A student’s wheels in the 1920s
Princeton University Archives

In Response to: Autos Get the Boot [6]

I impute nothing greater than irony to the following sad postscript to “Autos Get the Boot,” on the decision in 1925 by Princeton President John Grier Hibben 1882 *1893 to ban “all automobiles, carriages, and motorcycles [from campus] except in cases where necessary for business purposes” (That Was Then, May 16).

 Eight years after his decree and only one year after his retirement from the University — on May 16, 1933 — Hibben and his wife were motoring back to Princeton from Elizabeth, N.J., when their car collided with a truck on wet pavement. The president died while he was being transported to the Rahway (N.J.) Hospital; Mrs. Hibben died from her injuries a few weeks later. They were buried in Princeton Cemetery.