Biography | Albert Einstein — Fuld Hall, Where the Institute Finally Gave Him a Building

Albert Einstein and Elsa landed in New York on 17 October 1933 on the S.S. Westernland. A tug took them off at Quarantine. They were driven to Princeton that day. The Institute for Advanced Study had opened its School of Mathematics on 2 October 1933. Einstein was already on the Faculty, but he was still in Europe that morning. The first offices were not here. They were borrowed rooms in Fine Hall, the graduate mathematics building on the Princeton University campus. Fuld Hall, the brick clock-tower block on Einstein Drive, opened in 1939 as the Institute's own house. Einstein's first room in it was on the second floor. He later moved to the ground floor. After his death the trustees followed his wish and let other people use the office. He walked the mile from 112 Mercer Street most days. That house remains a private dwelling. The Institute owns it and does not open it. This campus is the place a visitor can actually stand. He stayed on the Faculty until he died. He retired from formal duties in 1945 and kept coming in. The work of these years was unified-field attempts that did not land, and a public life that did: letters, refugees, the 1939 warning to Roosevelt that others drafted and he signed. Fuld Hall is still the Institute's front door. The buildings behind it are not a museum walk. The grounds are open. The offices are not. Photo: Fuld Hall, Zeete, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Oren Jack Turner, 1947, public domain.