Bruce Price

Yale University – Welch Hall // 1891

Buildings of New England4 Comments

As Yale University continued to enclose its Old Yard with elongated dormitories in the second half of the 19th century, the proprietors began to experiment with slight deviations to the prototypical Victorian Gothic piles built in the previous decades. Following a financial gift from Pierce N. Welch, an 1862 graduate of Yale College, and his sisters in memory of their late father, Harmanus M. Welch, the college hired architect Bruce Price to furnish plans for the new dormitory. Welch Hall is built of Longmeadow Freestone, the building is more Romanesque in style with arched masonry openings, the rough hewn stone walls, and pointed dormers projecting through the eave lines.

Yale University – Osborn Hall // 1888-1926

Buildings of New England3 Comments

One of the biggest architectural losses at Yale was the demolition of the grandiose Osborn Hall in 1926, after standing less than 38 years! The building was constructed in 1888 at the southeast corner of the Old Yard at Yale, at the corner of College and Chapel streets, and was a landmark example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture. Designed by architect Bruce Price, the building was designed to face outward and was said to resemble a “squating toad with an open lip”. While architecturally stunning, the building was immediately met with criticism. Its construction necessitated the removal of the cherished Yale fence and the outward-facing design made it hard for students to focus on lectures while the sounds of horses and carriages on the cobblestone streets just outside. The short-lived Osborn Hall was razed in 1926 for Bingham Hall (next post), a prominently designed, but inward-facing building.