Forbesians Remain ‘All In’ for the Century-Old Princeton Inn

Dean Peter Bogucki, the founding director of studies at Forbes College, did not think anyone would come to celebrate when he invited families and grads from the Class of 1987 — the first who’d lived in the newly renamed Forbes — for lunch after Commencement. He was so surprised by the enthusiastic attendance that Jim Mohr, the college’s head of dining at the time, had to call local grocers and truck in extra cold cuts and salad to “feed the unexpected masses,” according to Bogucki.

“We were astonished by the degree of attachment that the students did feel to the college — even just that first graduating class,” Bogucki said.

The feeling endures at the former Princeton Inn, a Jazz Age institution that had once welcomed post-football-game alumni clad in orange and black sipping Old Fashioneds and chatting in excited clusters throughout the dining room and lounges. Acquired by the University and opened for undergraduate housing in 1970, the inn is marking its 100th anniversary this year, but no longer in mink-and-diamond luxury. Instead, the Forbes College of today is country and casual, separated from the confining, vertical entryways of the dorms in Rocky and Mathey and the sterilized air of Yeh and New College West.

“It makes a lot of sense that it used to be an inn, because that’s exactly what it feels like,” said Will Rhoades ’27, who jokes he is a Forbesian before he is a Princetonian. This intense “Forbes nationalism,” as Rhoades calls it, is not a new sentiment. Bogucki’s now vintage Princeton Inn College T-shirt collection features slogans like “All in for the Inn” and “Do it for the Inn” — proof of members’ time-transcending dedication.

Bogucki’s shirts harken back to the days of Princeton Inn College, before Malcolm Forbes ’41 gave $3 million to renovate and rename the residential college. The latter part of this deal frustrated students, attached to the historically descriptive name of their home, though Bogucki recalled the “so absolutely charming” donor visiting the college one evening and having a “town meeting” on the first floor. The renovations continued throughout 1984, and the newly christened college was dedicated in November of that year, unveiling an interior design concept by Robert Venturi ’47.

Forbes’ biggest virtue is its horizontal and continuous layout, where freshmen and sophomores mill about like ants in their farm. Forbes’ long corridors and retention of social spaces from the days of the inn necessitate that students see and talk to each other.

“It’s like this giant old mansion. You can walk down halls, and then sort of forget where you are,” said Patrick Caddeau, the current dean of Forbes College. Though sociality is the lifeblood of college, it has a casual atmosphere, Bogucki said, where “you can walk from one end of the college to the other in your pajamas.” Students come (and stay) as they are.

“We’re not in the center of campus where people are just passing through,” Caddeau said. “They are here to hang out.”

Rhoades finds Forbes’ removal from the bustle to be its strength. “There are less people that are going to Forbes all the time,” he said. “There’s more of the same people, too. At other dining halls, there’s a ‘Google Calendar’ mindset, whereas with Forbes, you go to the dining hall and eat with whoever is there.” Rhoades finds meals at Forbes more meaningful and spontaneous than those at other colleges.

Forbes has always been a site for conversation, Princeton’s version of the Algonquin Hotel. Rhoades remarked on evenings turned early mornings in the Flib (a “Flingo” term for the Forbes Library), talking about music and God and the universe and astrophysics. Like the first graduating class that was drawn back to Forbes after Commencement, Rhoades feels the pull at the end of every night.

On walks back from Firestone at two or three in the morning, he said, his friends “all begin to arrive at their dorms, one by one, to Rocky and then Butler and then Yeh.” And then, it’s just him, walking across Alexander Road in the silence and the snow toward home. One hundred years later, there is always room at the inn.