1996 PRINCETON COMMUNITY MASTER PLAN adopted - December 12, 1996

1. ADDITIONAL HISTORIC PRESERVATION CRITERIA AND STANDARDS

In designating historic districts and their boundaries the following principles should be followed:

In additional to the principles above, the following factors should be considered when delineating historic district boundaries:

2. HISTORIC GATEWAYS

In most cases, each of the roadways leading into the town is marked by an outer and inner "gateway," the former roughly on the Township's borders, the latter announcing arrival at the Borough's historic core. The outer "gateways" are in some cases characterized by historic nodes associated with water-powered mill sites.

The west, east, and south borders of Princeton Township are marked by watercourses, although on the west side of the course of Stony Brook does not coincide with the municipal boundary. The northern border, again not entirely coincidental with the municipal boundary, is defined by the diabase ridge. These natural features and their crossings remain important factors in differentiating Princeton from its neighbors and defining its character. Because early roadways were dependent on these crossings, and traffic funneled through them, nodes of settlement developed around them. The historical growth of downtown, from the central core outward along these arteries, also produced a density of historical development that helps define "old" Princeton.

The earliest of the roads through the Princeton area follows what is now State Route 27 (PrincetonKingston Road, Nassau Street) and US Route 206 (Stockton Street, Stockton Road, Lincoln Highway). Adopting the path of an Indian trail, it was developed as a "King's Highway" at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. It took advantage of fordable crossings of the Millstone and Stony Brook, skirting the base of the ridge, and keeping clear of lowlying areas subject to flooding.

At the Kingston border, the outer "gateway" is clearly marked by the Kingston Mill District, and associated eighteenth and early nineteenth-century structures. Unfortunately, the visual impact of the eighteenth-century stone bridge has been diminished by construction of the present bridge over the Millstone. It is still obvious, however, to pedestrians using the Canal Park in this area. The inner "gateway" is formed by the Jugtown Historic District.

At the western end of town, the outer "gateway" is formed by the stone bridge over Stony Brook, and the remaining buildings of the hamlet of Stony Brook, including the ruins of Worth mill and the Worth-Bruere complex of stone buildings immediately to its west. The "inner" gateway, less clearly defined than at Jugtown, starts in the vicinity of on the south side of Stockton Street at Lovers Lane, where the open space of Marquand Park is succeeded by a density of development, which, although still small-scale, becomes distinctly urban rather than suburban.

Another major entrance to Princeton from the west is along the Princeton Pike (Mercer Street-Mercer Road), which opened as the Princeton and Kingston Branch Turnpike in 1808. Here the outer "gateway" is formed by the stone bridge over the Stony Brook and other features of the Princeton Battlefield Historic District. The inner "gateway" is the vicinity of Springdale Road, where the character of density and scale again becomes urban rather than suburban.

Two of the four major southern approaches to Princeton were established in the eighteenth century -- Quaker Road and Harrison Street. Quaker Road is the least developed and most scenic of Princeton's entrances. Its entire course, from the West Windsor border to the Princeton Pike, runs first adjacent to the Delaware and Raritan Canal and then through a historic landscape that has remained relatively unchanged since the eighteenth century. This was the route of the march of Washington's army from Trenton preceding the Battle of Princeton. It is the only portion of the route that retains some semblance of its appearance at the time of the battle; the vista of woods and cornfields visible to the east of the road is similar to what, according to contemporary descriptions, Washington would have seen. Some of this vista is included in the existing Princeton Battlefield National Register District, and most of it lies within a proposed extension of this district.

Harrison Street was laid out in the mid-eighteenth century. Its historic outer settlement, related to mills on the Millstone, lies outside of Princeton in West Windsor and Plainsboro Townships. At the Princeton border, however, Harrison Street has a visual entrance quality as it crosses the canal and Carnegie Lake. Harrison Street shares an inner "gateway," the Jugtown Historic District, with Route 27.

Washington Road, established in the early nineteenth century, does not share Quaker Road's ambiance of antiquity. It does, however, possess long-established strong visual qualities, based on its more recent history as the primary connector between downtown Princeton and Route 1. These visual qualities include the allee of trees reaching from Route 1, across the West Windsor border to the banks of Lake Carnegie. Combined with the distant views of the university's towers, these create an approach with the air of a formal boulevard. This quality is enhanced by the scenic values of Lake Carnegie and the graceful design of the Washington Road Bridge. An inner "gateway" exists at the Princeton Borough line, where the characteristic early twentieth-century architecture of the campus buildings indicates a point of arrival.

The fourth major approach from the south, Alexander Road (in the Borough, Alexander Street), developed in the 1830s as a connector between downtown Princeton and the Delaware and Raritan Canal and the adjoining Camden and Amboy Railroad. Its outer "gateway" is the canal, now developed as parkland and the remains of the settlement of Princeton Basin, along the street's abandoned right-of-way. Its inner gateway is immediately north of University Place, where commercial and service uses give way to residential buildings similar in scale to those on Mercer and Stockton Streets.

The northern approaches to Princeton are somewhat less definable than those previously described. Because of the rugged terrain, settlement on the ridge has always been sparse, and there are no nucleated historic areas such as those found at other entrances to the town. The most heavily traveled road, Route 206 (State Road-Bayard Lane) is, in its Princeton Township segment, of relatively recent construction, having been opened in 1931. For a short interval directly below the Montgomery border, the area's characteristics do not differ markedly from the land to the north. Approximately half a mile south of the township border, however, the comparatively low density development, steep slopes, and heavy forestation differentiate this.. segment of Route 206 from the area to the north. The vicinity of Westcott Road forms an inner, "gateway." From this point south Route 206 (as Bayard Lane) follows the line of the eastern boundary of the Morven property, which was subdivided at the end of the nineteenth century. From' this point Ad' .Stockton Street it is bordered on the west by late nineteenth and early twentieth century., residential properties, with an admixture of earlier moved buildings: at its southern end. Larger tan most of the houses along other entranceways to Princeton, these nevertheless share the compact village quality of such related streets as Mercer and Stockton.