Julian Street

The Street Library, which is a wing of Wilcox Hall, was given in 1961 by Graham D. Mattison '26 in memory of the writer Julian Street (1879-1947), who lived in Princeton in the 1920s and befriended many undergraduates, of whom Mattison was one. The Street Library provides residents of Woodrow Wilson College with a selection of some ten thousand books in greatest demand by undergraduates. Mattison's gift built the library and purchased the original selection of books; it also provided an endowment for the addition of new books each year.

Street, whose son, Julian Street, Jr., graduated from Princeton in 1925, wrote that "as an outsider" he was fascinated by college life in Princeton as a "vision of . . . life in miniature." Before coming here to live he had collaborated with Booth Tarkington 1893 in writing a comedy, The Country Cousin, which had a successful run on Broadway. During the decade that he lived in Princeton, Street wrote a novel and three volumes of short stories, one of which ("Mr. Bisbee's Princess") won the O'Henry Prize for 1925. He was best known as a gourmet and author of books on wine, food, and travel.

Source: Leitch p. 456 ff