Faculty Housing

One of the unique aspects of the Institute for Advanced Study is its existence as a strongly residential community of scholars, where Faculty and the Members who visit each year live on or very close to campus.  This factor is essential in maintaining the level and intensity of intellectual exchange that occurs across the range of study in the sciences and humanities at the Institute.

In order to sustain this defining characteristic, the Institute plans to build 15 houses on a site of 8 acres of private land owned by the Institute. This site has been chosen because of its proximity to the Institute's main campus, and avoids unfavorable impact to the campus, the Institute Woods, and the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The proposed site of the Faculty housing is not located immediately adjacent to the Princeton Battlefield State Park. There will be a buffer zone of 200 feet between the housing and the Park, as well as a dense hedgerow of trees and vegetation. In addition, the housing itself is designed with a low profile.

For a map of the relevant lands, click here.  For a fact sheet with additional information about the project, click here. 

The Institute continues to be a committed member of the Princeton community on environmental and preservation issues.  In particular, it has contributed greatly to the preservation of the Princeton Battlefield State Park and the property that surrounds it.  In 1997 it relinquished the development rights to 75 percent of its property, permanently conserving 589 acres of Institute Woods and farmlands contiguous to the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The Institute today funds the maintenance of the Institute Woods and farmlands, set aside now for Institute scholars and members of the public alike. In the early 1970s, the Institute made available to the State of New Jersey 32 acres of land between its central campus and the Princeton Battlefield State Park, land that increased the size of the Park by 60 percent.

The Institute is committed to sustaining the Institute Woods and farmlands for generations to come and to preserving the integrity of the Princeton Battlefield State Park, which the Institute, in fact, helped create and continues to honor.

For additional information about the Institute Woods, please see the Winter 2007 issue of The Institute Letter.