An online trove of historical campus scenes

The newly digitized Grounds and Buildings historical photograph ­collection of Mudd Manuscript Library makes about 7,000 photographs of the campus available to the public on the Web. Photos range from the late 1850s to the present. Visitors to the site can page through the alphabetized collection or refine their searches by photographer, topic, or genre. It is easy to search for a specific topic or building: Select “Chancellor Green,” for example, and 128 photos are displayed. “This set of photos is consistently the most used of all of the Archives’ photo collections,” said University Archivist Daniel Linke. More than 25,000 photos should be available online in coming years, he said.

To visit the collection, go to the Princeton University Digital Library site at pudl.princeton.edu. Click on the “Collections” tab, then scroll down to “Historical Photograph Collection: Grounds and Buildings Series.”

An 1884 photo shows four buildings that no longer stand: the School of Science; the dynamo building, a source of power; the biological laboratory; and the original Dickinson Hall

Crew members prepare for practice in front of the original campus boathouse in 1875

An onlooker assesses damage outside East Pyne after a storm in the 1950s

Students play a game of ball behind Witherspoon Hall, circa 1930–50

A snowstorm circa 1890 keeps horse-drawn snowplows working in front of Blair Arch

The Dinky station near Witherspoon Hall, circa 1880