The Veblen House

The Veblen House & The Cottage

The Veblen House is located on a lovely wooded site in eastern Princeton, NJ, on the edge of the nearly 100 acres of forest the Veblens donated to Mercer County to create Princeton's first nature preserve, Herrontown Woods.

An early prefab dating back to the 1920s, what would become the Veblen House was moved to Princeton from Morristown by Jesse Paulmier Whiton-Stuart and his wife, Mary Marshall Ogden, in 1930. They later sold the house to the Veblens, who also owned the 1875 farm cottage nearby. Einstein and others of considerable fame frequently visited the Veblens. After Elizabeth Veblen's death in 1974, the house was donated to Mercer County with the expressed desire that it become a museum and library. The county then rented it out until 1998, at which point it was boarded up.

Up a short path from the Veblen House is the 1875 Douer farm cottage, a small barn, and a corn crib. This is the building people see when they hike the trails of Herrontown Woods, and it's often mistaken for the Veblen House. The Veblens acquired this site several years before acquiring the nearby house. It served primarily as Veblen's study—a place where he could get away, sit next to the woodstove, and read. Descendants of a family that lived there in the 1930s say that Einstein would sometimes wander by and be invited in for a sandwich.

Click here if you’d like to learn more about the Veblen House and the Cottage.