#ThrowbackThursday: Chancellor Green, Espresso Bar

With its beautiful stained glass windows, wood-paneled walls, and the occasional bird fluttering by, today’s Chancellor Green is a peaceful haven for studying. But it wasn’t always so quiet. “On a Thursday night, you couldn’t move,” Duncan MacNichol ’81 told the Daily Princetonian in 2009. MacNichol was describing the Chancellor Green pub, which opened after New Jersey lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18 in 1973. For about 10 years, students socialized at the pub over beers and snacks. The pub closed in 1984, after the drinking age was raised back to 21. In 1985, Chancellor Green reopened as a coffee bar, above, featuring espressos, cappuccinos, teas, and pastries. There have been efforts in the last few years to reopen a campus pub, but plans were shelved recently because an ideal location couldn’t be found. For now, Chancellor Green, which began its life as a library, will continue to be a silent space, for the turning of pages and the tapping of a keyboard.