Welcome to the home of the Glorious Tiger Inn! Located at 48 Prospect St., the Tiger Inn (otherwise known as T.I) was established in 1890 and is the third oldest club on the street. The contributions of over a century of traditions and fiercely loyal alumni have resulted in an amazingly fun-loving and tightly knit community. Stop by this classic Tudor building any day of the week and you will find members and their guests enjoying a meal or sharing a drink in one of the most beautiful and welcoming spots on campus.
More About Tiger Inn
Tiger Inn was designed by New York architect G. Howard Chamberlin, although Princeton myth credits Howard Crosby Butler, Class of 1892 (a founding member of Tiger Inn and Princeton’s first professor of architectural history) with its design.
According to the Daily Princetonian, it was modeled on a 15th- century inn located in the Chelsea section of London. The first story was constructed from sandstone from the same quarry that furnished the stone for Nassau Hall. The second and third stories, which overhang the entrance, were executed in the half- timbered style that is characteristic of England’s Tudor period.
The interiors continued the theme of the English inn throughout. The first floor contains a large stone fireplace (reputedly purchased from a manor house in Chester, England), extensive wood paneling, and a broad wooden staircase that leads to the library and other second-floor rooms. The dining room runs east- west across the back of the building. Mrs. T. Harrison Garrett, the widow of a Princeton trustee and mother of three of Princeton’s most prominent graduates of the 1890s, helped to finance these interior decorations.
Tiger Inn is the oldest continually occupied club on Prospect Avenue, and it was the first club to build in an explicitly “English” style. Within two years, Ivy would build in the fashion of a different, considerably more formal English inn. Yet the Tudor style did not reappear on Prospect Avenue until 1920, when Terrace Club remodeled its Colonial Revival house into a half- timbered “Tudor.”
Tiger Inn has recently finished renovating the club and has doubled the size of its dining hall as well as the tap room. Please stop by for a tour of our renovations as well as our library and pool room.
Tiger Inn, the third club to be founded at Princeton, began its existence in the University Cottage on University Place, which had recently been vacated by Cottage Club. The next year, it rented a clapboard house on William Street, where it stayed until 1895. In February 1895, Tiger Inn moved into a new building on the north side of Prospect Avenue, to the east of Ivy.
The full membership of the club, including all living alumni, have met four times to commemorate anniversaries of Tiger Inn. The highlight of the club’s fiftieth anniversary celebration was the publication of the club’s first official history, written by Charlie Mulduar and released in March 1940, just before America’s involvement in World War II. The club’s seventy-fifth anniversary was held on December 9, 1965, at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York. The celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the Club began in 1988 with a small informal meeting of 40 alumni at the Princeton Club of New York who began to plan the Centennial celebrations. The Centennial Celebrations peaked with the Club’s Hundredth Anniversary Dinner held on October 20, 1990, at the Hyatt in Princeton, following which many of the alumni insisted on continuing celebrations at the clubhouse. The Centennial celebrations were concluded by the subsequent publication of the second club history entitled The Tiger Inn of Princeton, New Jersey, 1890–1997. In February 2016, the Tiger Inn marked its 125th Anniversary with a Dinner held at the Westin in Princeton, followed by continued celebrations at the clubhouse.
View our latest report to the Princeton Prospect Foundation