Princeton's local boarding houses were an option for students well into the 20th century. After a fire in 1855 meant students had to look for housing alternatives and a consistent demand after enrollment exceeded housing capacity in the years that followed, many students had no choice but to live off campus. Here, George Grenville Merrill of the Class of 1889 reads in his room at Mrs. G. Goldie's boarding house in Princeton, New Jersey, 1889.
The hat he's wearing doesn't mean it was graduation day; some students just liked wearing mortarboards back then. As the Princetonian wrote as reason to wear such a hat in 1881,
"They can be, and are used to take notes on, as card tables, and, with the aid of a piece of chalk, as checker and 'go-bang' boards. It is almost time for the Faculty to warn us against sitting upon the ground, but a man with a mortarboard would have no need thus to risk his life and encourage malaria ; his cap transferred to the ground becomes a stool. What more picturesque than a row of bare-headed reverend Seniors upon a row of mortarboards? Calling the chalk again into requisition, we transform our magic cap into a target and thus encourage Princeton's world renowned pistol practice. It has been noticed (and with much justice) that the cap in question is very becoming to all."
Historical Photograph Collection, Campus Life Series (AC112), Box MP165, Folder 4, Image No. 6051.
