Wilson’s Hallways Weren’t Built to Prevent Riots

By Francesca BillingtonThere’s a rumor trapped in the winding hallways of Wilson’s ugly and inconvenient dorms--those hallways were built to prevent riots during civil unrest in the 60’s. Recently, student protests to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the residential college prompted us to straighten things out.The idea behind the rumor is that the winding hallways prevented students from mobilizing. University Architect Ronald McCoy said it’s not true.“The plans are definitely strange but I suspect they were an experiment in functionalist architecture of the time,” McCoy said. “The plans are very rational, functional and economical — all characteristics of the time.”  Though the dorms were designed in 1960, student unrest on American campuses didn’t start until later in the decade. The curvy halls were actually built to maximize space and create larger, economical dorm rooms. McCoy said that the architects also wanted to give the rooms natural light, so they placed the bathrooms in the center of the buildings, causing the corridors to wind around them.“All single rooms and multiple-room suites in the dormitories open off the stairwells, eliminating the waste of long, hotel-like corridors,” ‘It’s Time to Finish the Job’, an article about Wilson dormitories said. “The result is greater living space per dollar and per student.”The original dorm plans did not accommodate fire safety regulations. Soon after students moved into a suite on the third floor of the new 1939 Hall, they were even forced to evacuate and relocate rooms, according to a Daily Princetonian article, “5 Princeton Rooms Shut as Firetraps”. The winding hallways were added to the plan to create more fire escapes.The floor plan of Dodge-Osborn Hall shows the curving hallways in grey. In response, architects created more effective fire escapes, which required constructing winding corridors around the previously existing bathrooms, Jon Hlafter, University Architect Emeritus said.The new Wilson dorms received positive feedback from students. The University even introduced the “gizmo,” a furniture piece that combined a bookcase, closet, and fridge. There was also the “room-divider,” which housed a TV, fridge, and coat rack.A page from a University magazine revealing the new dorms in Wilson College, which included the “room-divider.”Fred Koetter, the architect hired to design 1927 Hall and Clapp Hall, said he decided on halls with short corridors and stairway entries to allow students to socialize more. The Ink doesn’t agree. Short corridors don’t help students make friends with each other because they never run into their neighbors. All said and done, there’s definitely a lack of space for students to gather. Pretty funny that the administration tried to create buildings that would get students to interact more, but ended up doing just the opposite. Oops!