Rutgers Then and Now

Rutgers University has come a long way since it was granted a royal charter in 1766. As it migrated from a parsonage in Somerville, to the New Brunswick-sited Sign of the Red Lion tavern, to stately Old Queens, and expanded northward along College Avenue, it would both compete and collaborate with the city that surrounded it for room to grow.

Rutgers, Then and Now tells this story, proceeding through ten sequential development phases of College Avenue and Piscataway campus expansionseach with its own buildings and physical layoutsthat took place over the course of 250 years. It delivers stunning photographic and historic documentation of the growth of the university, showing what it was and appeared originally versus what it is and looks like today. Among other in-depth analyses, the book compares the diminutive geographic scale of todays historical College Avenue Campusonce the entirety of Rutgersto the much larger-sized (in acreage) Busch Campus. Replete with more than 500 images, the book also considers the Rutgers campuses that might have been, examining plans that were changed or abandoned. Shedding light on the sacrifices and gifts that transformed a small college into a vital hub for research and beloved home for students, it explores how Rutgers grew to become a world-class university.