This Place in Time: The Great Privy (PP494)

Until 1901, Princeton’s “great privy” was located just down the hill from these tigers, at the rear of campus, between Whig and Clio Halls. In the middle of the nineteenth century, campus sanitation left much to be desired. Wooden outhouses and privies, referred to as “back buildings,” were above-ground structures that often did not drain well and were frequent targets of student vandalism. In December 1860 students set the back buildings on fire, destroying them, and subsequently President John Maclean recommended that the college build something more suitable to deal with campus sewage . The solution was the construction of the Cloaca Maxima, Latin for “Greatest Sewer,” used to refer to the first sewer system in ancient Rome. A single underground structure made of brick and granite with wooden doors, Princeton’s new “Great Privy” had twenty-four private stalls. It remained a part of campus infrastructure until the turn of the twentieth century, when indoor plumbing became commonplace.