I have just returned from a medically
mandated mile’s stroll through the min-paradise across the street from my
house, and I am thinking that even war might have an upside. The end of the Second World War and the rapid
demobilization of large numbers of men from the Armed Forces inevitably caused
certain disruptions in American higher education as it did in so many areas of
our national life. Many colleges and
universities had lost a sizeable part of their normal cohort of male students
to active service. Many others had
diverted important segments of the scientific research toward the War effort,
or actually become the homes for specialized programs born of military
necessity. By the end of 1945 these
institutions were faced with the challenge of returning to an imagined “normal”
while at the same time honoring the special needs and circumstances of
returning veterans. Provisions of the
“G. I. Bill of Rights,” passed by Congress in an anticipatory gesture in 1944,
would considerably increase America’s college population, especially at state
institutions, but there was an impact within the Ivy League as well.
At Princeton there had been many
young men who either left campus to serve or deferred admission to do so. They were now wanting to return—older, more
mature, and (in a fair number of instances) married. The Princeton authorities were almost
prepared to cope with the challenge of comparative maturity in the student
body, provided it was kept at a reasonable level, but married students had them flummoxed. Where were these people to live? There was a trustee emergency, there was a
faculty Task Force, and there was the Butler Tract. Beyond the fringe of the campus, and at that
time practically beyond the town itself, was a goodly chunk of empty land, hustled
for the University by a devoted alumnus named Butler early in the twentieth
century, and upon it the University built a small village of modest frame row
houses in which to shelter its married heroes.
The tract lay along the east side of South Harrison with two township
streets, Sycamore on the north and Hartley on the south, defining it. Within the tract itself the new housing was
laid out along little roads named Devereux, Eisenhower, Halsey, Marshall, and
King—and if you don’t recognize those names, you need a refresher course in
American military history.
gone but not forgotten
This was in 1945-46, and it was
officially designated “temporary housing”.
The brief glut would run its course within five years; new on-campus
dorms would be built. But….as the
Graduate School expanded, and as more married graduate students appeared on the
scene, Butler morphed into “Graduate Married Housing”. Wildly popular. And then, after about twenty more years…the
town of Princeton was well on its way to join the Upper East Side, Georgetown,
San Francisco, and a few other select beauty spots in a race for the title of
Most Unaffordable Place on Earth. The
Butler Tract was, in turn, the greatest rental bargain in town. By 1988, when we moved into a house across
Hartley Avenue, trying to control get-rich-quick subleasing deals had already
become a nightmare for the University real estate office. Thus about the year 2010, when the University
had built a compensatory lavish Graduate Housing complex lakeside, the authorities
announced their intention of razing Butler to the ground.
But by now Sycamore Avenue to the
north was well populated by town NIMBYs who had enjoyed seeing their $75,000
houses advance to the statutory Princeton million. There were Concerned Citizens, letters to the
editor, lawyers. There were tedious
meetings where an architect from the university subjected herself to the
mau-mauing of “stakeholders” animated by a dark hermeneutics of suspicion. I was never a NIMBY. After all, what was being proposed was going to be in my front yard. But the large majority of my fellow stakeholders
didn’t believe for a minute the University’s promise that for the foreseeable
future the tract would be left open parkland.
One overwrought lawyer prophesied that even if they did keep their
promise, the fate of the Butler Tract would undoubtedly be that of the blighted
ruins of Atlantic City: tent encampments of the homeless, and crack dens.
Slow
forward through tedious consultations and the enrichment of various
lawyers. The University of course “wins”,
shrouds the site with eight-foot high blinders, and engages in a year of nearly
parodically environmental-friendly demolition.
Month after month. What seems
like thousands of truckloads coming and going, but about as discreetly as Mack
trucks go, or for that matter, come. Eventually
they take the fences down. Dis-ap-point-ed! Except for the old
military streets, their sidewalks, and their street lights—all preserved and
functional—it looks like any other bulldozed stretch of Route One awaiting its
shopping center. But then various
agricultural machines arrive and do their things. In the spring the whole place explodes with
healthy grass and literally thousands of wildflowers. A herd of deer takes up residence in a large
open field. Many of the old trees reveal
a previously unnoticed magnificence. Well-equipped
professional grounds crews show up periodically to mow and tend the peripheral
swaths of flourishing lawn. At night the
street lights still illuminate the silent sidewalks with a comforting
glow. The park area is blocked off from
vehicular traffic but is absolutely open to cyclists and walkers, large numbers
of whom immediately begin marching around it with evident pleasure. And these are the kind of people who do pick up their dogs’ poop--mostly. Among them are many geriatrics, pregnant
women, convalescents and other unconventional hikers. Since I am among the last group I have not
yet dared to penetrate to the most distant center of the field of daisies, but
I already doubt that I shall find a crack den when I finally do. I recognize many of my smiling fellow walkers,
mostly my neighbors. Some of them reside
on Sycamore, and their already overpriced houses have just gotten another
little realtor’s goose on account of their “proximity to a beautiful park.”
