Scroll to Menu
| Hopewell | Princeton |
 |  |
| Philadelphia & Reading RR Depot and Train Station | Nassau Street Looking East, Sage Tower |
 |  |
| West Broad Street | Palmer Square and Tavern |
 |  |
| Greenwood Avenue Looking North | The Nassau Inn, J.B. Renwick, Prop. |
 |  |
| Saint Michael’s Orphanage | Alexander Hall, Princeton University |
 |  |
| Labaw Residence on Louellen Street | Horse and Buggy, Nassau & Witherspoon Street |
 |  |
| Hopewell Dainties (The Chocolate Factory) | Cuyler Hall, Princeton University |
 |  |
| Hopewell Bakery & Cash Grocery, C.H. Allen, Prop. | Skating on Loch Carnegie |
 |  |
| Blackwell Avenue Looking North | Quaker Meeting House |
 |  |
| Columbia Avenue | Blair Hall and Campbell Hall, Princeton University |
 |  |
| Ralston Heights, Stairway to Great Walled Garden | Princeton Inn |
 |  |
| Hart Avenue | Van Deventer Avenue |
 |  |
| Blackwell Avenue Looking South | Birdseye View of Palmer Square |
 |  |
| Old School Babtist Church, John Hart Memorial | Football Game, circa 1910, Princeton University |
Colophon, notes from the prop.
Purely for enjoyment, this-page a collection of vintage postcards of scenes from Hopewell Borough and Princeton, New Jersey (with nod to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, first performed at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre on January 22, 1938.)
I’ve lived in historic Hopewell Boro for more than three decades. Just 8 miles from bustling Princeton, with its world-class university, and enveloped by the township of the same name, the borough is a postage stamp-sized .72 square miles of quiet tree-lined streets and Victorian architecture. A notable Revolutionary War crossroads, in June 1778, Washington’s army encamped on the farmland surrounding the-signer John Hart’s home on the north side of town, just prior to The Battle of Monmouth.
The masthead up-top is an original photo-illustration that I created in Photoshop, modeled on the Philadelphia & Reading Train Station in Hopewell, were you to visit it looks a bit different. Other Victorian-era train stations are of virtually identical design. Built in 1876, the Hopewell P&R has been on the state and federal registers of historic places since 1984; still an active freight line; passenger service ceased in 1982; today the station is used as a community center.
A note for collectors: While I much appreciate the charm of well-worn ephemera, I instead decided to show these postcards as closer-to-new, doing some photo-restoration to each, and also taking a measure of ‘artistic license’ with some of them. ~CJ
