From an institutional perspective, the years from the 1760s through the 1790s were among the most traumatic and important in the College's history. They encompass such watershed events as the presidency of John Witherspoon; the Revolutionary War and the Battle of Princeton (which involved the occupation and liberation of Nassau Hall); Nassau Hall's use as the Capitol of the Continental Congress in 1783; and much more .

From an architectural history point of view, however, the post-Revolutionary period is barren, and much of the record concerns repairs. The rebuilding took a long time. At the turn of 19th century, the Trustees were still seeking war reparations from the government.

From an institutional perspective, the years from the 1760s through the 1790s were among the most traumatic and important in the College's history. They encompass such watershed events as the presidency of John Witherspoon; the Revolutionary War and the Battle of Princeton (which involved the occupation and liberation of Nassau Hall); Nassau Hall's use as the Capitol of the Continental Congress in 1783; and much more.

The arrival of John Witherspoon, an energetic Scots scholar recruited as President in 1768, marked a distinct upturn in the fortunes of the College. A good fund raiser -- then as now a requisite for Princeton Presidents -- Witherspoon soon placed the College on a firm financial footing. Witherspoon was equally successful as an educator, and he presided over the studies of some of the College's most notable graduates: James Madison , Aaron Burr, Jr., Philip Freneau , and "Light-horse Harry" Lee, among others.

Surprisingly, during his 25 years as President, Witherspoon constructed no buildings. Of course, the period from 1768 to 1794 was filled with upheaval, some of it indirectly Witherspoon's doing. A great advocate of independence from Britain, Witherspoon had signed the Declaration of Independence and represented New Jersey in the Continental Congress from 1776 to 1782.

Witherspoon could do little to protect his College from the depredations of war, and the American Revolution treated Princeton cruelly. Troops, both British and Continental, were quartered at various times in Nassau Hall, and they ransacked the building and the library. Most calamitous of all was the damage sustained during the Battle of Princeton on 3 January 1777.

Nassau Hall was the scene of a fierce rearguard fight with the retreating British during the battle and it suffered severely. Colonel Alexander Hamilton's battery of New York artillery caused the most spectacular destruction, firing a cannonball that smashed through a window in the prayer hall and destroyed a portrait of King George II

The soldiers also damaged the Rittenhouse Orrery, the College's most important piece of scientific equipment.

A portrait of George Washington, painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1784, was later mounted in the frame of the destroyed painting of King George III. It hangs in the Faculty Room of Nassau Hall today.

At the end of the war, Nassau Hall was in a sorry state. But by July 1783, parts of the building -- including the Prayer Hall and library -- had been sufficiently repaired to house, for four months, the Continental Congress, which brought such men as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the other statesmen of the age to Princeton.

But the famous company must have been of little solace to the beleaguered students of the College. With Witherspoon distracted by affairs of state and the College facilities badly damaged, student life in the early years of the Republic must have been bleak indeed.

Then as now, the food was a sore point. In 1782, for example, a young man named Peter Elmendorf wrote in his diary about the students' bill of fare: "We eat rye bread, half dough, and as black as it possibly can be, and oniony butter, and some times dry bread and thick coffee for breakfast, a little milk or cyder and bread, and sometimes meagre chocolate for supper, very indifferent dinners, such as lean tough boiled fresh beef with dry potatoes."

For students, the slow rebuilding from wartime damage must have been a continuing source of frustration. The College was still applying for war reparations from Congress as late as 1801.

Traveling through Princeton in 1798, an Englishman named Isaac Weld Jr. recorded his impressions of the post-Revolutionary Nassau Hall:

Here is a large college, held in much repute by the neighboring states. The number of students amounts to upwards of seventy; from their appearance, however, and the course of studies they seem to be engaged in, like all other American colleges I ever saw, it better deserves the title of a grammar school than a college. The library, which we were shewn, is most wretched, consisting for the most part of old theological books, not even arranged with any regularity. An orrery, conceived of by Mr Rittenhouse whose talents are so much boasted of by his countrymen, stands at one end of the apartment, but it is quite out of repair, as well as a few detached parts of a philosophical apparatus enclosed in the same glass case...The building is very plain and of stone; it is one hundred and eighty feet in front and four stories high.

Today, of course, the University takes great pride in Princeton's role in the Revolution as a battleground. One of the legendary ghosts on the campus is that of a dying British soldier, who has been reportedly sighted in the basement of Holder Hall on several occasions; other Revolutionary ghosts purportedly haunt Nassau Hall itself. Generations of Orange Key guides have shown visitors the spot on the south wall of Nassau Hall where one of Hamilton's cannonballs struck the building. To this day, groundskeepers carefully trim a small circle in the ivy in that spot.

From an architectural history point of view, however, the post-Revolutionary period is barren, and much of the record concerns repairs. The rebuilding took a long time. At the turn of 19th century, the Trustees were still seeking war reparations from the government.

Finally, in 1801, they received: 1,800 pounds (about $4,800). In April of that year, the Trustees decided to use this money to repair Nassau Hall and acquire new "philosophical equipment" (as scientific apparatus was then called). The Trustees specifically appropriated $700 to repair the rooms in Nassau Hall and to raise the floors "by about a foot" in order to make the rooms "dry, airy, and wholesome."

At the same meeting, Enos Kelsey, the college treasurer, reported that $2,273.21 had been spent constructing the third permanent structure at the college, a house "for the accommodation of a Professor of the College." Commissioned in 1799 as a residence for John Maclean Sr., this house faced onto Nassau Street and served as a pendant to the President's House. During the tenancy of Philip Lindsley, Ashbel Green's Vice President, it became known as the Vice President's House. The house was next occupied by John Maclean Jr. It was demolished or removed in the early 1870s.

In its own small way, this modest new structure represented an improvement in the College's institutional health. Upon Witherspoon's death in 1795, Samuel Stanhope Smith, class of 1769, had succeeded his father-in-law as President, and under his leadership the enrollment had rebounded. With a refurbished Nassau Hall, the College could look forward to the new century with justified optimism.

Aside from the Steward's House, built behind and slightly to the east of Nassau Hall in 1762, the existence of other buildings on the campus during the period 1756 to 1803 remains conjectural. President Burr owned a farmhouse and its adjacent land near where Dillon Gymnasium stands today. He may have added to the structure during his short residency at Princeton. The Trustees Minutes for 24 September 1760 record the speedy removal of the "President's Barn."

The other building project was of an equally prosaic nature. An anonymous account of Princeton's history suggests that the third building on campus was a firehouse, constructed in 1757. The Trustees Minutes do not support this proposition, although there was mention, in 1765, of leather buckets in an "enginehouse." This enginehouse would appear to have been replaced by a larger structure (location also unknown) in 1766. These preparations, however, would soon prove insufficient. In 1802, as the College of New Jersey appeared to flourish for the first time in a long while, came the great fire.