ABSTRACT
Like many other campuses, Princeton was subject to changing fashions, and the vogue for neoclassical planning and architecture was soon displaced. The romantic landscaping ideals of the Victorian age as popularised by Andrew Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted supplanted the formality of the early nineteenth century and under Princeton’s eleventh president, James McCosh, the campus’s symmetrical
outlines were softened by a new enthusiasm for the spontaneous picturesque. Arriving at the college from Britain in 1868, McCosh transformed the campus into an English country estate, characterised by oblique lines and meandering walkways that revealed surprises at every turn.
