The Campus Looks Inward

Appointed Princeton's first supervising architect in 1907, Ralph Adams Cram proposed that a grand north-south axis originating at Nassau Hall be the dividing line between campus uses - concentrating residential uses on the west half and academic uses on the east. McCosh Walk would form a secondary east-west axis originating at the Dinky station, at that time located in the vicinity of Blair Hall. Although Cram's plan was never implemented, the effects on the campus were a significant partitioning into east and west and the creation of courtyard sequences that contrast with the older portions of campus where the landscape was less rigidly defined by the architecture.