Princeton to Build $50,000 Kiosk

In 1983, Harvard laid out $57,000 for a new guard house inside Johnston gate. Not to be outdone by their Crimson counterparts, Princeton has just shelled out $50,000 for a booth of its very own.

The Princeton kiosk will serve as a guard tower at the new traffic entrance into the campus. The kiosk, which will accommodate a single security guard, is being built primarily in wood in "the style of an 18th-century cupola," according to Jon Hlafter, director of physical planning at Princeton. With a price tag of $50,000, the booth will cost about $1000 per square foot, Hlafter estimates.

The kiosk's architect, Robert Venturi, who heads the presitigious Philadelphia firm of Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown, said he was disappointed by unfavorable student reaction to the kiosk. The structure "should not be criticized the way it is," he said. "The students should note that architecture as opposed to building inevitably costs more. We have been working very hard and very furiously to give Princeton a useful and decent booth," he said.

He admonished students to "focus more on important issues...if this is a typical hour, $30 million will be spent at the Pentagon."

The pricey kiosk is reminiscent of Harvard's own sentry booth, built in 1983 at a total cost of $57,000. Crafted in the Victorian style and also built to house a single security guard, the Johnston Gate kiosk boasted a cost per square foot of about $2000.

Why the costly kiosks? According to Justin Harmon, director of commmunications and publications at Princeton, their kiosk is part of a multi-million dollar renovation of Alexander Hall, the main campus concert facility, and the adjacent Stockton Court plaza. The redesigned entrance area will eliminate traffic congestion and give visitors "a sense of place," he said.

Student reaction to the expenditure has been less favorable. Senior Eliot Young, a member of Students for a Responsible Society, an undergraduate group, said in a letter to the Daily Princetonian that the $50,000 spent on the kiosk could have paid for two single family residences in nearby Trenton.

Harmon was also perturbed by student reaction. He noted that the money for the kiosk came from a $100,000 grant from the DeWitt Wallace Foundation, and was specifically earmarked for renovation. Harmon emphasized that Princeton "did not divert funds from dryers, books for the library, scholarships, or other worthy purposes."

Hlafter said that the Princeton sentry house "is hardly a building in the traditional sense. It is more a decorative piece." He said that as an aesthetic work, the booth should not be judged on a cost-per-square foot basis.