Voorhees Mall - William The Silent

William The Silent

Fenton B. Turck, a New York physician and biologist, with the assistance of railroad magnate, and longtime Rutgers alumnus and trustee, Leonor F. Loree (Rutgers College Class of 1877), anonymously donated a statue of Prince William the Silent (1533–1584) of the House of Nassau and later Prince of Orange, who was the leader of the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish that set off the Eighty Years' War and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648. Turck, of Dutch extraction, intended to give the statue to the University to signify the institution's Dutch roots. He kept the statue in the basement of his laboratory in Manhattan for eight years before it was unveiled on the present Voorhees Mall on 9 June 1928. According to student tradition, the statue is said to whistle when a virgin passes by, and has therefore remained "silent." This statue is the only replica of the Lodewyck Rowyer original that stands in The Hague.