"Rutgers Then and Now presents an evolutionary perspective - descriptive, analytic, and photographic - on the buildings and the grounds that comprise the historic Rutgers College Avenue Campus. The book opens with an examination of the university's nineteenth-century territorial roots set on a site donated to Queens College in 1808, upon which construction commenced the following year on the iconic "Old Queens" building. The book continues through the sequential phases of campus expansion that took placeover the succeeding centuries. The central photographic and pictorial emphasis is a comparison of "what it was originally" versus "what it is today", drawing on over five hundred images from the combined collections of Rutgers University Archives and thephotography of Richard L. Edwards. Prefaced by contributions from Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway and New Brunswick Theological Seminary President Micah L. McCreary, authors James W. Hughes, David Listokin, and Richard L. Edwards provide invaluable commentary on architecture and campus design from the perspective of "seasoned" urban planners and university administrators, rather than as formal architectural scholars or art historians. The authors also selectively trace the multiple physical movements of several of the college's academic and athletic functions as they migrated to newer and expanding facilities, ultimately providing the definitive work on how the buildings and grounds of the campus were planned and came to be in the twenty-first century"--
Rutgers University has come a long way since it was granted a royal charter in 1766. It migrated from a parsonage in Somerville, to New Brunswick-sited The Sign of the Red Lion tavern, to stately Old Queens, expanding northward along College Avenue, and beyond. Replete with more than 500 campus images, Rutgers, Then and Now offers stunning pictorial and historical evidence of what it was then, side by side, with what it is today, a vital hub for research and beloved home for students.
Rutgers University has come a long way since it was granted a royal charter in 1766. As it migrated from a parsonage in Somerville, to the New Brunswick-sited Sign of the Red Lion tavern, to stately Old Queens, and expanded northward along College Avenue, it would both compete and collaborate with the city that surrounded it for room to grow.
Rutgers, Then and Now tells this story, proceeding through ten sequential development phases of College Avenue and Piscataway campus expansionseach with its own buildings and physical layoutsthat took place over the course of 250 years. It delivers stunning photographic and historic documentation of the growth of the university, showing what it was and appeared originally versus what it is and looks like today. Among other in-depth analyses, the book compares the diminutive geographic scale of todays historical College Avenue Campusonce the entirety of Rutgersto the much larger-sized (in acreage) Busch Campus. Replete with more than 500 images, the book also considers the Rutgers campuses that might have been, examining plans that were changed or abandoned. Shedding light on the sacrifices and gifts that transformed a small college into a vital hub for research and beloved home for students, it explores how Rutgers grew to become a world-class university.
