Publication: A Princeton Companion
Architecture and Urban Planning, The School of, was founded in 1919 (as the School of Architecture) under the leadership of Howard Crosby Butler 1892, but architectural study had begun at Princeton almost a century earlier with physicist Joseph Henry's arrival in 1832. Among Henry's hobbies was the study of construction, design, and landscaping. His drawings formed the basis for the first long-range building plans of the College, and the quadrangle in back of Nassau Hall remains approximately as he laid it out. He gave lectures on the history and appreciation of architecture, later continued by Albert B. Dod 1822, a mathematician. Interest was sufficient in the 1860s to generate plans for a four-year professional course in architecture, but nothing came of these plans.
Two names are important in the record of architectural teaching at Princeton, Allan Marquand 1874 and Howard Crosby Butler 1892. Professor Marquand, an art historian and head of the Department of Art and Archaeology, began the first regular instruction in architecture in 1882; he inspired many architects as well as artists and art history teachers. It was largely due to his influence that Butler, an archaeologist, returned to the Princeton faculty in 1902. Thereafter, architectural courses were offered regularly by Butler in the Department of Art and Archaeology.
A renewed effort to create a professional course in architecture was begun in 1916 by a group of former Princeton students who had gone on to architectural schools and who had found their work at Princeton an admirable foundation for professional training. After the war, in 1919, Butler announced that Princeton would offer professional training in architecture. The principles on which that training would be based are similar to those of today. It was Princeton's belief that an architect should have a well-rounded education in liberal studies and should approach his profession primarily as an art, that he should understand and appreciate other arts in relation to architecture, and that he should be taught the science of building construction as a part of his training in design, rather than as an end in itself. Princeton inaugurated the plan for an architectural course that would begin in freshman year and continue without break through two years of graduate work, leaving room for the inclusion of liberal electives. Within the last decade most architectural schools have abandoned their five-year programs in favor of a similar six-year plan of study. The first student to receive a professional degree in architecture from Princeton was Robert B. O'Connor M.F.A. 1920, a graduate of Trinity College, who later followed Stephen F. Voorhees '00 as the University's supervising architect.
Raymond Bossange was made director of the school upon the death of Howard C. Butler; he in turn was followed by Sherley W. Morgan '13. Morgan was first appointed to an instructorship in architectural drawing in 1916, and after World War I he and E. Baldwin Smith Ph.D. 1915 returned as assistant professors. These two teachers were responsible for the school's development over the next thirty years, and succeeded in making Princeton's School of Architecture one of the foremost in the country.
Sherley Morgan appointed Jean Labatut as resident design critic in 1928 following Frederic D'Amato's untimely death. This appointment was made upon the recommendation of two alumni of the school, Alexander P. Morgan '22 and Gordon McCormick '17, who had worked with Labatut in Paris. Jean Labatut's ability to bring out the best in his students, his sound judgment, and his artistic integrity contributed greatly to the success of the school during his thirty-nine-year teaching career at Princeton. The school was awarded many medals in national competitions, and individual students won five Paris prizes and four Rome prizes in architecture as well as other awards during Labatut's tenure. He himself was the first recipient of the award for distinction in education jointly sponsored by the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Many of Labatut's students are currently teaching architecture all over the world and many are deans or directors of their schools.
In 1930 Frank Lloyd Wright gave his first lectures in the United States at Princeton. These lectures, sponsored by the Kahn Foundation, were later published as a monograph, Modern Architecture -- Wright's first American book on his philosophy and his work.
Princeton entered the urban planning field with the creation of the Bureau of Urban Research in 1941, founded by Jean Labatut and managed by an interdepartmental committee, to establish source material for urban studies. Melville C. Branch '34, its first director, was ably assisted by Dorothy Whiteman. As part of the Bicentennial Celebration, 1946-1947, the school was able to conduct a three-day conference on Planning Man's Physical Environment, which was directed by Arthur C. Holden '12 and Henry A. Jandl M.F.A. 1937. It brought together leading architects, teachers, planners and writers from all over the world, including Alvar Aalto, Frederick J. Adams, Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius, Richard Neutra, Carlos Contreras, Mies Van der Rohe, William Wurster and others. The final session juxtaposed the contrasting views of its principal speakers Robert Moses and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Another important innovation, in 1949, was the Princeton Architectural Laboratory, a center for experimentation in architectural expression and technology. Here Princeton's contributions to architectural research were begun, and later, a pioneer study on metal curtain walls for buildings was conducted. The results of this study were published from 1953 to 1957, after Robert W. McLaughlin '21 had assumed the directorship of the school following Sherley W. Morgan's retirement in 1952. Also during this period the brothers Victor and Aladar Olgyay conducted a systematic study of the effects of climate and environment upon man and his shelter. Their book, Solar Control and Shading Devices remains the primary source for architects and planners in the field of architecture and its relation to the physical environment.
Under McLaughlin's directorship the school became an entity separate from the Department of Art and Archaeology in 1952. As the school expanded, the faculty included many visiting architects, notably Enrico Peressutti from Milan and Sven Silow from Stockholm. Another frequent visitor to the school, R. Buckminster Fuller, inspired students with the investigations he conducted in architectural structural theory. During one of his visits, the students designed, fabricated, and built a 40-foot tension-integrity sphere at the laboratory.
In 1963 the school moved from its cramped quarters in McCormick Hall to its new home, a building designed by a Baltimore architectural firm of which two principals were Princeton alumni, Charles Nes '28 and L. McLane Fisher '23. In 1963, also, the school lost by retirement one of its most active teachers, Francis A. Comstock '19, a member of its faculty for almost forty years.
In 1965 Robert W. McLaughlin retired as director of the school. In recognition of the increasing role which the school had assumed within the University during his administration, the title of director was changed to dean. Robert L. Geddes was appointed the first dean, and Henry A. Jandl became executive officer in charge of departmental administration. Under Geddes's leadership new faculty were added and changes were instituted in the curriculum, emphasizing values, concepts and methods, to provide the beginning architectural student with the broadest possible liberal education and, at the same time, to provide introductory courses for students in other disciplines in the area of urban studies and man-made environment, and historical studies.
The Research Center for Urban and Environmental Planning was established in 1966. One of its first contract projects in 1967 was a Planning and Design Workbook for Community Participation. At this time, the name of the School of Architecture was changed to include Urban Planning, and concurrently the school established a master's degree program in urban planning in cooperation with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. These innovations, soon followed by a Ph.D. program in urban planning, represented a major step by the school in meeting the challenge of the changing needs and goals of society.
Henry A. Jandl
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).