Richard K. Rein

October 10, 2019

A Big Piece of Public Art – But What’s the Point?

Richard K. Rein Princetoniana 3 Comments

Can a 39-foot-tall art installation redress the tarnished legacy of former President Woodrow Wilson? That’s the question raised by a recently dedicated sculpture at the plaza outside the home of the Woodrow Wilson School on the campus of Princeton University.

This sculpture greeting visitors to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School is intended to prompt discussion of Wilson’s tarnished legacy. But the message may go over most people’s heads — literally.

The short answer is no, but not because Wilson’s racist views cannot or should not be addressed directly and honestly. It’s rather because this particular installation, years and millions of dollars in the making, fails to deliver its intended message to its viewers.

The background: In 2015 some Princeton undergraduates dug into Woodrow Wilson’s past – he was president of Princeton, governor of New Jersey, and president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Wilson created the motto “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” As a leading advocate of the League of Nations, who vowed that “the world must be made safe for democracy,” Wilson won the Nobel Prize in 1919.

For a long time that was how Wilson was portrayed on the Princeton campus. But a deeper look shows that President Wilson encouraged racially discriminatory hiring practices by the federal government, and segregation of black workers already hired by the government. Wilson declined to offer his support to the women’s suffrage movement. The defense that Wilson was just a man of his times didn’t hold much water. His views and positions were challenged by many people at the time. Needless to say, some present-day undergraduates were enraged, taking over the office of the university president at one point to demand that Wilson’s name be removed from the title of the prestigious School of Public and International Affairs.

The immediate dispute got remanded to an alumni-student committee, which decided in 2016 that the Wilson name should remain on the school but that the historical record should be restated to show his full range of views, along with the voices of his critics, who previously were not widely heard. Landscape architect and sculptor Walter Hood, whose work includes several other large scale installations intended to address racially charged histories at other institutions, was commissioned to create the Princeton sculpture. And the university chose to place the artwork at the main entrance to the heavily trafficked plaza immediately in front of the building housing the Woodrow Wilson School.

When I first heard about the installation – last April when Hood appeared at the university to discuss his artistic intentions – I wondered what impact the piece might have on the overall dynamics of the popular plaza where it would be located. The Woodrow Wilson plaza is at a crossing of several pedestrian paths and faces busy Washington Road. On warm days students and townspeople are lured by the shallow reflecting pool, where toddlers can get their first dip, to abundant seating, and to shaded areas on the perimeter of the pool. It’s big enough so that skateboarders can work their magic at a safe distance – only university administrators, wary of potential lawsuits, seem to be nervous. The plaza has all the characteristics of a successful open space, except food. But maybe, I mused, the new sculpture would at least provide some food for thought.

So what impact has the new sculpture, 39 feet tall, had on the Wilson School plaza? > Read More …

August 26, 2019

In Praise of Nonpartisan Urbanism

Richard K. Rein Miscellany 0 Comments

At a time when the shrill voices of partisan national politics have driven me to turn the channel to coverage of minor league baseball and golf matches, I have been pleasantly surprised at the nonpartisan nature of most discussions regarding economic revitalization of downtowns, affordable housing, parking, traffic congestion, and other issues facing today’s metropolitan centers. It’s a wonderful respite. So I was alarmed by Christopher F. Rufo’s assertion in an August 22 Wall Street Journal op ed that “new left urbanists” are trying to make local governments “rebuild the urban environment” to “set right society’s socioeconomic, racial and moral deficiencies.”

That contention didn’t match my experience reporting and writing about urban issues over the past two years. I have encountered numerous proposals that seem less leftist and more like fiscal conservatism as once practiced by old-fashioned, reasonable Republicans. Congestion pricing for automobile traffic and higher parking meter fees in intensely used neighborhoods sound to me like lessons in supply and demand. Easing zoning rules so that a developer can build housing with no minimum number of parking spaces is an opportunity for entrepreneurial risk-taking: If the developer misjudges the market, he will pay.

Perhaps Christopher Rufo has confused ‘new urbanism’ with ‘urban renewal.’ The latter went down a long time ago, along with the Pruitt-Igoe housing project.

Two heroes of the “new urbanism” are former mayors Joe Riley of Charleston, SC, and Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City. You could read thousands of words about the accomplishments of either man before you discovered his political affiliation. As urbanist Richard Florida wrote in the foreword to Cornett’s book, The Next American City, “Local leadership really does defy party. . . . When I meet a national politician, it is immediately clear which side of the political divide they’re on. But when I travel to cities across the United States, I am amazed I can never tell who is a Democrat and who is a Republican.” > Read More …

August 22, 2019

Breaking News from the ‘News Desert’

Richard K. Rein Miscellany 0 Comments

An update has finally been posted in the case of the 26-year-old employee of a Princeton-based marketing firm who was found murdered in her apartment after going home for lunch on June 10. Police have charged a co-worker, Kenneth C. Saal, 30, of Lindenwold, NJ, with the murder.

Carolyn Byington, a graduate of Lafayette College, had worked at the Engine Group at 902 Carnegie Center in the Princeton-Route 1 corridor. The August 21 arrest for first degree murder was announced by Plainsboro police and the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office. Details on the accused killer’s alleged activities on the afternoon of the murder were reported by NJ.com.

A LinkedIn account for Kenneth Saal described him as a “staff accountant” at Engine Group, “with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in fixed assets, data analysis, account reconciliation, accounting, and intercompany accounts. Strong accounting professional with a masters focused in business administration from Monmouth University.” A 2011 graduate of Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, according to the LinkedIn profile, Saal previously worked at the Mercadien Group in Hamilton Township and at Valeant Pharmaceuticals in Bridgewater, before joining Engine Group in July, 2016.

ReinReports.com took notice of the case in a post filed July 30 as an indication of an emerging “news desert,” even in the relatively affluent central New Jersey community. Whereas 20 years ago journalists from several different news organizations might have pursued leads at the victim’s company, or knocked on doors of neighboring apartments to determine if anyone had heard anything suspicious that day, coverage now was limited mostly to the conveyance of official police reports. Understaffed and overworked, news organizations do their best. And less dramatic stories, like zoning and planning board matters, go largely uncovered.

August 12, 2019

The Case for Being a Defensive Pedestrian

Richard K. Rein Princetoniana 1 Comment

Pedestrians are becoming bold, and they should be. They are boldly speaking out at council meetings and planning board sessions, demanding more and safer pedestrian crossings. They are, in some cases, joining forces with bicyclists and advocating for bike lanes that will give cyclists a safe alternative to sidewalks.

Bold is good. But there is one place where being bold is not good for pedestrians. That’s inside those zebra-striped walkways that mark designated pedestrian crossings. Inside those crossings, the ones often marked by signs proclaiming that motorists must yield to pedestrians, bold is not good. As they approach and enter those crossings pedestrians should be tentative, defensive, and wary. The law says motorists must yield, but it doesn’t say they will yield.

A pedestrian was walking from the right in the crosswalk occupied by a car in this photo when he was struck by a pickup truck turning left from Prospect onto Washington.

On July 30 that point was demonstrated once again in Princeton, NJ. A 68-year-old man was in the marked crosswalk leading from the Princeton University campus across Washington Road to Prospect Avenue. Traffic in either direction on Washington was stopped by a red light. But a Ford F350 pickup truck on Prospect Avenue facing Washington had a green light, and the truck was turning left onto Washington Road, a path that led directly across that crosswalk. For whatever reason (I’ve made inquiries to both town and county officials for more information) the truck hit the pedestrian. He went flying, hit his head on the pavement, and died of his injuries on August 1.

The phrase “once again” deserves some context. > Read More …

July 30, 2019

Seeking an Oasis in a News Desert

Richard K. Rein Miscellany 1 Comment

One day in June, a 26-year-old woman working for a marketing and advertising firm in the prestigious Carnegie Center in the Princeton-Route 1 business corridor went home for lunch at her nearby apartment. She never returned. Her colleagues, alarmed at her absence, called police. They discovered the woman’s body at about 6 p.m. She had been murdered. According to news stories, some neighbors may have heard muffled screams coming from the apartment that afternoon. But no neighbors called the police.

The Packet was once Princeton’s pre-eminent community newspaper. Now circulation has fallen and a sidewalk neatnik calls its news box an ‘eyesore.’

There was a time, not so long ago, when the murder of a young white woman in an affluent community would have caused a flood of media coverage. The unconfirmed reports that neighbors heard something but reported nothing would have invoked the infamous killing of Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens, Queens, in 1964, while neighbors watched silently. Today in central New Jersey you would have expected a reporter to go door to door in the apartment complex, asking everyone who heard what and when.

But in the case of Carolyn Byington, a 26-year-old Lafayette College graduate from Basking Ridge, NJ, found murdered June 10 in her apartment in the Hunters Glen section of Plainsboro, NJ, there was no flood of media coverage. In fact, after the initial reports of her death the news dried up. Her hometown paper, the West Windsor-Plainsboro News, did issue a follow up on June 28, noting that local police and the county prosecutor had enlisted the help of federal law enforcement agencies, as well, in their investigation. Even then the authorities declined to reveal the manner in which the victim had been killed.

Beyond that, there was not a peep – at least nothing found in a recent Google search – regarding the murder.

Why not? Possibly the police have asked reporters not to dig too much because the digging might compromise the investigation. More likely it’s because the media in central New Jersey is understaffed, overworked, short on resources, and more than willing to settle for stories that are handed to them by local governing bodies and police departments. Here in relatively affluent central New Jersey, as well as in many other places around the country, we are living in a “news desert,” roughly akin to the “food deserts” created when the last supermarket closes up in an urban neighborhood. > Read More …