#ThrowbackThursday: A Creative Solution to the No-Car Rule

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“Old Elegance at Old Nassau,” read a Life magazine feature on Grinnell’s ingenious endeavor. The New York Times also picked up on the story, giving him front-page attention alongside articles on the Republicans’ campaign strategy and nuclear testing in the Soviet Union. “Grinnell has a passion for the past and is obsessed with carriages,” PAW reported in 1958. Having purchased a vintage green-and-black 80-year-old Brewster brougham from an antique dealer and an Amish-bred horse named Nancy, Grinnell was ready for business. He made appearances at Princeton football games and rented out to alumni for weekend excursions. Decked out in a top hat and tailcoat, and inspired by the carriages in Central Park, he also took dates on romantic, moonlit rides to Lake Carnegie ($3 for half an hour) and the Institute for Advanced Study ($5 for an hour). Princeton lifted the no-car rule in the late ’60s but reinstated it for first-year students in 2004, due to constraints on the availability of undergraduate parking. In the decade since the change, no freshman has followed Grinnell’s example.