Butler College Dormitories (Princeton University)

The university pulled down five Butler College dormitories and put up new residences in their place, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Of the material from the old college, all but 400 of 9,000 tons was reused or recycled. The residences opened for the start of classes in autumn 2009, when Butler became a four-year residential college, the last of those the university had planned. The dedication ceremony took place on 24 September 2009.

Henry N. Cobb, a founding partner of the firm, designed the college, with Michael W. Bischoff as fellow lead designer. The landscape is by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

The complex holds five residences within two buildings, with 10,000 m² of gross area, plus a café, a study library, a lounge, a gallery, seminar rooms and landscaped courtyards. The facades are of red brick in varying shades, picked out with bands of limestone, some continuous and some placed at random. They undulate, swelling and receding according to interior use, since the upper-floor suites needed larger bedrooms; the walls are built of custom bricks in twenty-five different shapes.

Cobb wanted to capture, in contemporary form, the traditional intimacy and eventfulness of Princeton's Collegiate Gothic. The ground is shaped on two levels: upper and lower courtyards lead to the existing Butler Commons. The college offers a broad public walkway, and new footpaths enrich the campus. The east wing encloses Memorial Court, a south-facing courtyard laid out as a stepped amphitheatre.

Low-E glazing lets daylight reach most of the interior, and green roofs make up more than half of the roof area.

At its opening the college was home to 288 students, both undergraduates and graduate students, and to one resident faculty member. Suites for four, each pairing two bedrooms around a shared living room and bathroom, account for most of the rooms. Each residence offers kitchens, and lounges where students can work or unwind. Among the residences are Wilf, Bogle and Yoseloff Halls, and the Class of 1967 Hall.

The residences connect through Butler Commons, home to the James S. Hall '34 Memorial Gallery and a multi-level mural by the artist Odili Donald Odita.