Reimaging Princeton’s Historical African American Community Through Virtual Reality

African American residents have lived in Princeton since the town was settled in the late seventeenth century. During this early period, enslaved individuals worked on farms and in domestic homes, including those owned by presidents and trustees of Princeton University. Later, at the turn of the twentieth century, many African Americans from the South migrated northwards—to places like Princeton—in search of employment. In the first half of the twentieth century, Princeton was a racially segregated town where African Americans were denied entry to many social establishments. Facing these hardships, Princeton’s Black residents found community in churches, schools, organizations, and businesses in the town’s Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, the area around Palmer Square was developed in phases as part of an urban renewal project. While the project made way for more commercial stores and restaurants, it encroached upon the African American community and pushed the neighborhood and its residents further away from Nassau Street into the Witherspoon-Jackson area. Despite the physical displacement of their homes and businesses, the contributions of Princeton’s Black residents continued to shape the town. Stories and memories bear witness to their lasting imprints.

On October 3, Being at Home in Princeton, an exhibition curated by Museumverse—a research group dedicated to the advancement of emerging technologies in the humanities—opened to the Princeton community. A multimedia exhibition, the show explores the history of Palmer Square’s construction, the resulting displacement of Princeton’s Black community, and the lived experiences of the Witherspoon-Jackson residents through a combination of archival photographs, paintings, and virtual reality. Being at Home in Princeton is on view at the James S. Hall Memorial Gallery in Butler College until December 3, 2024.

The exhibition features a VR component, built around the concept of spatial storytelling. The virtual tour begins at Palmer Square as it exists today and takes visitors to key sites in the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, including homes that were relocated to Birch Avenue, the Witherspoon Street School for Colored Children, the YMCA, and Griggs’ Restaurant. As visitors journey through these spaces, they can explore the environment, read informational panels, look at archival photographs, and listen to oral histories.

Panoramic footage of the sites was captured using an Insta360 ONE X2 digital camera and subsequently connected into a linear sequence to simulate the experience of walking through the neighborhood. A key consideration in the display of these scenes was accessibility. Although game engines like Unity offer more advanced rendering and options for interactions, the team chose Kuula, a web-based application for creating and sharing virtual tours, to minimize technical barriers. On Kuula, the tour can be accessed on mobile devices, computers, and VR headsets, allowing for a wider audience.

A challenge that many historical reconstruction projects face is the absence of archival materials, particularly for recreating interior spaces. The Historical Society of Princeton’s photo collections provide valuable references for the exterior appearance of the buildings in the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, but there is little documentation of their interiors—essential for creating a sense of place in virtual reality. To address this, the team used Skybox AI, an AI-powered tool that generates interior spaces based on textual prompts drawn from archives, written interviews, and oral histories. These AI-generated interiors are not meant to accurately recreate historical spaces but rather designed to suggest a certain mood or sense of place for viewers.

The VR medium not only juxtaposes the past with the present but also encourages audiences to reflect on how history, place, and memory are all entwined. We hope this VR tour fosters greater awareness of Princeton’s history and inspires people to visit the featured locations around town in person. We look forward to hearing your thoughts about the VR tour here.

The exhibition Being at Home in Princeton is presented by Museumverse, a research team exploring the intersection between art, technologies, and public humanities, in collaboration with the Historical Society of Princeton. The exhibition is sponsored by Inclusive Princeton, the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES), the Department of Art & Archaeology, the Lewis Center for the Arts, the Princeton University Humanities Council, the University Center for Human Values, the Center for Collaborative History, the Center for Digital Humanities, the Carl A. Fields Center, and the Princeton Graduate Student Government.