“Whenever I enter this club, I feel happy inside.”   Herman A. Heydt ’29

Cap and Gown prides itself on the diversity of its members. People from all different backgrounds, teams, groups, and activities all come together to be a part of the unique experience that defines Cap. Bicker at Cap is a fun, exciting, and low-pressure environment where bickerees are encouraged to meet the members through a variety of conversations, events and activities organized by members. Cap Bicker is what you want to make of it. Everyone interested is encouraged to come out, be themselves, and enjoy the camaraderie of getting to know each other in an incredibly unique and fun way.

Cap, like all of the clubs on the Street, enthusiastically participates in Lawnparties, Winter Formals, and Houseparties festivities. In addition to these staple events, Cap members also get to enjoy an Autumn semi-formal during the fall semester and a Valentine’s Day semi-formal during the spring semester (that’s two formals and four semis in one academic year!), and a whole slew of themed social gatherings throughout the year. These include Cap classics like Capmandu, Latin Night, and Boxers and Blazers. While these special events are fun and open to the wider campus community, Cap members get to enjoy recurring weekly Members Only events, including Cap Mondays and Movie Wednesdays where members are encouraged to hang out in the club outside of meals.

Another Cap staple that brings members together is our various affinity groups. Members can join affinity groups like Queer and Gown, Black and Gown, Latin y Gown, Cap and Brown, Cap and Yellow, Cap and Kosher, Celsius and Gown (international students), and many more! Members are always coming together to form new, informal groups, such as Puzzle and Gown, Ginger and Gown, and more!

Cap members can also put the “eating” in eating club; and with Chef Greg, sous chefs Ivan and Nicholas, and the rest of the crew cooking up delicious breakfasts, lunches and dinners, it’s not uncommon to find members and guests going back for seconds or thirds at meals. Thursday Dinner Club Nights are members-only affairs with special meals celebrating cuisines from around the world.

Bicker at Cap is a fun-loving, welcoming process that gives you the chance to get to know members and members a chance to get to know you through a series of conversations and activities. Bring a friendly and willing attitude and you’ll have a great time. We look forward to meeting members from the Class of 2027 at Spring Bicker 2025!

Learn More About Cap and Gown!

Facilities

The Cap and Gown Clubhouse was built in 1908 and was designed by Raleigh Gildersleeve, who also designed a number of other well-known Princeton landmarks including McCosh 50 and the dining hall at the Graduate College.  Our historic building remained essentially unchanged until 100 years later when the club launched a very successful campaign to renovate and expand the club.  Thanks to this effort by our loyal alumni, Cap and Gown Club is now bigger and more beautiful than ever with a new wing that includes a spectacular new dining room and taproom. In the past few years, Cap launched another renovation campaign that added the amazing new Cox wing for members to relax, study, and socialize in.

On the first floor, Cap has a comfy living room with fireplace, a sunporch, our historic dining room, an expanded servery, and our new dining room. The new dining room, equipped with a powerful speaker system, fits nearly two hundred people and is great for parties and dances. The sunroom is a favorite spot to study. On any given afternoon, you can find some members napping in the living room while the more musically-inclined members play tunes and sing around the piano. The Cox wing is another great study and relaxation spot with a working fireplace in the winter and floor-to-ceiling windows that open up to the great weather in the spring.

 

 

Downstairs, Cap has a brand-new taproom featuring a granite-topped bar, four taps, a television, and a newly updated speaker system for a wide array of nighttime activities and fun. Cap members love all different types of music and games – so whether you’re into dancing, chatting with friends, or just relaxing – the taproom is a favorite for everyone.

 

On the second floor, members study in our beautiful library, use the printer and meeting space in the computer room, challenge each other to a game of pool in the pool room, and watch TV in the dangerously comfortable TV room. The second floor, gender-neutral bathroom was recently renovated as well. Our second floor roof deck, complete with lounge chairs and dining tables, provides the perfect place to hang out on warm, sunny days.

Outside, the beautiful Clubhouse is complemented by a landscaped courtyard flanked by double decker balconies. This is the scene for fall tailgates, tent parties, and Cap’s famous outdoor barbecues (with our enormous outdoor grill).

 

History

Cap and Gown Club was founded in 1891 by a group of undergraduates from the Class of 1893 who had formed an eating society called the “Oliver Twist Club.” With some help from the godfather of so many of the clubs, Moses Taylor Pyne, Class of 1877, the group was reborn as Cap and Gown. Under the direction of Thomas O. Speir, Class of 1887, the new club constructed a building for itself on the south side of Prospect Avenue, across from the University Field, on the lot that Cap still occupies. (Cap and Gown thus holds the distinction of being the only one of Princeton’s eating clubs to stay in the same geographic location for its entire existence.)

Speir’s design called for a modest cottage with a gambrel roof and a wide front porch. It was completed in March 1892, but within three years, Cap and Gown had outgrown it and sought to build a larger structure. The Speir building was moved across the street to a location near the eastern corner of Olden Street and Prospect Avenue, approximately where the Mudd Library stands today.

The smallest purpose-built clubhouse at Princeton, this building played a key role in the development of the club system. In its Olden Street location, this building was the famous “Incubator,” so called because it served as the birthplace to a series of emerging clubs, including Cannon, Campus, Charter, Terrace, and Tower. Other clubs temporarily occupied the Incubator while their own clubhouses were under construction or renovation.

Cap and Gown, meanwhile, commissioned Boston architect William Ralph Emerson to design a new and more elegant clubhouse in 1895. Emerson was a noted practitioner of the shingle style, but in this structure looked to other models. The rendering for the building shows a distinctly Italianate Revival influence, especially in the pair of large arched windows on the facade and the second-floor balconies. In reviewing the finished structure, the Daily Princetonian noted that “it is nearly square in form and rises two and one-half stories, the first being of blue Lancaster granite, and the second of stucco with ornamental rubble finish.” Of the Prospect Avenue clubs, only Tiger Inn (1893-5) featured this kind of mixed media on the exterior.

In December 1896, Cap and Gown moved in, but within a decade it felt compelled to build again. Ivy and Cottage had completed their grand new clubhouses and Colonial and Cap soon followed suit. Cap selected Raleigh Gildersleeve, a prominent architect with much experience in Princeton, to design its new clubhouse. The Emerson building was moved away (to be taken over by Dial Lodge).

Gildersleeve offered a new style for an eating club: a kind of French-influenced or Norman Gothic, built of brick. It was T-shaped, with the long side facing Prospect Avenue and the short side on the west end. In case the club needed to expand, Gildersleeve noted, it could construct a second wing to the east. This placement also offered fine views to the south from the large veranda that runs all the way across the rear of the building.

In an article published in the Princeton Alumni Weekly in 1908, Gildersleeve discussed his plan for the club:

“The facades, in style and use of materials, are somewhat different from anything in Princeton. The general effect is of the minor Normandy chateaux. In the main the lines have been kept as simple as possible, but at the entrance doorway and over the windows of the dining room bay the stonework has been enriched with carving in the Gothic fashion, somewhat florid and fanciful. The walls are of brick, very dark and glazed for the most part, but with as much variety in color as could conveniently be obtained. The texture of the bricks is rough and their shape quite irregular”.

Gildersleeve added that “an effect of irregularity, simplicity, and individuality was thus obtained which could not be achieved in any other way.” Gildersleeve also supervised the planting of a row of Lombardy poplars on either side of the building.

Cap and Gown was completed in 1908. For all of Gildersleeve’s expressed intentions of “simplicity,” it is the most ornamented of all the eating clubs and in scale and elegance ranks with the other clubhouses of the period. Cap and Gown would also influence future construction on Prospect in its use of dark brick and Gothic models. 

Alumni

The Cap and Gown Club is home to some of the most active alumni on the Street. Cap welcomes alumni back home every year, hosting special alumni events all year long. This includes Cap on Tap! every home football game and a special fall homecoming celebration, a biennial Cap in the City event for young alumni and upperclassmen members, and a huge Reunions Open House after the P-rade. Members, Officers, and staff alike look forward to meeting (or catching up with!) hundreds of Cap alumni returning for Homecoming and Reunions where we all enjoy the fabulous station party buffet put on by Dennis Normile, our club steward, and our great kitchen crew and club staff.

When you join Cap and Gown, you don’t just join for a handful of semesters – you become a member for life with friendships that last a lifetime!

Financial Aid

Cap and Gown’s financial aid policy provides a grant for club membership to every member on Princeton University financial aid and guarantees that no member on full financial aid pays any out-of-pocket costs for club membership.

Each year, Cap members who receive any financial aid from Princeton University will receive a grant from the Cap and Gown Financial Aid Fund that covers the difference between the Princeton board rate (inclusive of the additional grant provided by Princeton Financial Aid for upperclassman board) and Cap and Gown member house and board rates. Any member who is not on financial aid from Princeton University, but receives external sources of aid—such as government grants from their home country—is similarly eligible for a Cap and Gown financial aid grant, provided that they meet criteria consistent with Princeton University’s Financial Aid Office’s eligibility criteria. The policy is transparent and will ensure that members on University financial aid know the value of the grant that they will receive as soon as the University has released its board rate for an academic year.

While a recent Daily Princetonian article suggests that Cap’s financial aid policy is among the most inclusive on the street, the Financial Aid Committee is continuously seeking to improve the existing program and is very open to receiving suggestions.

Please note that the dues listed on the sidebar of this page reflect base dues for students who are not on financial aid (i.e., students on financial aid pay a lower amount that varies from year to year). Sophomore members who join in the spring semester have a headline fee of $1,000. Any sophomore member on partial financial aid will receive a $200 grant, reducing the cost to $800. Any sophomore member on full financial aid will receive a $700 grant, reducing the cost to $300. Additionally, the University offers an option to transfer $300 in Dining Points to the cost of eating club spring membership, effectively making Cap a $0 out-of-pocket cost for sophomore members on full financial aid.

Please contact our treasurer, Aidan Phillips (listed in sidebar) for any questions on financial aid.

Staff

Dennis Normile has been Cap and Gown’s Club Steward for over 35 years. He is a manager, a chef, a mentor, and the ultimate party planner. Cap’s parties – whether it’s Winter Formals, one of our bi-semester Semi-Formals, House Parties, or any other theme party – are made all the more special thanks to his gifts as both a chef and an artist. He can whip up a feast, carve an ice sculpture, and paint extraordinary backdrops for any theme. He is also a musician (drummer) and an expert dog trainer. Most of all, he has the most fun sitting around telling stories about Cap lore.

 

Dennis, along with Head Chef Greg Bonagura, House Manager Oscar Campos, and House Advisor Terry Wooding, lead the staff in the Club’s day-to-day operations. We appreciate their hard work in making sure members enjoy delicious meals three times a day and have access to a clean, functioning, and safe Clubhouse all semester long.

Service & Sustainability

Cap and Gown initiates and participates in community service projects all year long.  Recent service projects include:

• Pie an Officer! An annual Spring semester charity event to raise hundreds of dollars for Princeton Mutual Aid.
• Cap Water Assassins! An annual Fall semester charity event, where donations are required to participate. Over a thousand dollars are raised each year and the winning team donates all funds raised to a local charity of their choosing.
• Cap organizes a clothing drive at least once a semester where members can opt to buy, swap, or donate clothing in good condition at the end of each semester.

Cap and Gown was the first club to create a position for a Sustainability Chair.  This has been followed by other clubs, and the clubs are all now focused on finding ways to save energy, recycle, and reduce waste as much as possible.