Nathaniel Fitzrandolph

This lovely 24' tall 30' wide wrought-iron gate is the formal main entrance to campus, as it provides passage through the thick 15'-high wall along one side of the campus and faces.

Every fall, the entire freshman class is assembled outside the Fitzrandolph gate and the students are f ormally paraded through the gate to mark the beginning of their time at Princeton. Then, immediately after graduation, the entire class again parades through the gate, but now from the shelter of the university into the "real world".

In addition, a university legend asserts that undergraduate students who walk out of the gate's main passageway before graduation will not finish their degrees.

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From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978). https://pr.princeton.edu/history/companion/fitzrandolph_gateway.html

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FitzRandolph was the son of one of the original seventeenth-century Quaker settlers of Princeton. More than any other citizen of Princeton, he was responsible for raising for the College the money and land the trustees required of the citizens of the place where it was to be located