Princeton Battlefield Society Files Another Appeal Over Historic Battlefield

The Princeton Battlefield Society has filed with the NJ Appellate Division an appeal of the Princeton Planning Board decision approving the faculty housing project on property owned by the Institute for Advanced Study.   

The group lost an appeal in June, and is now asking a three-judge panel to review the case again.

The recent appeal prolongs a decade-long battle over the land. It began when Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study first introduced its plan to build faculty housing on a portion of the land it owns adjacent to its campus and Battlefield State Park.

It was immediately met with public outcry, and the plan was modified to call for the 15 units- eight townhouses and seven single-family homes.

The Planning Board approved the plan in 2012.

The battlefield, which the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed on its 2012 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, is the site of Gen. George Washington's pivotal Revolutionary War counterattack and victory against the British during the Battle of Princeton in 1777.

The Battlefield Society has questioned the project based on what it calls faulty wetlands disclosure and allegations that the Institute may not build cluster housing because it was not allowed under 1992 zoning.

"We remain steadfast in our conviction that preserving the site of the climactic counterattack by Washington at Princeton is of enormous importance to the understanding of this turning point victory by Washington in a brilliant campaign known as the Ten Crucial Days," Princeton Battlefield Society President Jerry Hurwitz said, adding that “without preserving the counterattack site and its natural topography and setting, still undeveloped after more than 235 years, the American people will lose a vital link to the past every bit as important to the creation of this nation as Gettysburg is to preserving it."