Street Library, The

Street Library, The, which is a wing of Wilcox Hall, was given in 1961 by Graham D. Mattison '26 in memory of the writer Julian Street (1879-1947), who lived in Princeton in the 1920s and befriended many undergraduates, of whom Mattison was one. The Street Library provides residents of Woodrow Wilson College with a selection of some ten thousand books in greatest demand by undergraduates.

Mattison's gift built the library and purchased the original selection of books; it also provided an endowment for the addition of new books each year.

Street, whose son, Julian Street, Jr., graduated from Princeton in 1925, wrote that ``as an outsider'' he was fascinated by college life in Princeton as a ``vision of . . . life in miniature.'' Before coming here to live he had collaborated with Booth Tarkington 1893 in writing a comedy, The Country Cousin, which had a successful run on Broadway. During the decade that he lived in Princeton, Street wrote a novel and three volumes of short stories, one of which (``Mr. Bisbee's Princess'') won the O'Henry Prize for 1925. He was best known as a gourmet and author of books on wine, food, and travel.

From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).