Campus Architecture Database: Whig Hall

Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.

Building Type: Academic

Construction Type: Renovation

Cost: $3.5-million

Square Footage: 12,560

Architect: Farewell Mills Gatsch Architects

Contractor: Massimino Building Corporation

Opened: 2009

Whig Hall was designed by A. Page Brown in 1893. It and a twin, Clio Hall, housed a pair of undergraduate debating societies. After a fire gutted Whig Hall in 1969, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates inserted a four-story Modernist structure into the Neoclassical shell. This renovation preserves Charles Gwathmey’s landmark design while improving the building’s infrastructure and making functional enhancements to meet 21st-century requirements. Lobby and gallery spaces were enlarged, the lower level was reconfigured to better accommodate student programs, meeting rooms were added, and new kitchen areas were inserted. The entire building was also made fully accessible, including the stage in the chamber that serves as a meeting place for the surviving debating society, the American Whig-Cliosophic Society.

(Photos: Lawrence Biemiller)

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