By Linda Arntzenius
What would Manhattan be without its Central Park? What would Princeton be without its lake? Originally known as Princeton Lake, it wasn’t long before it took the name of its benefactor, Andrew Carnegie.
Today, the 262-acre Lake Carnegie not only serves the University’s rowing team, for whose purpose it was created, it is a recreational resource for walkers, cyclists, canoeists, kayakers, fishermen, and birdwatchers. Its waters and shores are habitat for numerous species from turtles to snakes, mammals to birds. Pileated woodpeckers have been spotted there, not to mention ducks, geese, cormorants, songbirds, flickers, and even a pair of bald eagles who have made their nest nearby.
Just three and a half miles long and 800 feet at its widest, the lake was formed by flooding low-lying swamp and marshland at the confluence of the Millstone River and Stony Brook alongside the towpath of the Delaware and Raritan Canal which borders its eastern shore.
Albert Einstein famously launched his tiny sailboat from the public entry point off Faculty Road on its western shore. And, when conditions permit, the lake is a picture perfect spot for ice-skaters.
HOW PRINCETON GOT ITS LAKE
According to archivist Dan Linke, a chance conversation between Carnegie and Princeton University alumnus Howard Russell Butler (class of 1876) led to the lake’s construction. In 2006, Linke, who is University Archivist and Curator of Public Policy Papers at Princeton University’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, curated an exhibition marking the centenary of the lake’s completion in 1906.
As the story goes, Carnegie sat for a portrait by Butler in 1902. Butler had been coxswain of the rowing team back in the 1870s before the College of New Jersey officially changed its name to Princeton University in 1896. As painter and subject got acquainted, Butler’s thoughts turned to his alma mater and Carnegie reminisced about the lochs of his native Scotland. As early as 1860, there had been talk of introducing rowing as a sport at Princeton. The Nassau Literary Magazine had suggested that the Delaware & Raritan Canal would provide an opportunity for training. Although the canal was narrow, it was no more so than the “diminutive Cam” at Cambridge University in England, which had produced the champion rowers of England. But it wasn’t until a decade later (the Civil War having intervened) that rowing began.
The canal, as it turned out, was far from ideal. Even in Butler’s day, it was busy with steam-powered commercial boats traveling between New York and Philadelphia. By 1884, the congestion was so bad that safety was an issue. The rowing team disbanded in 1886. What was really needed, Butler knew, was a lake. The Millstone River Valley just north of the campus would be the perfect spot. Would the famous philanthropist foot the bill?
Carnegie had already been approached by University President Woodrow Wilson about funding a lake, among other University projects, but Wilson’s request had been apparently so low-key that it failed to elicit any response from the philanthropist. Butler’s more direct approach must have been more persuasive, for Carnegie asked the artist to find out what the project might cost and traveled to Princeton from his residence in New York City to take a look for himself. On seeing the proposed site, he’s reported to have said: “O, what a place for a lake!”
Butler came back to Carnegie with a figure of $118,000, roughly equivalent to $2.5 million today. “It was one of the great underestimations in Princeton’s history,” says Linke. Ultimately the project would cost almost four times as much.
Ever the canny Scot, Carnegie discussed the project’s feasibility with his friend, the retired U.S. President Grover Cleveland, who lived in Princeton, before giving Butler the go ahead. With Carnegie on board, Butler and eleven other Princeton alumni began acquiring the land that would be needed for the lake. They moved quietly so as not to set off a “rush” that would inevitably inflate costs. Together Butler and his friends bought over a hundred acres, of which they gave 89 to the University. Other supporters of the University followed suit.
BUILDING A LAKE: MEN AND MATERIALS
By 1905, immigrant laborers, mostly Italian and Hungarian, were at work cutting down trees, pulling up and burning stumps, and moving earth at the lake site. These new Americans, together with horses and mules, worked 10 and 12 hour days. They cleared and dug the entire lake basin to a depth of one to two feet. They hauled 5,000 barrels of cement and 3,600 cubic yards of masonry to build a dam that measured 650 feet long, 4 feet thick, and 27 feet tall, with 17 feet anchored in solid rock below ground. An archival photograph (below) from the collection in the Historical Society of Princeton shows their primitive living conditions and a handwritten record in the Princeton University Archives records that on New Year’s Day in 1906, their work day was shortened to eight hours.
THE IMAGES
The Historical Society of Princeton (HSP) provides access to some 4,000 photographic images of Princeton landmarks, people, institutions, and events in its Photo Archives collection via a digital database. Reproductions can be purchased. In addition database users will also find hundreds of three-dimensional objects in the HSP collection ranging from the tiny political campaign buttons to the large pieces of furniture owned by Albert Einstein among other paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, textiles, archaeological artifacts, and ephemera. For more, visit: www.princetonhistory.org.
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