Portrait of John Notman by Samuel Bell Waugh, 1845. (Wikipedia)

Versatile and Prolific in Princeton and Beyond

By Anne Levin

For two months last summer, an exhibit about architect John Notman was on view at Princeton Public Library. “John Notman: All the Presidents’ Houses” was small, but significant — so much so that it was moved to the building’s lobby during Princeton Reunions weekend, the annual Princeton University event that brings thousands to town.

Those alumni were likely familiar with the four buildings in the show — the Walter Lowrie House (1845) on Stockton Street, which is home to the president of the University; Prospect House (1851) , today a dining club on campus for University faculty and staff; Guernsey Hall (1852) in Marquand Park, which was eventually divided into condominiums; and Springdale (1851), the Mercer Street home to the president of Princeton Theological Seminary. Three of the buildings are Italianate in style. Springdale, described as “cottage Gothic,” is the only outlier.

“What’s interesting is that Lowrie House, Prospect, and Guernsey Hall were designed in the same, Italianate style, but were actually different from each other,” says Rebecca Flemer, who organized the Notman show with Evie Timberlake. “They have individual details and different layouts.”

Co-chairs of the Marquand Park Foundation, Flemer and Timberlake did the research and writing for the exhibit, which was sponsored by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. At a date to be determined, the exhibit will be at Ellarslie, the Notman-designed house in Trenton’s Cadwalader Park that is now home to the Trenton City Museum.

Ellarslie Mansion, photo by A.L. Opdyke. (Wikimedia Commons)

It was Notman’s creation of Marquand Park and Guernsey Hall that sparked Flemer and Timberlake’s interest in the architect’s work.

“The fact that the park really hasn’t changed much from his original plan, and the way he combined landscape and architectural design, appealed to us,” says Timberlake.

Researching additional sites in and outside of Princeton, they kept running into the Notman name.

“We saw that Notman was also the architect of Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. Then we also did a historic American landscape survey of Cadwalader Park, and there he was again, designing Ellarslie,” says Timberlake. “I was doing some research at Point Breeze in Bordentown, and it had a Notman house on the property. I said to someone, ‘I feel like John Notman is tapping me on the shoulder.’”

Born in Edinburgh in 1810, Notman trained at the Royal Academy of Scotland, apprenticed to a builder, and worked in the office of architect William Henry Playfair before setting sail for America in 1831. His life and career are detailed in John Notman, Architect, the catalog for a 1979 exhibition at Philadelphia’s Athenaeum, which Notman designed. The author of the catalog was the late Constance Greiff, a prominent name in Princeton historical circles and an expert on Notman’s work.

John Notman’s plan of grounds, 1846. (Princeton University Library Special Collections)

“Because his intelligence was high and his grasp of the fundamentals of architecture was sound, he was able to demonstrate considerable versatility,” Greiff wrote. “Over a century after his death his surviving works remain the best evidence of his excellence as a designer, serving old functions well and adapting to new ones with grace.”

Greiff described Notman as the architect who “introduced the Italianate villa to the United States at Burlington, New Jersey, and was recognized by the chief apostle of the picturesque, A. J. Downing, as one of the country’s most skillful practitioners in that vein.”

In addition to the Renaissance Revival-style Athenaeum on Philadelphia’s Washington Square, Notman designed numerous buildings in that city including the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square, Saint Mark’s Church, the gatehouse at Mount Vernon Cemetery, and The Library Company.

In and around Trenton, Notman designed an addition to the New Jersey State House, St. Paul’s Church, and the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, now known as Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, among other buildings.

Notman’s connection to Princeton was largely through Robert Field Stockton, known as the Commodore. Stockton commissioned the architect to design the four villas, two as wedding gifts, for members of the Stockton family. The catalogue by Greiff also details the architect’s work rebuilding the university’s Nassau Hall. Ivy Hall and Trinity Church’s Parish School were among his other Princeton-based projects.

Built in 1845, Lowrie House, above and below right, is the current home of the president of Princeton University. (Property of the Trustees of Princeton University. Princeton University Archives, Mudd Library, Grounds & Buildings)

Prospect is the largest of the four villas. In 1878, its owners bought the house and accompanying 35-acre estate and deeded them to Princeton University, which was then known as the College of New Jersey. A year later, it began serving as the home of the University’s presidents. As the campus got bigger, students began to take shortcuts across the garden.

“After a particularly flagrant instance of trespassing by a rampaging football crowd, Woodrow Wilson, then University president and Prospect resident, erected an iron fence enclosing five acres of the grounds in 1904,” reads the University website.

(Property of the Trustees of Princeton University. Princeton University Archives, Mudd Library, Grounds & Buildings)

In 1968, it was decided to turn Prospect into a faculty club. The Walter Lowrie House on Stockton Street became the official home of University presidents. Lowrie, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, was a translator of Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. His wife, Barbara Armour, had originally inherited the property from her father, a wealthy Chicago businessman and a member of Princeton University’s class of 1877. Barbara Armour gave the house to the University in 1960, where it briefly served as a campus guest residence.

The early residents of the Lowrie House had ties to slavery. Two of its most prominent residents “were Princeton men whose fortunes — both political and financial — were deeply interconnected with the slaveholding South and the Confederacy,” reads the University website. “The history of the Lowrie House reveals Princeton to be a place where the barriers between North and South were particularly permeable.”

Built in 1851, Springdale is the current home of the president of Princeton Theological Seminary. (Princeton University Archives, Mudd Library, Grounds & Buildings)

Springdale, on Mercer Street, is described by Greiff as “the least elaborate of the several villas designed for Commodore Robert F. Stockton’s relations.”  The Seminary purchased the house and surrounding acreage from the Stockton family in 1899, and it has served as the official residence for the school’s president ever since.

With their connection to Marquand Park, Flemer and Timberlake have an especially strong connection to Guernsey Hall. Originally called Fieldwood, its third owner was University Professor Allan Marquand, who enlarged the house by a third in 1912 and changed its name to Guernsey Hall after an island in the English Channel. In the late 1970s, historic preservation architect William Short converted it into five condominiums. Its original foyer and staircase are still intact.

“Notman took four years to design the park before building Guernsey Hall,” says Flemer. “Richard Stockton Field, who owned the property [before Marquand] and was a lawyer, was very interested in gardens and landscapes. He competed in garden shows, and you can still see parts of his greenhouse on the property that are still standing.”

Notman died in 1865 and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, which he planned. Brief obituaries in Philadelphia newspapers described him primarily as a designer of churches. But he was much more than that.

“Notman was, in sum, one of America’s most innovative architects in the second quarter of the nineteenth century,” wrote Greiff. “Although not stylistically an originator, he was an importer of sophisticated design ideas from Britain, translating them skillfully for his American clientele. He also was quick to utilize the technological developments that transformed the art of building in the nineteenth century, and he was alert to the availability of new materials and new techniques.”

The fact that Notman’s four most important buildings in Princeton are still in use made the compilation of “John Notman: All the Presidents’ Houses” especially meaningful to its creators.

“The great thing was that these houses are all still standing,” says Timberlake. “We are so lucky in Princeton to have them here.”

Prospect House was the home of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Princeton University presidents. (Shutterstock.com)