Many Italians came to Princeton as stonecutters for the buildings at the University. Like many of the colored residents, the Italians were regulated to this area of town.
Dorothea van Dyke, daughter of Dr. Henry van Dyke, a professor at Princeton University, poet and diplomat, was keenly interested in the advancement of the Italian population, with whom she worked as a volunteer social worker. When Dorothea died giving birth to a daughter (who also did not survive), her husband, Guy Richards McLane, and her father established a non-profit association in her honor. In 1913, this two-story Italianate structure was built and named after her.