Nassau Hall has endured war and fires in the more than 260 years since it was built, a building today that is home to the Princeton University administration.
But as with any building, it needs repair, a task that falls on the shoulders of Donald Lowe, assistant vice president of facilities operations at the Ivy League institution.
“The way I like to describe Nassau Hall is that Nassau was there before the country was a country,” Lowe said in a recent interview of a building that was constructed in 1756.
The place where Founding Father James Madison once studied is getting some work. Plans call for a new roof and other repairs the university intends to make between now and early next year. Documents filed with the Princeton planning office also indicate the university will restore the cupola.
“We had an assessment done that told us the structural components of it are fine,” Lowe said. “It’s just that the parts that are visible need attention, need replacement.”
The university would not disclose the cost of the project.
As part of its plans, the university plans to lay a new slate roof with slate from the Buckingham Slate Co., in Virginia, according to documents the university filed with the municipality. The company, founded in 1867, produces an “unfading blue black” slate that has a long life span, a company executive said.
“Essentially, it’s just never ever going to change color, it’s never going to break down. It’s the longest lasting slate in the world,” said Brad Jones, sales director for Buckingham Slate. “It is often used on campuses because of that kind of constancy of color.”
The slate can be found at Harvard University’s Lowell House, a student dormitory, and at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., among other places.
Replacing the roof of an historic building is labor intensive, said George Hnat, who used to own a roofing business in Maryland.
“The slate’s heavy, you’ve got a scaffold,” Hnat said. “Usually, the roof has a steep pitch on it because with slate the water has to run off fairly quickly. You have to have a fairly steep slope.”
Built before the Revolutionary War, Nassau Hall was shelled during the battle of Princeton in 1777, served as the temporary home of the Continental Congress in 1783, and had two fires, in 1802 and 1855.
“The largest stone building in the American colonies, it was built on land donated by Nathaniel FitzRandolph, after whom the university’s FitzRandolph Gate is named,” according to a history of the building on the university’s website.
During the project, passersby will be hard-pressed to miss the work taking place.
“What’s going to look interesting is that even though it’s a relatively straightforward roof replacement and cupola rehabilitation, it will have scaffolding all the way around Nassau Hall and then scaffolding elevated up at the cupola level,” Lowe said. “There will be a massive amount of fencing and scaffolding. It’s going to look like a really major project, but it’s really simple, I guess, at its basic level.”
