Drumthwacket

Drumthwacket is the official residence of the governor of New Jersey. The mansion is located at 354 Stockton Street in Princeton, close to the state capital of Trenton. (It is one of only four official governor's residences in the country that is not located within its state capital; the other three are in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Tennessee.)

Drumthwacket and the surrounding land was sold to the state in 1966 and was designated as the governor's mansion in 1982. The estate is administered by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The non-profit Drumthwacket Foundation is responsible for preserving, restoring, and curating the house and grounds. In addition to being an executive residence, the home is also a historic house museum. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

History

The land that it is built upon was once owned by William Penn, the Quaker proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania. William Olden acquired the property in 1696. A small white homestead by Stockton Street called Olden House was later built on the site, and in 1799 Charles Smith Olden was born there. Olden gained wealth working at a mercantile firm in Philadelphia and later New Orleans before returning to Princeton, where he began to build Drumthwacket in 1835, giving it its name from two Scottish Gaelic words that mean "wooded hill." Olden began his involvement in politics as a gentleman farmer and businessman, as treasurer and Trustee of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), as a state Senator, and finally as governor in 1860, when he became the first governor to live at Drumthwacket. The original structure consisted of a center hall with two rooms on each side, including the 2 ¹⁄₂-story center section and large portico with six Ionic columns, which remains today.