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THE PROPOSED GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Price: £399
Postage: £2.75
Year: 1903
Author: Compiled by Prof Andrew Fleming West with Foreword by Woodrow Wilson
Publisher: The Trustees of Princeton University
Brief Description: A scarce opportunity to buy this exceedingly rare 1st edition proposal for a residential graduate college at Princeton University
Quantity: Only ONE item in stock
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Boards are soiled, tears to top and base of spine, rub to edges.
Internally very good condition, no inscriptions or markings, some foxing to endpapers, illustrations clean, some shadowing on pages opposite illustrations.
"With his appointment in December 1900 as first dean of the graduate school, West devoted his energy and talents to the development of the school and particularly to the creation of a residential graduate college. He wanted Princeton to lead the way in providing adequate residences for American graduate students. In the spring of 1903, after visiting Oxford, Cambridge, and other universities in Britain and on the continent, he outlined his proposal for a residential college in this handsomely illustrated book, which he proceeded to use, with great effectiveness, in raising funds for this project. One of the first results of his effort was a $275,000 bequest left in the spring of 1906 by Mrs. Josephine Thomson Swann, of Princeton, for a graduate college in memory of her first husband, United States Senator Robert S. Thomson, of the Class of 1817. The Swann bequest brought to light a disagreement between West and President Wilson regarding the location of the graduate college that marked the onset of the great controversy between these two strong and stubborn sons of Presbyterian ministers. From the beginning, Wilson had wanted the graduate college ‘‘at the heart'' of the University as ‘‘a means of vitalizing the whole intellectual life'' of the place. West appeared to be in agreement at first: in his book, he spoke of the influence the proposed graduate college would have on ‘‘every undergraduate who passes it in his daily walks.'' However, as his plans developed, he settled on a location geographically separate from the main campus, where, as he put it, the graduate college would be free from the distractions of undergraduate life, and thus able to develop ‘‘its own true life.''" (from Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press, 1978) West won this particular battle with the dedication of the new Graduate College in 1913, the controversy was represented as a clash between the elite wealthy & democracy. This failure to secure his plan for a graduate college, helped to propel Wilson into politics and on to the White House.
The plan in this book was therefore never realised but became a key moment in the life of Princeton and Woodrow Wilson.
