To spot Tiger Inn, look for a striking timber-framed Tudor-style house right in front of you, with a stone base and half-timbered upper walls that give it the feel of a cozy English inn.
Welcome to the legendary Tiger Inn, or as loyal members fondly call it, “The Glorious Tiger Inn.” Imagine the scene back in 1895: Princeton was a swirl of young energy, the streets buzzing with rivalry, and here, the club’s first members-just 30 at the start-were getting ready to move into their new clubhouse modeled after a classic old inn in Chelsea, England. The smell of fresh timber and stone filled the air as craftsmen hammered the last beams into place. The very design was special, dreamed up by G. Howard Chamberlain, but Princeton myths might have you believe it was the handiwork of Howard Crosby Butler, the club’s architect member and the university’s first professor of architectural history.
Step closer and let your imagination drift into the central hall, thick with the creak of massive antique furniture donated by Mrs. Thomas Harrison Garrett. Those were more than just couches and tables-they were gifts from a family whose three sons became some of Princeton’s brightest stars. The Garretts also helped fund the very walls you see, ensuring the club had a cushy start-and a solid foundation to survive the roaring twenties and even the Great Depression.
Tiger Inn’s fortunes have always been tied to change. In the 1920s, clinking dishes and laughter sometimes spilled into the street as the club expanded-rooms were added, spaces remodeled, and the kitchen migrated south to feed an ever-growing crowd. One year, members had to eat at rival clubs while their beloved clubhouse went under the saw and chisel! Yet every change was about keeping the spirit alive, and by 1928, Tiger Inn was ready for anything-maybe even a football tackle or two if you took a wrong step.
Today, the inn is busier than ever, with over 150 students calling it home at any moment, and more than 2,000 alumni stretching all over the world. The place has been continually improved, most recently through a sweeping twenty-first-century renovation. Funded entirely by devoted alumni, the new dining halls buzz with conversation, and social rooms come alive for every gathering-big or small.
Tiger Inn isn’t just a building; it’s a feast of tradition and achievement. Fancy Olympic heroes? TI’s original members put Princeton on the global stage at the very first modern Olympic Games in 1896. Imagine the triumph-three TI athletes among four Princetonians bringing home seven medals, punctuated by Robert Garrett’s dramatic discus win. Decades later, another member, Maia Mei Weintraub, fenced her way to Olympic gold in 2024, making club history yet again.
But it’s not all sports-oh no, Tiger Inn has sent its members out into the world as Nobel Prize winners, professors, playwrights, and even polar explorers. Jesse Williams nabbed the first Pulitzer Prize in Drama, while others led the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wrote bestselling novels, or braved five expeditions into the frozen Arctic.
Of course, in a story stretching this long, there’s a little controversy. Gender debates roared across campus as women won the right to join the club in 1991 after landmark court cases. Today, TI is as much home to female leaders as to male, and in 2015, history was made when women filled half the undergraduate officer positions. There are moments when tradition wrestled with progress, when the old guard worried-and sometimes grumbled-about the shape of the club to come.
Spend a moment here and sense the echoes-spirited bicker competitions, legendary card games in an upstairs room meant for anything but cards, the laughter of students from decades past, and the footprints of soldiers, artists, and politicians. Every inch of the inn is a living scrapbook-ask the portraits in the Library upstairs, and they just might wink back at you.
So, welcome to Tiger Inn, where history is thick in the air, tradition has a mischievous twinkle, and every day promises a new page in the story. And who knows? The next great chapter could start right when you step through that sturdy door.
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