Noting the Importance of Veblen House and Herrontown Woods in Preserving Open Space
To the Editor:
Thank you, Town Topics, for generously providing space for our letters of concern about our community. Several weeks ago, you published letters by Steve Hiltner of Friends of Herrontown Woods and Wendy Mager of Friends of Princeton Open Space about the blight that was beginning in our beech forests. Over a thousand trees will be affected in Herrontown Woods around the home of Oswald Veblen, the father of the Princeton open space movement. My favorite poet, Robert Frost, who thought of the beech tree as “a witness tree” would be sad. How often we see initials carved on the bark of beeches as I memorialized in my poem “God and Buggs.”
When I noticed those two letters, I recalled that among the paintings that I had collected was a rather large one of a beech forest by an accomplished artist who had studied under Daniel Garber. The painting gets at what the essence of a beech forest is about, what it feels like and means to many of us. I decided to donate it to the restoration of Veblen House. I felt that just seeing it would draw attention to the cause.
It needed repairs and a good cleaning to bring out the colors. Robert Hummel, a local artist who I met at Princeton Makes, decided to join me as we pulled together our efforts for the cause. Robert was also very concerned with Herrontown Woods. He had been there doing a painting Veblen’s home. I enjoy creating poetry that is inspired by his paintings which I found at Princeton Makes.
Why does Veblen’s home and Herrontown Woods mean so much to all of us? It was through the efforts of Veblen that open space was first created around the Institute for Advanced Study for the sake of scholars being able to get away from it all, which eventually led to greater efforts by others to preserve open space all over Princeton and beyond. We not only owe a tip of the hat to Veblen, but to many other people like Scott and Helen McVay that work hard to increase the growth of open space as in their poetry trail Greenway Meadows. Just imagine what Princeton would look like today without all these efforts.