2004 a tradition was added at Princeton's opening exercises called the Pre-Rade where the matriculating freshmen march into the gates behind the banners of their residential colleges to mark their entrance into Princeton.^[26]

Research institution in Princeton, New Jersey. The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel, many of whom had emigrated from Europe to the United States.

It was founded in 1930 by American educator Abraham Flexner, together with philanthropists Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld. Although it is close to and collaborates with Princeton University, Rutgers University, and other nearby institutions, it is independent and does not charge tuition or fees.

Flexner's guiding principle in founding the institute was the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The faculty have no classes to teach. There are no degree programs or experimental facilities at the institute. Research is never contracted or directed. It is left to each individual researcher to pursue their own goals. Established during the rise of fascism in Europe, the institute played a key role in the transfer of intellectual capital from Europe to America. It quickly earned its reputation as the pinnacle of academic and scientific life—a reputation it has retained.

The institute consists of four schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. The institute also has a program in Systems Biology.

It is supported entirely by endowments, grants, and gifts. It is one of eight American mathematics institutes funded by the National Science Foundation. It is the model for the other eight members of the consortium Some Institutes for Advanced Study.^[29]

Reservoir in New Jersey. Lake Carnegie is a reservoir that is formed from a dam on the Millstone River, in the far northeastern corner of Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey. The Delaware and Raritan Canal and its associated tow path are situated along the eastern shore of the lake. Noted businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated money for the construction of the lake, which was donated to Princeton University. In 1990, the Lake Carnegie Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The lake, which is privately owned, is used by the university's rowing team, and is home to the US Olympic rowing team. It is, however, available for public use for activities such as ice skating, fishing, and picnicking. Fish species include largemouth bass, carp, pickerel, crappie, channel catfish and occasionally a few rainbow and brown trout that make their way into Carnegie Lake from Stony Brook. Years of pollution have led to a dangerous decrease in the lake's safety levels. Efforts to improve the water quality of Carnegie Lake are ongoing.

An aerial view of this lake appears in the opening title sequence of the drama series House M.D.^[30]

The John B. Putnam, Jr. Memorial Collection of Sculpture is a group of outdoor sculptures distributed through the Princeton University campus in Princeton, New Jersey. The collection is made up of works from 20th and 21st century sculptors. On March 1968, President Robert Goheen announced that an anonymous donor gave a $1 million dollar fund for the collection in honor of Princeton alumni John B. Putnam, Jr. Lieutenant U.S.A, who was killed in action during World War II. The works were selected based on a committee of alumni who current or former directors of art museums, and the first 20 were purchased in 1969 and 1970.

The collection was first designed to have only 20 sculptures, but after receiving George Segal's Abraham and Issac, in 1979, the total catalogue increased to 21. The Princeton University Art Museum describes the collection as "not a static phenomenon" and that "work is underway to identify and purchase or commission works by artists."^[31]

Graduate school in Princeton, New Jersey. The Graduate College at Princeton University is a residential college which serves as the center of graduate student life at Princeton. Wyman House, adjacent to the Graduate College, serves as the official residence of the current Dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Sarah-Jane Leslie.

Thomson College, the central quadrangle now commonly known as the Old Graduate College, is a memorial to United States Senator John R. Thomson 1817 provided by a bequest left by his widow, Mrs. J. A. W. Thomson Swann, the Graduate College's first benefactor.

It was dedicated on October 22, 1913, during the tenure of the first dean of the Graduate School, Andrew Fleming West, and was the first residential college in the United States devoted solely to postgraduate liberal studies. The group of Collegiate Gothic buildings was designed by Ralph Adams Cram and located on a hill, one-half mile west of the main campus. Its most prominent architectural landmark is the 173-ft-high Cleveland Tower, which features one of the largest carillons in the United States. Cleveland Tower adjoins the Old Graduate College, which also includes Procter Hall, the Van Dyke Library, Pyne Tower, and North Court. In 1962, the New Graduate College (colloquially, "new GC") was built to expand the Old Graduate College to the south-west, although it features a more modern architectural style.

The Graduate College currently houses approximately 430 graduate students, mostly in their first-year of graduate study. The Graduate College's Pyne Tower is also the home of the current administrator in residence. It has been featured in the films Admission and Runner Runner.^[33]

Building in Princeton, New Jersey. Nassau Hall is the oldest building at Princeton University in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. In 1783 it served as the United States Capitol building for four months. At the time it was built in 1756, Nassau Hall was the largest building in colonial New Jersey and the largest academic building in the American colonies.

The university, originally known as the College of New Jersey, held classes for one year in Elizabeth and nine years in Newark before the hall was completed in 1756. Designed originally by Robert Smith, the building was subsequently remodeled by notable American architects Benjamin Latrobe, after the 1802 fire, and John Notman, after the 1855 fire. In the early years of Princeton University, Nassau Hall accommodated classrooms, a library, a chapel, and residential space for students and faculty. It housed the university's first Department of Psychology, for example.

During the American Revolutionary War, Nassau Hall was possessed by both British and American forces and suffered considerable damage, especially during the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777. From June 30 to November 4, 1783, Princeton was the provisional capital of the United States, and Nassau Hall served as its seat of government. The Congress of the Confederation met in the building's library on the second floor. According to Princeton University, "Here Congress congratulated George Washington on his successful termination of the war, received the news of the signing of the definitive treaty of peace with Great Britain, and welcomed the first foreign minister—from the Netherlands—accredited to the United States."

At present, Nassau Hall houses Princeton University's administrative offices, including that of the university's president. Old Nassau refers affectionately to the building and serves as a metonym for the university as a whole. The U.S. Department of the Interior designated Nassau Hall a National Historic Landmark in 1960, "signifying its importance in the Revolutionary War and in the history of the United States."^[34]