Moments after my photographer’s alarm rang at 6:00am on Monday June 12, 2023, Tom received a message from the one person he loves, besides me, who said an overpass bridge on I-95 had collapsed just outside of Philadelphia. The warning was nothing short of a miracle as we were scheduled to spend the afternoon in Philly after we had finished our sightseeing in Princeton and Trenton that morning. Our projected route from Trenton into Philadelphia would’ve taken us directly into the traffic quagmire caused by the bridge collapse. However, because of that early morning heads up, my companions had plenty of time to find an alternative route to the ‘Cathedral of Freedom’ known as Independence Hall.
While the previous afternoon in Princeton was dedicated to visiting gravesites, our Monday morning was focused solely on seeing that city’s historic houses where some pretty famous people once lived. As a matter of fact, Princeton offered us a ‘Who’s Who’ of individuals that could rival most towns in America. I’m talking about George Washington, Grover Cleveland, Albert Einstein, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, and Woodrow Wilson, who lived in four of the houses himself.
By 7:40am, Tom and Bob had our vehicle loaded and we were on the road to the first sites of the day, which happened to be two homes where Woodrow Wilson had lived while he served as professor of jurisprudence and political economy at the College of New Jersey. Wilson thrived at the college and quickly earned a reputation as a compelling speaker and author – he wrote nine books and essays during his time there.
When we arrived at the first home of Woodrow Wilson, which was located at 72 Library Place, Tom carried me up onto the public sidewalk in front of the historic home where he and Bob began taking pictures. Just as soon as I posed for the first image, however, the owner of the house walked out onto the front stoop and inquired about our activity. Just when I thought for sure our photo-op was going to end before it got started, my two companions engaged in a conversation about the home’s history with the owner. Not only was Joel an extremely nice and accommodating man, but he also told us a story about Woodrow Wilson we had never heard before. Joel mentioned that Wilson had purchased the home in front of us in 1889, but his wife Ellen liked the design of the house across the street better. After she nagged her husband enough about their neighbor’s home, Wilson commissioned New York architect Edward S. Child to design a new house to appease his wife. By 1895, Dr. Wilson and Ellen moved into their new digs – a nice Tudor Revival house that mirrored the one across the street and was located just two doors north of their current home.
When we finished our visit at the two Wilson homes on Library Place, the three of us boarded our SUV and headed for the third Wilson home in Princeton, located on Cleveland Lane. Although Woodrow lived in the first two homes while he was a professor at the college, the third home of our tour was where he lived during his single two-year term as Governor of New Jersey. At the time when Wilson served as Governor, the state of New Jersey did not have an official Governor’s mansion. Since the newly elected Governor loved Princeton, which was only 11 miles from Trenton, he opted to live in the Tudor style home along Cleveland Lane rather than reside in the capital city.
Shortly after Tom found a place to park along Cleveland Lane, the three of us made our way to the front of the former Governor’s home, which was almost totally obscured by trees and bushes. The historic house was a private residence and surrounded by a privacy fence, but that didn’t stop my photographer from having me pose for a couple of pictures. – even after Tom and Bob saw the home’s owner arrive and park their car in the garage. It took a little ingenuity, but my photographer managed to hold me over a lower section of the front gate where we had a perfect view of the historic house. As I posed for the first image, I thought about Governor Wilson sitting in his living room on November 8, 1910 when he learned he had been elected President of the United States. Thankfully, the owner never made another appearance during our entire ten-minute visit.
Even though Governor Wilson’s foliage-shrouded home along Cleveland Lane was a challenge to see, the historic house stood fairly close to the public sidewalk, which gave my photographer a fighting chance to let me pose near the building.
While our next stop was within walking distance from the Wilson House, heading out on foot was totally out of the question – at least in the mind of my rotund camera guy. Instead, he drove the three of us around the corner to Hodge Road where we parked near Westland Mansion, a very historic home Tom and I had visited in 2017.
Westland Mansion was the home of President Grover Cleveland from the time he retired from the White House until his death inside the mansion on June 24, 1908. Grover’s young widow, Frances, who was 28 years his junior, continued to live in the mansion with her four children. On February 10, 1913, Frances became the first Presidential widow to remarry when she tied the knot with Thomas Preston, an archeology professor. The two were married at Princeton’s Prospect House, home to the university’s President. Following their wedding, Preston went on to teach at Princeton, while Frances remained a prominent figure in campus social life.
Westland Mansion was built in 1856 by Robert F. Stockton, who was a grandson of Richard Stockton, Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Stockton designed the home after Morven and described it as a “2-1/2-story, stone structure covered with stucco painted yellow, [with] twin parlors on the first floor, spacious rooms, high ceilings, and handsome marble mantelpieces.” When Grover Cleveland bought the mansion in 1896 after his second term as President had expired, he named his Princeton mansion ‘Westland’, in honor of his friend Andrew Fleming West.
When we arrived at the historic site, Tom and Bob faced a huge decision as the private residence sat a long way back from the public sidewalk. My companions stood at the driveway entrance for a moment or two as they discussed their options – either they capture their images from the sidewalk, or they walk up the driveway for a closer view of the house. I figured for sure those two “covert-operator” friends of mine wouldn’t hesitate to walk up the driveway and get me close to the house, especially when there wasn’t a gate at the entrance nor any signage to discourage unwelcomed visitors, like us. But once again, like they had done two days earlier at the Bush house in Greenwich, Connecticut, they opted to play it safe and remain on public property. I was shocked, and very disappointed – and I think deep down, Tom and Bob regretted their decision as well. There’s not a doubt in my mind that if and when we ever return to Princeton, the three of us will get closer to the home where Grover Cleveland spent his final moments of life.
As the three of us headed back to our vehicle, I tried to look at the bright side of our short visit to Westland Mansion. Had we been confronted by the owners, who spent over four million dollars for the house in 2015, we might be on our way to jail instead of Morven – the historic home where Richard Stockton once lived. Or Tom and Bob could have been shot and killed, like Princeton native Aaron Burr did to Alexander Hamilton. But since I had visited Cleveland’s birthplace and his gravesite the previous day, standing alongside the home where Grover died would’ve been the “Grover Cleveland Trifecta” for me and my two friends.
It was a very short drive to the Stockton home, which was located just around the corner from the two Wilson homes we had already visited. While I had never seen Morven before, Tom and Bob had visited the mansion during their Declaration of Independence tour in 1991. As a matter of fact, as soon as the three of us walked onto the property and they stood directly in front of the historic mansion, I heard Mongo say out loud: “It’s been thirty-two years since we last stood on this spot. And now, we’re twice as old as we were then. Where has all the time gone?”
The large 2 1/2-story brick home in front of us, known as Morven, was built in the late 1750’s by Richard Stockton, who was a member of the first graduating class at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) and an American patriot who signed the Declaration of Independence. Richard’s wife, Annis Boudinot Stockton, was the one who named their home “Morven”, after a mythical Gaelic kingdom she had read about in a poem. Morven stayed under Stockton family ownership for four generations until it was sold to New Jersey governor Walter E. Edge in 1944 where it remained as the official Governor’s Mansion until 1981.
While I posed at a handful of strategic locations near the exterior of Morven, I envisioned the British invasion that arrived on the grounds just three months after Stockton penned his name to the famous document of freedom. Although they weren’t The Beatles, it was a Hard Day’s Night for the Stockton’s when some of the King’s soldiers carried the Continental Congressman away to jail while their friends pillaged and plundered Morven. Following his release from prison in January 1777, Richard Stockton returned to his beloved home a beaten and broken man, but more resolute than ever for the American cause. Due to his inhumane treatment in the hands of the British soldiers while captive, Stockton’s health had deteriorated greatly by the time he was released. Over the next two years, the Signer developed cancer on his lip, which quickly spread to his throat, and the 50-year-old patriot died an agonizing death at Morven on February 28, 1781.
As it turned out, Morven was also a Presidential site as well. Following her husband’s death, Annis Stockton often corresponded with General George Washington and his wife Martha through letters that included her poetry. America’s first ‘Power Couple’ also visited Annis several times during and after the war, including an August 29, 1781 visit when the General stopped at Morven during his march towards Yorktown. One stanza written in a poem by Stockton reflected her visit with Washington: “I Saw great Fabius Come in state, I Saw the British Lions fate. The unicorns despair. Secur’d in Secrecies divan, the chiefs contemplated the plan, and York town clos’d the war.”
When Tom placed me at the front doorstep of the great Stockton mansion, I looked out to the grounds before me, and I saw her standing there. She was a beautiful poet; her long locks of dark hair blowing in the gentle breeze. I watched in silence, like dreamers do, as she waved her arms at the uniformed soldier riding up the long and winding road towards her. Then suddenly, as quickly as it had come together, my vision of the poet and soldier had vanished with a little help from my friends. Tom and Bob had returned to the front of Morven and said it was time to continue our magical history tour of Princeton at the house of a pure genius. Even though I knew we were a long way from Monticello, I couldn’t wait to get there.
Morven was an amazing place for me to visit, and I could tell my companions were happy to be reunited with the historic home as well. When Tom fired up the engine to our Explorer, I kicked-back in my camera case because I figured we’d be on the road for a while. After all, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello was about 300 miles away. However, we no more left the parking lot next to Morven when my photographer parked the vehicle on a side street just three minutes later. It turned out the genius my companions had mentioned earlier was Albert Einstein, who lived on Princeton’s Mercer Street for the last twenty years of his life.
The first thing I noticed when Tom carried me onto the public sidewalk in front of the white, two-story home was it was a private residence. There was a small, metallic ‘Private Residence’ sign affixed to the iron gate that blocked the main walkway to the home’s front porch. In a sense, it was Einstein’s fault, as he never wanted his home to be transformed into a museum after his death.
Albert Einstein’s historic Princeton home was built in 1838, although it originally stood on Alexander Street until the construction of Stuart Hall forced the home to be relocated two blocks away. Elsa Einstein, Albert’s first cousin and second wife, purchased the home on July 24, 1935. Unfortunately, Elsa wasn’t around very long to enjoy her new digs as she died roughly seventeen months later inside the house. While Einstein was never a professor at Princeton, he did occupy an office on campus where he delivered lectures and associated with physics professors. Albert’s incredible theories, including his Theory of Relativity, helped inspire generations of physicists and mathematicians, not only at Princeton, but around the world.
But as intelligent as Einstein was, he never learned to drive an automobile and his home was just a modest dwelling. I found it odd the place had only one bedroom and two bathrooms, especially when Albert lived with three women following his wife’s death in 1936. For many years, Einstein lived in the home with his sister, his stepdaughter, and his secretary. He must’ve been a genius to make that arrangement work with only one bedroom.
Albert Einstein did not die inside the house in front of me. Instead, he took his final breath at the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro, which wasn’t too far from the main campus. The day before his death on April 18, 1955, Einstein suffered internal bleeding from a rupture in his abdomen. He refused surgery, stating to his doctors and loved ones: “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.” The most intelligent person to walk the Earth since July 4, 1826 was gone.
We had visited six historic homes in Princeton in just 90 minutes, and each of those places were in close proximity to the university. Since the last two homes on our agenda were located on the campus of Princeton University, it was time for us to head off to college – and I was excited to go back. It had been a little over two years since my last visit to the campus where I was afforded a close look at Prospect House – home to the President of Princeton University for 90 years.
As soon as Tom found a good parking spot along Nassau Street, my photographer and I parted ways with Bob. That was because Mongo had his own list of sites he wanted to see on campus, and we had ours – Prospect House and Maclean House. My companions had set a one-hour time limit for their individual campus tours. That meant Tom and I had little time to waste since Prospect House was a good hike from our vehicle and my photographer doesn’t exactly move at the speed of light. Had Einstein discovered a theory called the Speed of Sloth, he would’ve accurately described Tom’s hiking abilities.
We went to the nearest of the two sites first, which was the Maclean House. When the two-story brick mansion was built in 1756, it was constructed solely for the use by Princeton’s Presidents. As a matter of fact, Princeton President John Witherspoon lived in the house from 1768 to 1779, during the time he served as a delegate in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. But besides the university President living there, the Maclean House had another Presidential connection as well, and that was with our first President, George Washington. General Washington occupied Maclean House in January 1777, during the Battle of Princeton, and again in 1783 while Congress met in nearby Nassau Hall.
When Tom carried me up to the Maclean House, I noticed Princeton University didn’t hide the fact that slavery was once prevalent within the walls of the historic home. The university was quick to admit that five of its Presidents, who occupied the home from 1756 to 1822, owned slaves who lived and worked there. As a matter of fact, the college discovered that following President Samuel Finley’s death in 1766, an auction was held inside the historic home for all of Finley’s personal property, which included his books, furniture, livestock, and as the records indicated – “two negro women, a negro man, and three negro children.” While most Americans believe the use of enslaved people was only in the Southern states, the ugly truth of the matter is every state’s history has been stained at one time or another with that inhumane practice until it was abolished for good on June 14, 1866.
I stood on the historic home’s porch and listened to the eerie quiet behind me. At one point, however, the silence was broken by what I thought was Founding Father John Witherspoon talking to his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery Witherspoon, about the document he had just signed in Philadelphia weeks earlier. But as he discussed the instrument of freedom that had recently passed in Congress, I also heard the cries of others who weren’t so fortunate, for they would have to wait another century for their own freedom bell to ring.
As soon as Tom and I were finished at Maclean House, we began the long walk through the middle of the campus to Prospect House. From an opening in the camera case, I saw some of very historic buildings, including Nassau Hall. After the two of us passed the same statue of John Witherspoon I saw two years earlier, I knew we were on familiar grounds. For the next several minutes, I listened as my photographer huffed and puffed all the way to the Prospect House gate. It was at that moment, just as part of the historic mansion came into view between the trees, the two of us realized we were headed into a construction zone. While we were both instantly disappointed, Tom and I held out hope the ongoing construction we saw in the distance was at a site near Prospect House, and not associated with the historic home itself.
Well, that wish didn’t come true. Where in the heck-fire was our Guardian Angel when we needed her? When my photographer and I got closer to Prospect House, the place was surrounded by barricade fencing, caution tape, construction equipment, and dozens of workers. It looked like a war zone, and it didn’t appear we would be getting out to the home’s flower garden. While the two of us had visited the house in 2021 and saw it unobstructed, we never made it to the historic garden located behind Prospect House, which was why it was our primary target on this visit.
One of the workers told Tom we were two weeks too late as the renovation project had just begun on May 31st, and it wasn’t scheduled to be completed until September of 2024. Just as we were about to turn around and head back towards the Explorer, the guy said to my photographer: “You can still visit the garden, all you need to do is get to the pathway around the other side of the house. That path will take you directly into the garden. Just don’t go past any of the fencing.”
Prospect House was built in 1851 on the site of a farm whose house once hosted George Washington during and after the Revolutionary War. But that wasn’t the historic home’s only Presidential connection. By 1878, the building and grounds were donated to Princeton University, and it became home to the university’s President. One of those Presidents was none other than Woodrow Wilson, who led the university from 1902 until 1911, which was when he became Governor of New Jersey. Two years later, on February 10, 1913, Grover Cleveland’s widow, Frances Folsom Cleveland, married Thomas J. Preston, Jr. at Prospect House. Preston was a professor of archeology at Princeton and it’s likely the university’s President at the time, John G. Hibben, invited the couple to use his house for their wedding ceremony. What an honor that must’ve been for Hibben – it’s not every day a former First Lady gets married in your house.
Tom carried me along a paved pathway around the east side of Prospect House. Just when I began to think my photographer had been given the wrong directions by the worker, Tom made a right hand turn down a gravel path and into the garden. I felt like Dorothy when she opened the door to her farmhouse after she landed in Oz. The garden was more lavish than I ever imagined.
During their time at Prospect House, Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Ellen, decided she wanted an elaborate flower garden behind their home. After the President had an iron fence installed around the garden’s perimeter, Ellen designed the landscaping in the shape of the university’s shield. When viewed from above, Ellen’s pea stone pathways define the outline of the shield. While the types of flowers and shrubbery have changed many times since the Wilson’s lived there, some of the trees near the garden pre-date the home’s construction. As Tom carried me to various spots around the garden, I envisioned Woodrow and Ellen Wilson taking an evening stroll along the same pathways. Perhaps they sat on one of the benches and discussed their future together; a future that might one day take them to the White House.
Prospect House was our fourth and final Woodrow Wilson home we had visited during our time in Princeton. And although the renovation project had prevented us from getting near certain areas of the historic building, it seemed good to see it once again – especially from the beautiful garden that was designed by Ellen Wilson.
We had a little over 20 minutes to make the long hike from Prospect House, through the campus, and back to our vehicle where we planned to meet Mongo at 10:30am. At the halfway point of our journey, Tom stopped and let me pose near the statue dedicated to John Witherspoon. In recent years, some liberal people have demanded that Witherspoon’s statue be removed from the campus grounds due to his association with slavery. It’s true that John Witherspoon owned enslaved people, plus he publicly lectured and voted against abolishing slavery in New Jersey. I truly believe history should not forget nor try to sweep those facts under the rug. But that wasn’t why the ten-foot-tall bronze likeness of Witherspoon was placed just outside of East Pyne Hall. He was honored for the countless number of contributions and sacrifices he made, not only to Princeton University, but also to this great country during its formation – a nation where every adult is here by choice, and every person living here can help make this country better if they choose to.
When Tom held me aloft near the statue of John Witherspoon, I was in total awe as I stared up into his bronze eyes and thought about the Patriot, the Preacher, and the President who was legally blind in his later years. Then it dawned on me – John Witherspoon was legally blind and Reese Witherspoon was legally blonde. It looked like the acorn didn’t fall too far from the family tree.
Tom and I arrived back at the Explorer with twenty minutes left on the parking meter and ten minutes to spare before our 10:30am pre-planned rendezvous with Bob Moldenhauer. Princeton, New Jersey had been a treasure trove of historic sites and I didn’t want to leave – even though I knew we had a tour of Independence Hall waiting for us in the afternoon.
Albert Einstein was once quoted as saying: “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” And I suppose the same theory applies for bobble heads falling in love with a historic city. In my mind, Einstein knew every aspect about gravity. After all, he was probably one of THEM!
