Black and Yellow
A close look at Princeton University’s historic Joseph Henry House
Outside the eggshell yellow walls of Joseph Henry House, situated along the northern edge of Princeton University’s campus, the sky is an uninterrupted blue — a summer sky that could fool anyone into believing it is mid-June were it not for the snow adorning the bloated bushes standing guard around the house’s perimeter. The naked branches of the surrounding trees impertinently draw long afternoon shadows on the building’s face — grey veins that reflect the nearly two centuries lived by the house. Inside, in Room 16, a group of 16 sophomores sit. With the exception of two students whose slight unpunctuality has cost them a chair at the table, the rest are gathered attentively, notebooks in front of them, around a polished chestnut table that nearly spans the room. From the head of the table, John McPhee, prolific nonfiction writer and Ferris Professor of Journalism at the university since 1974, introduces the guest speaker of the day: Mary Norris, a writer and copy-editor for The New Yorker and self-professed “comma queen,” who sits at the opposite end. It is simply another Monday for the students in JRN 240, a three-hour seminar on writing creative nonfiction.
The light fixtures above our heads, made up of frosted wine glasses with a Grecian labyrinthine pattern, are unlit, rendering the room at the mercy of filtered sunlight, fickle and indecisive, highlighting and obscuring faces in a teasing dance. As I sit, listening to Mary’s fascinating and incredibly amusing adventures with the Greek alphabet and the minutiae of English punctuation, my mind wanders to think about all of the brilliant writers who have surely graced this room and, perhaps, sat in the very chair I am sitting in.
Evidence of these writers hangs all over Joseph Henry House’s fabled walls. A scribbled fragment of a manuscript titled Ode to the Maggot, by Yusef Komunyakaa, a professor of Creative Writing, hangs next to me. The “evolution from early notes to the final poem” of A Disquisition upon the Soul, by James Richardson, professor of English and Creative Writing, hangs at the other end of the room. However, parts of one manuscript, a passage from Toni Morrison’s 1997 novel, Paradise, catches my eye more than the rest. Hung across from me in a golden riveted frame are two simple documents: on the left, a chaotic draft scrawled and marked up on a piece of generic lined paper, and, on the right, its cleaned-up, typed-up twin that eventually made it into the book.
There is something inspiring about seeing that lined paper — a sight so often daunting to aspiring writers — entirely scratched up, circled and crossed out, written and rewritten, alongside the final product. Just as there is something inexplicably enthralling about reading the “Stars — they’re just like us!” section of US Weekly (where Channing Tatum is caught stocking up at Target and Ashton Kutcher is discovered to “stay hydrated” by sipping from his water bottle), it is reassuring to be reminded of how very human we can be. No one, not even Toni Morrison, can escape the necessary revision process (complete with self-doubt and uncertainty) any writer must undergo.
The purpose of Joseph Henry House was not always to serve as a museum of literary memorabilia or as a home for Princeton’s Andlinger Center for the Humanities. Rather, it was a home to Joseph Henry. With its raised panel shutters, square columns embellished with a row of dentils under each cornice, Greek Style portico, and white trimming punctuated by decorative webbing, the house fits in with most of Princeton’s architecture. Constructed in 1838 in the Federal Style, the home was designed by Charles Steadman, an architect whose lasting legacy includes over 70 buildings in Princeton, a lot of which have become a significant part of the university’s identity. Although it is commonly believed that Henry himself designed the house, as evidenced by early sketches of the building that he presented to the university Trustees in 1837, the building’s current lack of resemblance to those sketches and similarity in style to Steadman’s other works has lead scholars to believe the credit belongs to the latter rather than the former.
The home, with its rickety floors that groan in protest with every step and its peculiarly hidden annex adjoining Room 16 (complete with a kitchen and steel-mesh patio tables), has not always been where it is today — that is, adjacent to Chancellor Green, behind Stanhope Hall, and slightly overshadowed by its lofty neighbour, Nassau Hall. Rather, the building is known for having been moved an astonishing amount of times in order to allow for other buildings to be constructed. It was moved in 1879 for Reunion Hall, 1925 for the University Chapel, and 1946 for Firestone Library, until finally coming to rest on the Front Campus lawn across from the John Maclean House.
For Henry, the distinctive yellow building was as much a personal dream as a part of his compensation, provided by the university in order to incentivize him to teach at Princeton. In 1832, Yale’s prominent geologist, Benjamin Silliman, was asked what he thought of Henry as a candidate for an appointment at Princeton. Silliman said that, “as a physical philosopher he has no superior in our country; not among the young men.” To which Henry, dubious and only a high-school teacher at the time, asked, “Are you aware of the fact that I am not a graduate of any college and that I am principally self-educated?”
Nonetheless, Henry was an extremely talented physicist with precocious instincts that helped him contribute greatly to the field. He spent fourteen years teaching natural history, chemistry, architecture, and natural philosophy at what was then called the College of New Jersey (Princeton) and established his own laboratory where he conducted research on electromagnetism — a concept that was new at the time. Through his research, Henry discovered self-inductance, an achievement after which the standard unit to measure electrical inductance became known as the ‘henry.’ He was also known for building the strongest electromagnets of his era, and was arguably the first to invent a sounding-type telegraph before the often-credited Samuel Morse. It is recorded in student memoirs from the 1840’s that he wired the invention from his laboratory in Philosophical Hall (where Chancellor Green now stands) to his home and occasionally used it to order lunch through telegraphic messages.
Outside of his historic home, Joseph Henry also appears permanently in statue form. Looking “like a man of action, wearing an academic gown and a look of determination,” Henry is memorialized in marble by Daniel Chester French, a celebrated sculptor who also contributed to the Lincoln Memorial, in a corner of Frist Campus Center’s exterior. Far more interesting, however, is what name fails to be memorialized anywhere on campus.
Sam Parker, a mixed-race free man, typically goes unmentioned in the story of Joseph Henry. However, Parker, with an annual $48 salary, was Henry’s “servant and assistant.” In Henry’s personal journals, he writes that Parker was a form of “indispensable” assistance, “a coloured servant whom I have taught to manage my batteries and who now relieves me from all the dirty work of the laboratory.” Parker is believed to have been incredibly critical to Henry’s research — so much so that when Parker was ill in the summer of 1842 all of Henry’s experiments came to a standstill while he recovered. Parker even directly participated in the professor’s experiments, acting as a “human galvanometer” and taking the shocks that were necessary in the “interest of science.” Edward Shippen, student memoirist from the class of 1845, wrote that “Professor Henry’s Sam” was “one of the most important persons in Princeton (according to the students’ view)” but that the students liked Sam “as an engine…and hated him as a ‘ginger n****r’” who “put on airs.”
Indeed, there is next to nothing written about Sam Parker. What little there is came with the university’s “Princeton and Slavery” project, released last year in a collaborative effort to investigate and tell the stories of the school’s historical involvement with slavery. The difficult, uncomfortable past is what the project calls “the central paradox of American history” and one easily exemplified by the university.
I think back to that manuscript inside Joseph Henry’s house, the one written by Toni Morrison. I remember that Morrison delivered the keynote address at the Princeton Slavery Symposium last year, in which the years-old research was shared publicly, and discourse on the school’s controversial racial history resurfaced. I can’t help but wonder if Morrison knows what the walls on which her work hangs have been a judge to, what is emblematized when the name “Joseph Henry” continues to be spoken and “Sam Parker” remains hidden in the silence of unknowing students. Perhaps more so than simply inspiration for the anxious writers learning within these yellow walls, Morrison’s manuscript is a small step towards reconciling that historical paradox. It is a small step towards giving credit where it’s due.