From the Publisher, Summer 2025

Dear Princeton Magazine Readers,

Though this is our Summer issue, I am still feeling like “spring has sprung” because it has been such a beautiful spring with clear days and chilly, rainy nights. This has given us one of the greenest springs ever! In fact, I can’t get over how rich all the green has been this year.

Last week I happened to make a turn west off Princeton-Hightstown Road and ended up in a residential neighborhood that is a spectacular environment. The roads are all “boulevards” with dense landscaping on each side and a central green space that separates the traffic going each way, and within these central greenways are beautiful arrangements of trees that now have 10-inch trunks. I found it hard to believe that such a wonderful environment exists. I then realized that what I was looking at was the result of careful guidance by the West Windsor Planning Board and its staff from 20 years ago.

I so wished that every New Jersey planning board would have such vision, because what comes with it is municipal pride plus increased value in the development housing along such lovely roadways.

In this issue you are going to make a discovery, as I did in my side trip, of a host of wonderful places to visit in New Jersey during this summer. Wendy Greenberg and Jeff Tryon’s “Happy Trails” lists 15 places to visit in New Jersey, and each one is totally distinctive.

Imagine finding an old seed in the drawer of an antique chest or learning from a family of native Americans that they had held onto a seed for generations. Princeton University faculty member Tessa Lowinske Desmond was starting to write a book about seeds when she realized that ancient “heirloom” seeds needed to be cultivated so that new seeds for future generations could be created. Out of this notion The Seed Farm at Princeton was born. Wendy Greenberg wrote this story about the farm and the tremendous volunteer help it gets.

To do the title page for this story, our Art Director, Jeff Tryon, created his own work of art made entirely of seeds on black fabric. Wouldn’t this make a great logo for the farm?

Mary Abitanto is a phenomenal chef, writer of cookbooks, photographer, and forward thinker. Princeton Magazine is so fortunate to have her creativity available for your enjoyment. “Everything’s Just Peachy This Summer” is a terrific example of her many skills and includes several of her recipes. You can finish it off with her Peach Whiskey Smash, but only drink one!

One of the most exciting places to visit in Princeton is the building of the Arts Council of Princeton, where you never know what you might find. “Dogoyles Around Town” is about current Artist-in-Residence Victor E. Bell and his sculptures that are a mix of dog, dragon, and gargoyle. They are small but stress the importance of animal rescue and the feelings of safety and love that a full-grown dog can provide. As a footnote, on the last page of the article you will find a picture of writer Don Sanborn’s dog Gilbert, who died recently at age 17.

Though it has no gargoyles, the handsome Gothic Revival house on Edgerstoune Road created by architect Alfred Hopkins for himself in 1932 had become rundown and lay vacant for years. Anne Levin’s story is about the two very successful Princeton graduates who decided that Princeton was where they wanted to settle. With the expert help of historical rehab architect Michael Mills, they went to work restoring the house and its 100 leaded glass windows. It is now truly a masterpiece!

Then there was a new challenge — the couple wanted to have an indoor swimming pool, something that did not exist in Gothic times. They added a handsome, very modern pavilion with a roof pitch that matched the original house. Inside is a “swimming tank” that pumps water past you at a desired speed and you swim, but actually go nowhere! The interior walls of the pool building are decorated with one-inch tiles that range from a blue tile density at the bottom to vivid white at the top. This new pavilion and the renewed Gothic mansion do very well together as a composition.

Though Art Director Jeff Tryon’s title page for “Elegant, Elusive, and Endangered” is inspired by the well-known saga of the beautiful Monarch butterfly and the efforts to save it, this story by Sarah Teo is about all butterflies, whose numbers are declining worldwide. This is caused by climate change, pollution, and land development, all of which are due to the increase in the worldwide population. There are other causes and huge efforts to save the butterflies, which Sarah covers for you.

I should point out that this is Sarah’s first full story for the magazine. To date she has been responsible for layout in Town Topics and also the updating and creation of our Well-Designed Life pages and, in this issue, A Well-Designed Hike page.

Stuart Mitchner’s Book Scene is as engaging as ever with his coverage of butterfly books and local author Edward Tenner and his Essays in Unintended Consequences.

Then there is John McPhee and his Tabula Rasa. John McPhee has been a favorite of mine ever since he invited me to accompany him to the New York World’s Fair in the 1960s and comment on the architecture for a Time magazine story he was writing.

With Juneteenth, it is appropriate that we celebrate Shirley Satterfield as the historian and the preservationist of the history of the unique Black community that existed in Princeton from the early 1800s to 1948 when the “Princeton Plan” ended segregation in town.

This year, Shirley received the Betsey Stockton Award, and it is truly a pleasure for us to dedicate this issue of Princeton Magazine to her. In the last decade she created the Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society (WJHCS), which is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the totally self-sufficient community that existed between Witherspoon and John streets from Green Street down to Birch Avenue. WJHCS is responsible for the stainless-steel plaques that mark 29 historical sites in the neighborhood as part of a heritage tour that Shirley has personally led over the decades. Studio Hillier designed the plaques, and I serve as Treasurer of WJHCS.

Five generations of Shirley’s family have lived in Princeton and attended school at the Princeton School for Colored Children at the corner of Witherspoon and Maclean streets. The school was a beautiful piece of architecture that Studio Hillier owns and intends to completely restore the exterior and name the building “The Satterfield” in Shirley’s honor. Ilene Dube has written the cover story on Shirley for this issue.

Our dedicated staff and I hope that you enjoy this issue and all that it has to offer. We also hope that you will “shop local,” especially with our advertisers without whom there could not be a Princeton Magazine.

Respectfully yours,