Publication: A Princeton Companion
Sesquicentennial Celebration, The, took place on October 20, 21, and 22 in 1896, reaching a climax when the College of New Jersey, on the 150th anniversary of its founding, formally announced its change of title to Princeton University. More than two years were spent in the celebration's preparation, and it was, according to contemporary accounts, the largest and best organized academic festival ever held in America. The previous winter and spring, President Patton and classicist Andrew Fleming West, the organizing genius of the celebration, had toured the country, arousing alumni interest, while mathematician Henry B. Fine and art historian Allan Marquand had gone about Europe, inviting eminent scholars to attend. That summer a trustee-faculty committee had assured the Sesquicentennial's national significance by securing President Cleveland's agreement to give the principal address. The entire affair was a brilliant success, thanks to careful planning -- and to Princeton's good fortune in having for the occasion three days of beautifully crisp and sunny weather in an otherwise wet and foggy October.
Visitors to the celebration found the town and campus bright with color -- the red, white, and blue and the orange and black of flags, banners, and ribbons, set off against the brilliant fall colors of the trees and of autumn flowers coming into bloom. Princeton banners hung from dormitory windows, American flags were raised on every flagpole, and in the streets carriage and draft horses wore orange ribbons in their manes. Triumphal arches set up on Nassau Street for the occasion -- one given by the town, the other provided by the Colleg~ -- added a touch of classical dignity to the scene. The town's arch bore a Latin inscription for ``God Save the Republic,'' and the College's bore mottoes bidding farewell to the old (AVE VALE COLLEGIVM NEOCAESARIENSE) and welcoming the new (AVE SALVE VNIVERSITAS PRINCETONIENSIS).
During the week preceding the celebration, a fitting prelude to Princeton's assumption of university status was provided by a series of eighteen learned lectures given by six outstanding foreign scholars: Leipzig's Karl Brugmann on ``Noun Genders in the Indo-Germanic Languages''; Dublin's Edward Dowden on ``The French Revolution and English Literature''; Utrecht's A.A.W. Hubrecht on ``The Descent of Primates''; Gottingen's Felix Klein on ``The Mathematical Theory of the Top''; Edinburgh's Andrew Seth on ``Theism''; and Cambridge's J. J. Thomson on ``The Discharge of Electricity in Gases.'' The American Mathematical Society held a special meeting in Princeton in honor of Professors Klein and Thomson, and less formal gatherings were held to honor the other lecturers.
The first day of the celebration included a sermon by President Patton in the morning, a reception of delegates in the afternoon, and an orchestral concert that evening. At the convocation for the reception of delegates, Harvard's president, Charles W. Eliot, speaking on behalf of American universities, congratulated Princeton on the contributions it had made to public service, medicine, history, and science, through such men as John Witherspoon, Oliver Ellsworth, James Madison, Benjamin Rush, David Ramsay, and Joseph Henry. The speaker for European universities, Professor J. J. Thomson of Cambridge, extolled the achievements of three Princeton scientists, physicist Joseph Henry, geologist Arnold Guyot, and astronomer Charles A. Young.
The main events of the second day were a convocation in the morning, a football game in the afternoon, and a torchlight procession at night.
At the convocation, Henry van Dyke 1873, representing the Cliosophic Society, recited an ode, ``The Builders,'' which he had composed for the occasion, and Woodrow Wilson, speaking for the American Whig Society, delivered an oration, ``Princeton in the Nation's Service.'' Wilson's eloquent address -- a British delegate said there had been ``nothing to equal it since Burke'' -- brought a long continued ovation.
In the football game, watched by many of the delegates as well as by students and alumni, Princeton defeated the University of Virginia, 48-0.
The torchlight procession, more than a mile long, began behind Nassau Hall, and was led through the town by a picked group of a hundred students, wearing reproductions of the blue and buff uniforms of the Mercer Blues, a Princeton company that had fought in the Revolution. They were followed by a delegation of twenty-five Yale seniors, eight hundred Princeton undergraduates, and two thousand alumni, representing classes back to 1839. Everyone carried an orange torch or lantern of some kind, and most of the alumni classes wore costumes and carried transparencies. ``It was an unforgettable sight,'' William Berryman Scott recalled in his memoirs forty years later; the lights against the red and yellow autumn foliage, he wrote, ``made a fairy scene.'' In front of Nassau Hall, where the procession ended, each class paused, as it passed in review, to cheer President and Mrs. Cleveland.
The main features of Nassau Hall, from the ground to the top of the cupola, were outlined in orange electric lights, the front campus was strung with Chinese lanterns, and overhead a full moon shone. Further color was added to the spectacle by fireworks, set off along the front fence on Nassau Street -- large dynamite rockets, fiery wheels, bursting bombs, fountains, showers, and set figures, ending with the final ``Good-night, Princeton 1746-1896.''
On the third morning, the historic City Troop of Philadelphia, whose forebears had served under Washington in the Battle of Princeton, led a splendidly costumed academic procession from Marquand Chapel to Alexander Hall for the concluding Sesquicentennial anniversary exercises.~ President Patton thanked the delegates for their participation in the celebration and for their continuing interest in Princeton; announced that, despite the business depression, a special committee on endowment had raised more than $1,350,000 for professorships, fellowships, a new library, and a new dormitory; and, finally, proclaimed that ``from this moment on, what heretofore for one hundred fifty years has been known as the College of New Jersey shall in all future time be known as Princeton University.'' With this announcement, Professor George McLean Harper recorded, ``the audience broke into immense applause . . . [and] cheering, each cheer ending with the triple, `Princeton University.'''
Following the conferring of fifty-eight honorary degrees, President Cleveland delivered the principal address, in which he made a plea for more earnest participation by educated men in the political affairs of the nation; he received a tumultuous ovation.
The Sesquicentennial was a turning point in Princeton's history. It marked the occasion when the old college gave way to the new university, and its effects influenced the University's growth years after the celebration was over. Andrew Fleming West demonstrated organizing talents that he later used as dean of the graduate school, and developed friendships with alumni, which proved invaluable in raising funds for the Graduate College. President Cleveland, warmed by the reception he had received, came to live in Princeton the following spring; he was elected a university trustee and served as first chairman of its graduate school committee. Henry B. Fine's contacts with foreign scholars, especially with his Sesquicentennial house guest J. J. Thomson, helped him further his ideas for making Princeton a great center for mathematics and science; some of his earliest appointments were students of Thomson. And Woodrow Wilson's celebrated address, formulating a continuing ideal of Princeton service to the nation brought him to the fore as a potential leader of the university -- and of the nation.
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).