“Rutgers Then and Now”: A Discussion with Authors James W. Hughes and David Listokin

As 2024 comes to a close and EJB Talks concludes another season, Stuart Shapiro discusses the new book by University Professor and Bloustein School Dean Emeritus James W. Hughes and Distinguished Professor David Listokin, “Rutgers Then and Now.” If you missed the book release event held on Thursday, December 12, today’s podcast is your chance to hear more about the events that led to the creation of this book, including the trips to the archives to uncover hidden gems of Rutgers’ pictorial history. The authors also talk about discussions with people from across Rutgers as well as with external groups whose own organizations captured unexpected views of the campus growth. They close out by sharing some of their favorite parts of the project as well as personal views on how Rutgers can continue to grow move forward in the digital information age.

 

Transcript

Stuart Shapiro
Welcome to EJB Talks. I’m Stuart Shapiro, the Dean of the Bloustein School. And the purpose of this podcast is to highlight the work my colleagues and our alumni in the fields of planning, policy, and health are doing to make the world a better place.

This is the final episode of our 11th season of EJB Talks and we have a very special episode today. I’m speaking with my colleague, Professor David Listokin, from our world-ranked urban planning program, and one of my predecessors, Dean Jim Hughes. Jim and David have written along with former Rutgers chancellor Dick Edwards. A new book on the history of Rutgers called, “Rutgers, Then and Now.” Jim and Dave, welcome to the podcast.

James W. Hughes
Thank you.

Stuart Shapiro
So let me start by asking what led the two of you and Dick to decide to write this book.

James W. Hughes
We can actually go back almost three-quarters of a century, to get one of the germs that ultimately led to this book and to the Bloustein School today. In 1946, the then College of Engineering hired Edward B. Wilkins as a professor of planning in the college. At the same time, he was also the campus planner and the director of the Middlesex County Planning Board. And so, he was involved in all the campus planning for really three decades after World War II, and created the planning program within the College of Engineering.

And I was his student from 1961 to 1965 as an undergraduate. And since there were only three planning engineers in the class, I had a lot of attention from him and I’d spent many hours in his office on the third floor of today’s Murray Hall. And he would inform me about all the decisions going on with campus planning and with individual buildings, their quirks and the like. And so we quote him extensively in the book.

But ultimately, planning was moved from the College of Engineering to Livingston College and became the big urban planning urban studies program and that eventually became the Bloustein School. So that’s the long historical sweep. But from my side, you know, it was certainly a tremendous interest in the physical development of the campus, you know, during my stay here. And then David and I had done extensive work on the transformation in New Brunswick, the revitalization of New Brunswick and the like. And that had incorporated parts of the Rutgers development and transformation over time.

So we became partners in that endeavor. And then I don’t remember exactly how Dick got involved. I mean, we knew he was a photographer, and we had the germ of an idea of the three of us coming together and producing a pictorial history of the Rutgers College Avenue campus which was really the nuclei of today’s vast Rutgers empire, which has spread throughout the state. And eventually, as we went into it, it became more complex, more text, less photographs. Although we have more than 500 images in the book. But it wasn’t a careful… maybe we paralleled the development of Rutgers (laughing) but it wasn’t a carefully planned book from the beginning. We sort of got together and it sort of evolved over time. We had certainly a great working relationship among the three of us and we also had some superb help from some of our assistants, some superb editorial help. So it was sort of a really a splendid coming together and really, we spent five years on this and it was really one of our great experiences of being at Rutgers.

Stuart Shapiro
Wow. David, did you want to add anything about your involvement?

David Listokin
To paraphrase somewhat what Jim said. I tell my planning students a lot of life is not planned and this has been a saga. I think it reflects as we were aging or getting more mature, however you expressed (laughing) It’s time….

Stuart Shapiro
Like fine wines David!

David Listokin
It’s time to look back. I think it reflects our, you know, individual interests. I mean, Jim has an amazing encyclopedic knowledge of Rutgers and that, you know, that would be lost if it wouldn’t, you know, be put down in something more formal. And I have interest in history and historic preservation, and of course that intersects a lot with the campus and its evolution.

Stuart Shapiro
Gotcha. Can you tell me a little bit about your research process where… I remember you guys talking about the archives you dug into and things like that? Can you tell me a little bit about that?

James W. Hughes
Well, it started, and David can elaborate on this. It started with gaining access to the archives and learning the process of getting these books and these boxes of files out of the sub basements of Alexander Library. And you had to make appointments and the like and you can only get 2 or 3 boxes at a time. And you would have to take out the images you wanted and then a week later they would copy the images and send them to us and the like. But it started out, we were going to do the whole university. So it was a big, wide process. And then we ultimately narrowed it down to the College Avenue Campus. Again, if that took us five years, the university would have taken us a quarter of a century (laughing) really to go through it. Do you remember those days, David?

David Listokin
Oh. Very fondly. It sort of brings you back to your student days of sort of, being in the bowels of a library. And there’s something special about archives. Because it’s somewhat… you never know exactly what you’re going to find and there’s missing stuff and what have you. The archive librarians were just wonderful. And I can’t thank them enough. But it, you know, there’s the expression, it takes a village to raise a child. There were so many roots we had to grow to bring this book together. I mean, Archives are very important. Rutgers Institutional Planning and Operations. You know, I mean they, their knowledge, their files, their pictures, you know really, really one-of-a-kind.

The New Brunswick Theological Seminary. I kind of hazily knew about them, and then all of a sudden you’re speaking to them. I there there was one emeritus professor there, John Coakley, invited me to his home in Highland Park, and you know, he was very supportive. The Rutgers Prep, we went there and believe it or not, one of their teachers is an archivist and they’ve written two books on Rutgers Prep so we had some wonderful conversations. Touched base with… if there was anyone in New Jersey who knew something about this, we hoped to touch base. The New Jersey Historical Society, the New Brunswick Library,  resources at Middlesex County etc., etc. So it’s a big topic and you had to approach it from different vectors.

James W. Hughes
Yeah, initially the thought of Dick was mainly a photo book as there are a lot of “then and now” photo books out there for Manhattan, a number of cities and the like. And it quickly morphed into really an analytical framework to examine the campus, and I think one of our achievements was actually determining the 10 stages of campus development that the College Avenue campus went through. And again, College Avenue campus is not the best name for that campus because it originally was the Men’s College, Rutgers College, and the like. And it actually went across the river into what is today’s Busch campus. Then it was the River Road campus, which was just an extension of the Men’s College across the river because they ran out of land, they needed space for a football stadium, they needed practice fields. They needed intramural fields and the like. But I think we did a pretty fantastic job in boiling it down to those 10 stages of development to giving an actual framework of how the campus developed.

Stuart Shapiro
You both mentioned the pictures in the book, which are amazing as I was looking through them. Were there a couple of shots that just sort of took your breath away as when you got them and put them in the book?

James W. Hughes
Well, one of the experiences… two or three of them were particular to me because of my personal experiences. One was the New Jersey Garden in the New Jersey room on the original Alexander Library, and this was a magnificent brick patio with the state of New Jersey with a water feature with 1954 native plantings around the patio. And it got wiped out when they put in the new addition to Alexander in the 1990’s. The other one was related to a story by Doc Wilkins who told me, on the wall of the library, which again was eliminated with the addition. There was to be a marble sculpting there, and they commissioned a sculptor for that wall. And the Board of Governors rejected it because it was too classical, because the library was the first modernistic structure on the campus. The sculptor… They rejected it, and the sculptor sued. The settlement was they had to pay the sculptor. Rutgers kept the marble slab, but no other sculpting could go on that wall. So they planted pyracantha on it. So I remember the pyracantha as an undergraduate. But if Doc Wilkins hadn’t related that story to us, that would have never been recorded in history. And completely forgotten. So just those little pieces of Alexander Library struck me.

David Listokin
So my perspective… although your question, which ones did you like? It’s like which child is your favorite? (laughing) Actually not a picture per se, the orthophoto maps, I think, really opened my eyes. And actually one of them showing the center line of College Avenue going straight into the Bush campus and into Waxman. I mean, I had no idea. The aerials, I thought, really, the then and now aerials. You know, speaks a thousand words or those spoke quite a few thousand on that.

You know things like I was not aware of, you know, Bleeker Place on the Nielsen campus. Who knew, you know, that there was a street there or we have pictures of cars parked there, etc. You know, what Jim mentioned on the New Jersey Garden, who knew, who knew? And so, we’re proud of the pictures and actually it was a sense of, if we don’t bring it together, no one else is going to do this. So you know, we’re happy we had the opportunity.

Stuart Shapiro
That’s great. David, you mentioned surprises in the research process if you’re doing it right. You’re always surprised by something you find. Right? So what really threw you for a loop where you were like, wow, I had no idea!

David Listokin
First, there was so much I did not know. And I’ve been working here half a century gone now. So I have to acknowledge that. I guess there were facets that I hadn’t fully appreciated. The episodic nature of the building. It happened in waves. The planned and not so planned. How buildings came about. The change. I mean at one time, if Rutgers needed a building, Rutgers would build the building. And now, you know, you have the public private partnerships. You know, since with DEVCO and the construction of the Honors College and the New Academic Building.

Stuart Shapiro
Yup.

David Listokin
I guess that continues, you know, with the Helix, etc. on that. So just like it’s hard to pick which pictures were best, it’s like, it’s hard to identify which surprises were most revealing.

Stuart Shapiro
Jim, I would imagine it’s hard to surprise you. What surprised you?

James W. Hughes
A number of the early buildings. Well, not so early, certainly into the 20th century, were actually done by “starchitects,” architects who really had national and international acclaim. One of them was Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. And he was the great, great grandson of the first president of Rutgers. And he was hired to do Geological Hall and the Kirkpatrick Chapel and library. And it sounds…the great, great grandson of that designing two buildings on Old Queens…a little bit of nepotism in that situation? Well, it turned out what he did was the Dakota apartment building in New York City, which was the first luxury rental building and now one of the most famous co-ops were John. He did the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

Stuart Shapiro
Wow.

James W. Hughes
He did the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. He did the Princeton Stadium and the like. And we had no idea that he had been that famous an architect. Another one was Louis Ayers, who was a 19…1896 electrical engineering graduate from the College of Engineering. And he did all of the neo-Georgian buildings on the Rutgers campus. But he also did the Department of Commerce building in Washington, DC, now the Herbert Hoover building. But at the time, it was the largest building ever constructed in Washington. And he also did… was one of the architects of the Federal Triangle and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York City. So, Rutgers had this tradition of having superb architects in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. That’s not to say the current architects aren’t good, but those were really exceptional individuals.

Stuart Shapiro
Yeah. Many of those buildings that you’ve mentioned, I’ve been in. The Department of Commerce, the Plaza Hotel and such. So I know exactly what you’re talking about. So, David, earlier you talked about how research, you know, it doesn’t always go according to plan. And it seems to me from looking at the book and from talking to both of you that Rutgers’ evolution, for all of our pride and planning, has not always gone to plan. And that there have been, sort of, random developments that occurred along the way. Can you guys speak to that a little bit?

James W. Hughes
Sure, I’ll do a little bit and then turn it over to David. One of them, I think, is at several stages there were distinct plans made. Several by Harlan Bartholomew, who was another… he wasn’t a Rutgers engineering graduate. He dropped out in1909 because he didn’t have enough money to pay his tuition. And he became the first municipal city planner in the United States and then created one of the largest planning consulting firms in the country. And he did one plan…several plans for a centralized campus out along Route 1, which didn’t exist. It was College Farm. His idea, and he did a lot of metrics in terms of future Rutgers expansion, and he saw the fragmentation that existed. And again, this is over a century ago and we still have the fragmentation issue today.

You had a separate Women’s College in one geographic location, a Men’s College, and a School of Agriculture. So, his plan was to bring them all together in one location. Obviously, it was too much for the Board of Trustees to handle a concept like that. So, he did develop some other plans and the like for College Avenue. But none of the buildings subsequently followed his plan. It was like, it was put on a shelf. And then when they had money for a building, let’s put it here, let’s put it there.

And David mentioned the center line of College Avenue. That was another Louis Ayres plan. And the initial plan was to move all the science activities from today’s Voorhees Mall to a new science campus, a sub campus, on today’s Busch campus. And Waksman was the linkage where you extended the College Avenue center line and center line the building on it. And they had a great plan, which was on a ridgeline a crescent and along that crescent would be a whole series of neo-Georgian buildings overlooking today’s golf course. Two of the buildings were built, Chemistry and Microbiology, and then the plan was completely forgotten, as all the science activities were located in the 60s and the like so. That’s always a problem of creating a plan and then sticking with it. Because decision makers change and they have their own ideas of where they would want buildings and the like and ignore some of the work that went on before.

David Listokin
So, I would just add to that the budget has often been an issue. I mean, it really starts with Old Queens. You know, there was ornamentation and other facets of that building that were planned and just weren’t done. They didn’t have the resources. I guess it’s also the opportunistic. You know, Rutgers becomes a land grant college. Now we can do some buildings. New Jersey passes this special tax credit if you develop near transit. Transit hub tax credits and that helps fund the Honors College, you know. Things you wouldn’t think of those linkages. The New Academic Building, etc. So, it’s you plan and then, life and reality hits.

Stuart Shapiro
(laughing) Yeah, that’s true in many spheres of life. So, the book is called “Rutgers Then and Now.” But I want to end by sort of looking forward as well. In going through this and looking at the history, one of the prime values of looking at history is telling us about today and moving forward. What lessons are there, if any, for Rutgers in particular as we look to the next decades.

James W. Hughes
Well, one area which David put a lot of time into was questioning the physical needs in an information age economy. In a mobile information age economy. And where you have distance learning, distance classrooms, where you have Zoom. Where you have all types of ways of communicating that you don’t have to do daily face-to face communication. So, it raises questions about the maintenance of existing space and what about new space?

And again, when you when you when you require a new space, you probably have to issue a bond issue and the like. An alternative to that, which Rutgers has been following the last decade or so is renting existing buildings that are not physically, directly on the campus, whether they’re in downtown New Brunswick, such as the School of Social Work to Albany Street Plaza. The Planning and Facilities and Operations moved out to a suburban office building in Piscataway because, budget wise, it was just too easy to rent space rather than going through a five-year planning and construction period. So, I think is a lot of uncertainty going forward about how universities are going to evolve. We don’t have a secure road map yet.

David Listokin
So, I would add on some further lessons going forward. You have the expression “town-gown.” Some of that separation has lessened. You just look at the bookstore. You know, bookstores used to be in the heart of the College Avenue campus. Then they dipped their toe in the water and they built up a parking garage right by the train station. Now we have the bookstore there. And of course, the latest permutation is the Barnes and Noble bookstore, right in the heart of the downtown by Gateway Transit village.

You know, just think of us. Bloustein and Mason Gross. You know, we moved. You know and deliberately have moved. You know, to the heart of the downtown. Now that that offers both opportunities, and it has its own pressures. You know, there’s an expression, “studentification,” that students move into, or large number of students move into you know, neighborhoods around universities. It raises housing costs, it has other impacts on on that.

I think looking forward, more attention to preservation. I mean, if you look at the College Avenue campus, almost every building, in some way, would qualify to go on the National Register of Historic Places. Because of age and people associated with it and the architecture. Well, you know, Rutgers and other universities, we have to think more about that. And maybe how you could capture that as a potential revenue source. Can you use tax credits? You know, as you go forward, you have limited university funds. You know, just like the transit hub credit was used, you wouldn’t think of that being used in the heart of the campus for the Honors College and the New Academic Building.

I think, you know, looking at… too much of college campuses have been devoted to parking.

Stuart Shapiro
Uh huh!

David Listokin
How do we get past that? And actually, you know, if you look at College Avenue it used to have… both sides had parking and you would bike there under peril, you know so I think you have to think about that.

But also second, what Jim was referring to. You know with COVID. Do we continue to just, build like we did? A large auditorium rather than smaller spaces? How do you capitalize on hybrid? Why does everything have to be on the college campus itself? You know, very much more broadly, you know, where office work is done with hybrid arrangements. So there’s a lot of change that will happen and challenges that will happen. But I guess when you look at what Rutgers has accomplished in two and a half centuries, I’m kind of confident we will at least muddle through.

Stuart Shapiro
Excellent. A lot of the challenges you two mentioned, the hybridization of higher education, the parking and the cars, rather than bikes or scooters. These are these are challenges that are not just Rutgers’, but higher education’s in general. It’s been a fascinating discussion, thanks to both of you so much for coming on.

James W. Hughes
Well, it’s great to be here.

David Listokin
Nice. Thank you.

Stuart Shapiro
Also, big thank you to our producer, Tamara Swedberg, and to Karyn Olsen. Happy holidays to everyone! And we will see you in January with another season of talks from experts at the Bloustein School. Have a wonderful and safe holiday, everyone.