Princetoniana

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

A recent major change in a dangerous pedestrian crossing in downtown Princeton, NJ, begun June 10, has been extended beyond its two-week initial trial period. Even though everyone – motorists and pedestrians alike – are inconvenienced by the change, few horns have been honked in the longer than usual lines of traffic at the intersection and no angry letters have appeared in the community newspapers. Maybe this change, while not a significant improvement, will turn out to be a moment of enlightenment for the state Department of Transportation, which controls the intersection and which until now has greeted every proposal for increased pedestrian safety with the refrain that the proposed change better not impede traffic – and by traffic they don’t mean foot traffic.

Some background: The intersection in question is on the town’s main street, Nassau Street, where two cross streets, Vandeventer Avenue and Washington Road, meet Nassau. In 2016 a change was made to the traffic lights to make the intersection safer for motorists. It also had one small improvement for pedestrians — a three-second lead time that gave pedestrians a head start in a crosswalk before turning traffic could cut them off.

But I warned in a community newspaper at the time that there was one small problem for pedestrians: Activation of the walk/don’t walk signals depended on someone pushing a “beg button.” Often no one did – everyone no doubt assumed that the signal would change at the appropriate time. As a nearby resident who drove through the intersection twice a day and used it often as a pedestrian, I witnessed many platoons of confused pedestrians, with looks of desperation asking “when will it be our turn.” The answer: Never, if you don’t push the button.

My 2016 concern took a tragic turn in October, 2017, when a pedestrian in the crosswalk was struck and killed by a cement mixer. (Amazingly, the resolution of the case has not yet been made public, even almost a year after I wrote a major story on that accident and several other near-fatal crashes involving pedestrians. We have sent e-mails requesting follow-up information to the investigating agency.)> Read More …

Is it possible that I know more than a traffic engineer from the New Jersey Department of Transportation? To put the question in context, I should say that I never took a single engineering or science or architecture course in college. I majored in English. And I have never served on a planning or zoning board in any town.

But, with respect to a certain intersection in my hometown that will be the subject of a two-week study by the DOT, I do have some first-hand knowledge. As a motorist I have driven through it twice a day for 30 years or so commuting to work. As an avid pedestrian, who lives less than two blocks away, I have walked through the intersection a dozen times a week, if not more.

Also, as a reporter for a community newspaper, I studied the intersection closely when a major change was made to its signals for motorists and pedestrians in 2016. I studied it again after a pedestrian was killed in 2017, for an in-depth article on pedestrian safety that appeared in the Princeton Echo.

As I noted then, the intersection where Washington Road and Vandeventer Avenue meet Nassau Street in the heart of downtown Princeton, is a challenging one, with four phases of signals to govern the vehicular traffic, two of which also permit pedestrians to cross. But pedestrians know they can cross only if they push the button – aka the “beg button” – on the traffic signal poll. Often the pedestrians do not push the button, assuming that the walk/don’t walk signal will change automatically, as it does at most other intersections in town.

We argued then that the signal changes were an improvement, but that pedestrians couldn’t be relied on to push the button to activate the signals. We do not know if that shortcoming contributed to the pedestrian death, but it certainly has led many instances of confusion, with frustrated pedestrians stepping out into the roadway against their own better judgment to finally get on their way.

During the trial period from Monday, June 10, through Friday, June 21, the new “exclusive pedestrian phase,” or “all-way scramble,” as it is called, will still rely on pedestrians to push the beg button to work. Then they will have to wait through up to four separate signal phases enabling the motorists to go their various ways. After that pedestrians will get about 39 seconds to cross in any direction, even diagonally if they wish.

That will be a sweet time for pedestrians after a long wait. But it will be a bitter moment for motorists, who will soon realize that, if they miss their green light, they may well have to wait 39 seconds longer than before to finally get moving.> Read More …

(Note: The story below is an edited version of an article that appeared originally in the April 24, 2019, edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper.)

Chances are that the last thing you think about if you visit Scudder Plaza outside the home of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School is the man for whom the school is named.

You might consider the plaza as a convenient and scenic shortcut across the east side of the campus, with its large but shallow — five or six inches deep — reflecting pool and its 23-foot high Freedom Fountain, an assemblage of jagged metal through which water bubbles mellifluously. Or you might view it as a comfortable place to sit and catch up on e-mail or just grab a moment of solitude. Benches line the edge of the plaza, and the steps leading to the pool can also serve as seating — if you kick off your shoes and let your feet get wet.

By my grading system, explained below, the plaza at the Woodrow Wilson School is the second most successful public gathering place in town, after Hinds Plaza, the space adjacent to the Prince­ton Public Library and Witherspoon Grill. On a sunny weekend afternoon you can find students working on their computers, couples lolling around, parents watching toddlers in the pool, seniors catching some sun and — on occasions when no one is chasing them away — a few teenaged skateboarders showing off their skills. I’ll bet not one of them is giving any thought to Woodrow Wilson and his legacy.

That may change in September, when a 39-foot tall sculpture — consisting of two slender vertical columns, one black, one white, one leaning into the other — is installed. The sculpture will be located among the two rows of trees on the Washington Road side of the plaza (and probably require the elimination of two of those eight trees). Visitors to the plaza from the Washington Road side will either walk around the sculpture or walk through the space between the two vertical columns. Either way, some visitors will inevitably be made to think about Wilson and his legacy.

The sculpture was commissioned after a 2015 protest (including a student occupation of Nassau Hall) that brought to light Wilson’s history of racist and sexist beliefs and actions — a part of the former Princeton and United States president’s legacy that had been largely overlooked in favor of his call for “Princeton in the Nation’s Service” and his advocacy of the League of Nations. Calls were issued for the removal of Wilson’s name from the School of Public and International Affairs. But the university, also mindful that the Wilson School has a legacy of its own, proudly maintained by thousands of graduates over the years, wisely decided to retain the name but commission a work to address Wilson’s past, warts and all.

The sculptor, Walter Hood, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, appeared on campus to describe his work and its message. I attended the event for two reasons: First to figure out how this artwork would address some century-old scars; and second to consider how the sculpture’s physical presence would affect the public’s appreciation of this popular public space.

> Read More …