Neighborhood Discussion Offers a Look At a Witherspoon Street of Yesteryear

Matthew Hersh

Witherspoon Street: it has been the centerpiece of virtually every in-town planning and development dialogue and will probably continue to play a prominent role in Princeton for years to come. And while the battle between various residents as to what Princeton's future should look like sounds like the journalist's credo "who, what, where, when, why, and how?," the exploration of the future always manages to unearth the history of a neighborhood that somehow never quite manages to let go of its past.

Princeton Future, a community organization established to look at in-town development, has spent the last three weeks holding public meetings establishing a dialogue between residents to get a better handle on how Witherspoon Street will absorb the impact of monumental changes at either end of the corridor. On the southern end, near the downtown, Princeton Borough is about to embark on the second phase of its downtown development project, which is sure to affect commercial and pedestrian activity. Witherspoon House, next to the Princeton Public Library, is near completion, offering luxury housing to a demographic not normally associated with a Witherspoon Street address.

On the northern end, the University Medical Center at Princeton is weighing its options for expansion or relocation. While the hospital has yet to make a decision or to even indicate how it might decide, major change will come to that end of Witherspoon Street regardless. If the hospital stays, residents will have to shoulder the impact of taller buildings and increased traffic. If it leaves, residents will have to decide what takes the hospital's place. This daunting question has suddenly entered the community discourse, leaving many residents unsure of the future of their own backyards.

But what has also come out of these dialogues is the history that preceded this discussion, the hospital, the library, and the new municipal garage.

In discussing Witherspoon Street, Wanda Gunning, chairperson of the Regional Planning Board of Princeton and one of Princeton's several "unofficial" historians, offered more than a bit of perspective.

Witherspoon Street "was the dividing line between two estates owned by Thomas Leonard in the 18th century," she said. Mr. Leonard, who died around the time of the University's chartering in 1746, was the biggest single financial and land donor to Princeton University at the time.

Mr. Leonard came to Princeton around 1710, married the widow of the late Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He subsequently acquired all of the Stocktons' 5,000 acres to distribute to the Stockton children, keeping some of it for himself.

A wealthy landowner and major figure in New Jersey politics, Mr. Leonard left a definitive legacy, as exhibited by "lost heirs" of Mr. Leonard's who perennially turn up in New Jersey's court system.

Since Mr. Leonard's death, Ms. Gunning continued, land ownership changed hands several times. The part of the road that was home to Mansgrove House, which still stands on Terhune Road, was owned at one point by John Witherspoon. His widow subsequently lost that estate, and constant challenges in the courts ensued.

Eventually, the land from Mansgrove up to about Clay Street, Ms. Gunning continued, was developed into what was known in the 19th century as the Ferguson Tract, named after Josiah Ferguson, a captain in the Revolution. Mr. Ferguson built some modest housing on that land.

On the other side of the street, Thomas Wiggins, the town doctor, had picked up much of the current cemetery's land, which he subsequently left to the Presbyterian church. There were also some houses where the cemetery is now.

"It was a neighborhood in which free African-Americans and whites settled," Ms. Gunning said, adding (a possible harbinger of things to come) that there had long been title problems with land ownership of that area.

The current hospital site, once Pierson's Dairy Farm, was previously owned by James Carnahan in the 1850s after he retired as president of the University. On the other side of the street, which the Princeton Packet and Community Park now call home, were stock farms and slaughterhouses.

"People complained constantly of the smell if you were at the cemetery putting flowers at your family plot," Ms. Gunning said.

By the time the hospital was firmly established in the 1920s, some slaughterhouse structures still stood within the residences of the Birch and Leigh avenues. In fact, Leigh Avenue was named after Mr. Leigh, one of the last owners of the slaughterhouses.

Across the street, land owned by Walter Butler Harris was opened for development. Mr. Harris, a University professor and architect, also developed a lot of land in Princeton, Ms. Gunning said. He laid out these "smallish" streets, some of which had houses on them when he died in the 1930s, but many of which were not built until the 1950s.

Fast forward to the present, Saturday morning at the library's community room where concerned residents sit in groups laboring over maps to get a better sense of the land that seems poised for imminent change. It was appropriate that Ms. Gunning prefaced Princeton Future's brainstorming session with the developmental history of the neighborhood, because she, and the residents on hand Saturday, are all writing themselves into the history books of the Witherspoon Street neighborhood.