John Witherspoon School

In 1961, Princeton Borough announced plans to replace the Nassau Street elementary school and the Witherspoon middle school with a new school on Walnut Lane. The Board of Education, asking for community input on the school’s name, proposed retaining the name that was already assigned to the “present Witherspoon School.” They announced the official name of “John Witherspoon School” in 1964.

Construction began in 1965 and finished around June 1966. When the school was completed, Borough students and staff gathered their belongings and symbolically paraded from their respective schools to the new building, led by the Princeton High School band.

Upon its completion, the John Witherspoon School was meant to house Borough students in grades K-8. However, in June 1966, Princetonians voted to consolidate the separate Borough and Township school systems into one regional system. While the new regional school board rushed to reconfigure attendance zones, the John Witherspoon School served K-8 students as originally planned, but it opened as a consolidated elementary school in September 1967. Valley Road School became the regional middle school.

When Valley Road School closed in 1973, John Witherspoon School was converted into a 6-8 school known as John Witherspoon Middle School. Its student body expanded to grades 5-8 after Littlebrook and Johnson Park temporarily shut down in the 1980s. A major addition was constructed in 2004.