Edwards Hall commemorates the College's third president, Jonathan Edwards. It was built in 1880 at the behest of President McCosh to fill "the clamant want" of a "new and plain dormitory to provide cheap rooms for . . . struggling students," and to reduce the number of freshmen compelled "to live beyond our walls and under no tutorial inspection." McCosh was sensitive to reports "zealously propagated by the friends of rival institutions" that Princeton was becoming a rich man's college and was not "making provisions for a class of persons for whom the College was originally instituted." He was also persuaded that the student disturbances that had brought the College unfavorable attention in the newspapers in the late 1870s "were hatched in extra-collegiate rooms in town." In the 1880s and 1890s Edwards Hall had a reputation for "plain living and high thinking" and for a time was known as "Poler's Paradise."

Source: Leitch p. 152 ff

Edwards Hall in Evolution of the Campus

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