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.