Reunions, reunions, 1915–2009

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Princeton’s reunions are almost as old as Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity itself, going back to the days when the uni­ver­sity was still known as the “Col­lege of New Jer­sey.” In today’s blog, posted dur­ing the Reunions week­end of 2011, we are show­ing you the old­est reunion footage in the Uni­ver­sity Archives: an anno­tated film of the Class of 1895’s 20th and 30th Reunions in 1915 and 1925, fol­lowed by footage of the Class of 1915’s 40th Reunion in 1955, and the Class of 1944’s 65th Reunion in 2009, the most recent reunion footage in the Uni­ver­sity Archives. The films may be com­pared with reunion footage fea­tured in pre­vi­ous blogs, includ­ing the Reunion of the Class of 1921 in 1923 and 1926, and the Reunions and P-rade of 1928, of 1960 and 1961, and of 1986. A com­pi­la­tion of this footage to wel­come return­ing alumni in 2011 can be found here.

The Class of 1895’s 20th reunion footage is the first of its kind, and would well have been the very old­est film in the Uni­ver­sity Archives, if not for the news­reel footage of the inau­gu­ra­tion of Pres­i­dent John Grier Hibben in 1912. The film was made by the Con­necti­cut Film Com­pany, which had two men fol­low the class around cam­pus on Reunions Sat­ur­day, then return the fol­low­ing Mon­day to show the film at the Class Din­ner. As Class Sec­re­tary Andrew Imbrie put it in a let­ter to class­mates in advance of Reunions, this would be “a stunt never before attempted at any Prince­ton reunion.”

The anno­tated film opens with alumni and their sons dis­em­bark­ing from the train (which is still in front of Blair Hall). We then see mem­bers of the Class of 1895 pass by their place of lodg­ing, the Hill Dor­mi­tory at 48 Uni­ver­sity Place (0:48). Next we watch the class as they pro­ceed through FitzRan­dolph Gate accom­pa­nied by Klingler’s Allen­town Band (1:07). Class mem­bers have been instructed to wear straw hats, white trousers and a dark coat. Hat bands, but­tons and white umbrel­las were pro­vided for the class. “Umbrel­las keep hot sun off bald heads,” wrote Imbrie, “and when used en masse dis­pel the silly feel­ing which one has when one car­ries one by one’s self.”

Back at head­quar­ters at the Bachelor’s Club, we see a crowd of men and chil­dren gath­ered around class mem­ber Howard Colby’s “‘sar­sa­par­illa auto­mo­bile,’ built, dec­o­rated and pro­vi­sioned with thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion for the small army of sons and daugh­ters” of class mem­bers (2:23). As the film winds down, the cam­era pans over the 136 class mem­bers who returned for 1895’s 20th along with their sons (3:53). The D.Q. Brown Long Dis­tance Cup is pre­sented by Dick­in­son Brown to his class­mate Henry “Spi­der” McNulty, who trav­eled the far­thest, from China, to attend the reunion.

This twelve minute silent color movie cap­tures the Class of 1915’s 40th reunion, open­ing with tents on cam­pus and P-rade footage in the rain, which ends with the tra­di­tional Yale-Princeton Com­mence­ment base­ball game at Uni­ver­sity Field at the cor­ner of Prospect Avenue and Olden Street. The build­ing at 3:44 is the for­mer Osborn Club House (until recently the Third World Cen­ter). The P-rade footage is fol­lowed at 5:55 by indoor and out­door din­ing scenes and addi­tional reunion footage.

The Class of 1944’s “Great­est Gen­er­a­tion” 65th Reunion hon­ored the mem­bers of the class (89%) who served in World War II. The film (a gift of Her­bert Hobler ’44) includes the Memo­r­ial Ser­vice the class held in Trin­ity Church, a spe­cial por­tion of which rec­og­nized the 22 mem­bers of the class who lost their lives in the war. The U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” led the class in the P-rade.

–Christie Lutz and Helene van Rossum

The films fea­tured here are part of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Class Records (Class of 1895 and Class of 1944) and the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 0043).

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