New Jersey/In the Region - A Battle Over Faculty Housing - NYTimes.com The Institute for Advanced Study plans 15 faculty houses near Princeton Battlefield State Park. A FIGHT going on over a 22-acre Revolutionary War battlefield here is growing in intensity. Pitting scholars against historic preservationists, the conflict threatens to erase all traces of that earlier skirmish, which some historians consider the turning point of the War of Independence. The property in question, owned by the Institute for Advanced Study, has recently been approved by the Princeton Regional Planning Board as the site for 15 faculty houses, covering 7 of the 22 acres. Those plans are being challenged by the Princeton Battlefield Society, a citizens group that views the site as the geographical fulcrum of George Washington's counterattack against the British during the 1777 Battle of Princeton. The dispute deepened two weeks ago when the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the battlefield as one of the country's 11 most endangered historic places, citing "inappropriate development" as the reason for its selection. According to the trust's Philadelphia field director, Walter Gallas, only 10 of the 242 sites it has identified as worthy of preserving over the last 25 years have been given over to redevelopment. "We're hopeful we can turn this one into a save," he said. We think this really is a place of national significance. It's a place where you really can see what could have determined the trajectory of our country's history. Finding an alternative seems unlikely, at least from the perspective of officials at the institute, which has spent years pursuing various housing opportunities on its 800-acre campus bordering the Princeton Battlefield State Park. Since its founding in 1930 as a place where international scholars come to pursue advanced research, the institute has promoted the value of residential proximity. "We're not just a theoretical community but an actual community of scholars with the ability to interact at all times," said John Masten, an associate director of the Institute for Advanced Study, where Albert Einstein was on the faculty and J. Robert Oppenheimer served as the director. Thirty years ago, more than half of institute faculty members lived within walking distance, Mr. Masten said. Today, 10 of 28 live in neighborhood homes that the institute has acquired over the years for professors to buy (and their estates to sell back to the institute upon death). In building the planned 15 faculty homes - 7 detached houses and 8 clustered town houses - the institute seeks to provide more reasonably priced housing in a now-exclusive neighborhood that most faculty members couldn't afford to buy into. This is not the institute's first attempt to build on some part of its land. In the early 1970s there were plans to build 6 or 7 homes on a 12.2-acre parcel that the institute later sold to the state to be included in the Battlefield State Park, along with 19.4 acres it deeded to the state. The total it received from the transactions was $335,000. In the 1990s, the institute floated plans to build 246 homes on a 600-acre tract now known as Institute Woods. Community opposition was fierce enough that the institute sold its development rights to Princeton Township for $14 million, preserving that land in perpetuity. During both of these earlier thwarted efforts, Mr. Marsten said, the institute received assurances from both the state and the township that it would be able to build faculty housing on its remaining property. That is a point the Princeton Battlefield Society disputes. Since its formation in 1971, it has devoted many of its resources to fighting the institute to preserve land around the 80-acre Princeton Battlefield State Park. According to the group's officers and lawyer, this is its biggest challenge yet. "We're talking about a piece of property that is of immense historic value and we're going to destroy it under tons of rubble to put up housing for 15 professors," said Bruce Afran, the society's lawyer, who has filed suit against the institute and intends to appeal the Planning Board's decision on the grounds of zoning violations and the possible presence of wetlands on the site. At the heart of the debate is what exactly took place on the grounds on Jan. 3, 1777. On a recent visit to the site, Jerry Hurwitz, the president of the Princeton Battlefield Society, recounted how Washington regrouped after his Christmas victory in Trenton against the Hessians to mount an assault on British troops. Basing their case on historical, geological and archaeological surveys of the area, Mr. Hurwitz and other experts concluded that much of the fighting took place on the institute site, which they would like to see added to the adjacent state parklands. "People want to be able to place themselves at the scene - see what the soldiers saw at the time of the battle," said Mr. Hurwitz, noting that such imaginings would be impossible should houses be erected. Citing its own studies, the institute asserts that the site did not play a significant role in the Battle of Princeton and that some of the society's experts "were pursuing an agenda in which some of their practices were not as objective as they could be," Mr. Marsten said. Commemorating a battle, he said, is not just about adding land to the battlefield site, and should include better interpretive signing, which the institute promised to provide when it was granted permission to build. If the project goes forward, the institute will also be required to allow for a 200-foot buffer zone between its project and the state park, and to move the line of trees now separating its land from the park, replanting them closer to the houses to reduce their visual impact. None of this satisfies the preservationists. "In terms of values," Mr. Hurwitz said, "I don't know if it's Einstein versus Washington, or if Einstein would have even supported development here. It's a matter of preserving a site that should be sacred, especially for an institute of higher learning.