Princeton, NJ – In a lot of towns, a letter to the editor from two acclaimed historians condemning a proposed new apartment complex in a historically significant neighborhood would have been the last word on that subject.
The historians are James M. McPherson, who won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1989 for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, and Sean Wilentz, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005), whose interests also include social history. Wilentz is the author of Bob Dylan in America and won a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to Dylan’s official “Bootleg Series” release of his 1964 concert at New York’s Philharmonic Hall.
In their letter to the Town Topics published on October 16, McPherson and Wilentz called the proposed new apartment project at the corner of Stockton Street and Hibben Road an “irreparable act of vandalism” to the neighborhood, which contains landmarks dating back to pre-Revolutionary War days. Even though the project has passed all of its regulatory hurdles to date, McPherson and Wilentz urged not just Princetonians but concerned Americans to continue to fight “this latest threatened heedless spoilation.”…