On Hillhouse Avenue, one of the finest streets in New Haven, you will find a great collection of historic homes and large institutional landmarks. Adjacent to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College built this structure, the Mason Laboratory between 1910-1911 for Mechanical Engineering and related departments. The building was designed by architect Charles C. Haight, who was responsible for a number of other Neo-Gothic buildings at Yale. The limestone building properly holds the streetedge and blends in well with its surroundings.
Yale has such great architecture. Walking around the campus, you can find examples of buildings of every time period and architectural style, it is like a living museum of architecture in that sense. Located on Hillhouse Avenue, Kirtland Hall is arguably Yale’s best example of Beaux Arts/Neo-Classical architecture, but it stands out for its use of local East Haven and Longmeadow sandstone. The building was the first laboratory to be built at Yale in the 20th century and was named after Jared Potter Kirtland (1793-1877), the first medical student enrolled at Yale. After graduation, Dr. Kirtland practiced medicine throughout Connecticut until 1823, when his wife died and he moved to Ohio. During his life, Dr. Kirtland also developed an interest in natural history and assisted in the first geographical survey of Ohio. In the early 20th century, Lucy Hall Boardman, a philanthropist and niece of Dr. Kirtland, not only donated funds for scholarships at Yale, but also donated a building, Kirtland Hall. As part of her gift, Ms. Boardman stipulated that her nephew, architect Kirtland Cutter, would be commissioned to design the building, and of course, Yale obliged. The building originally housed the Geology Department and became an integral part of the Sheffield Scientific School.
Yale University’s School of Architecture was in the midst transition when Louis Kahn joined the faculty in 1947. The post-war years at Yale trended away from the school’s Beaux-Arts lineage towards the avant-garde, and Modernist principles brought over from European architects. When the University called for a new wing for its existing Venetian Gothic style Art Gallery Building (1928), they obviously had no choice but to make a statement for the future of the school. Architecture professor Louis Kahn worked with Anne Tyng, who was both a professional partner and his “muse”, who heavily influenced his works, including here where she designed the concrete tetrahedral slab ceiling at the interior galleries. As a professor and practicing architect, Kahn hoped for students and visitors would engage with the building, even interior spaces often overlooked design-wise, such as the stairwells. While the facades are fairly minimal in design details, because the attention was paid to the interiors, which provide protection from natural light while also allowing for large floor plates for customizable exhibitions. The structure is Yale’s first true Modernist building on a campus which soon after was dominated by some of the country’s most iconic examples of the style.
Before there was Street Hall or the Old Yale Art Gallery Building, there was the Trumbull Gallery, the first college-connected art museum in the United States. This building was erected in 1832 by artist and collector, John Trumbull (1756-1843), who specialized in Revolutionary-era works, and was known as the “Painter of the Revolution”. In his later years, Trumbull sold 28 paintings and 60 miniature portraits to the Yale College, and helped establish the college-affiliated art museum. He is said to have designed this Classical style building, to house his collections, all with minimal windows to protect his collection from direct sunlight. The gallery also housed a crypt for Trumbull and his wife, hence its tomb-like appearance. When Street Hall was built, the collection and tombs were relocated there, and again in the late 1920s when the Art Gallery was constructed. In 1869, Yale College added windows to the building and operated the school treasury from here until it was demolished in 1901. The Trumbull Gallery stood just in front of the Old Library.
One of the most visually stunning and unique buildings in New England is the 1928 Yale Art Gallery building, which is connected to Street Hall (last post) via a skybridge over High Street. Completed in 1928, the Yale Art Gallery was designed by relatively little-known, but significant 20th century architect, Egerton Swartwout. Swartwout graduated from Yale College in 1891 with a B.A. degree and with no formal architecture training, was hired as a draftsman at the illustrious firm of McKim, Mead & White in New York before running his own office, Tracy and Swartwout. Built in a Gothic Renaissance style inspired by Italian buildings such as the Bargello in Florence, the sandstone masonry structure commands the prominent site with a corner tower and facade fronted by five gothic arched windows. Inside, visitors are transported to a historic Italian art museum within the Gallery Wing, with the full-height Gothic windows with walls, floors and ceilings restored and lined in stone.
Closing out this series on Yale’s Old Campus, I present one of the finest Victorian Gothic collegiate buildings in the United States, Street Hall. Street Hall was designed by Peter B. Wight (who had just completed the Venetian Gothic style National Academy of Design in New York City) and opened in 1866. The building opened as the Yale School of the Fine Arts, which was the first art school on an American college campus. The building was named after Augustus Russell Street (1791–1866), a Yale graduate and New Haven businessman who donated the funds for the building’s construction on the condition that all residents of the city could enroll in the school, wanting a bridge between citizens of New Haven (“Town”) and the college “Gown”). Augustus Street and his wife, Caroline Leffingwell had seven daughters together, all of whom predeceased them. It was likely the fact he was around so many women in his life that he also required the Yale School of the Fine Arts to admit both male and female students (Yale would become co-educational and admit women to all programs in 1969.) Street Hall is a landmark example of the Victorian/Venetian Gothic style with lancet arches, polychromatic stone, and trefoil and quatrefoil stone medallions. Street Hall is now connected to, and is a part of the Yale University Art Gallery.
Alumni Hall at Yale was designed and built between 1851-1853, at the northwest corner of Yale’s Old Campus. Its was designed by Gothic specialist architect Alexander Jackson Davis, who completed Dwight Hall (the Old Library) a some years prior. The building had a large, open floorplan on the first floor for large gatherings as well as the entrance examinations, along with the biennial examinations that every student had to take at the end of his sophomore and senior years. As the building turned 50 years old, the campus around it was already looking very different. Shifting priorities for dormitory space in the yard necessitated its demolition for Wright Hall (next post). Alumni Hall was razed in 1911, but its two crenelated towers were salvaged when the building was demolished. They were incorporated into Weir Hall which has been incorporated into Jonathan Edwards College, one of Yale’s residential colleges.
After Lawrance and Welch halls (previous two posts) were built on the eastern edge of Yale’s Old Campus, there was a small space between the two that needed to be enclosed to provide a true cloister for students, shielding them from the noise and ever-developing Downtown of New Haven. Architect Charles C. Haight designed the new hall to resemble a medieval gatehouse. The simple, tall rectangular mass has octagonal towers at each corner with copper domes on top and a crenelated parapet resembling an old English castle spanning between them. On the ground floor is the Phelps Gate, the main entrance to the Old Campus from the east. Its namesake was the late William Walter Phelps, an 1860 Yale graduate who served as a Congressman and as ambassador to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The building holds an important role in the annual commencement ceremonies, which begin in the New Haven Green and pass through to the Old Campus through this gateway.
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.
Lawrance Hall was built in 1886 following a financial gift to the college by Frances (Garner) Lawrance, as a memorial to her late son, Thomas Garner Lawrance (1862-1883), who died unexpectedly during his senior year at Yale. The building was designed by New York architect Russell Sturgis, who previously designed Farnam and Durfee halls as well as the Battell Chapel, all enclosing the northeastern edge of the Old Yard. Lawrance Hall is the last Victorian Gothic style building constructed at Yale and also Sturgis’ last commission at the college. Here, Sturgis designed a Gothic building to provide continuity to his earlier dormitories nearby, but added French flair seen at the end towers and rounded turrets at the street facade. The French inspiration may have been a suggestion by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrance as they operated Cercle anglais, an English Club in Pau, France where they occupied Villa Lawrance, when living there. Today, Lawrance Hall is the freshman dormitory for Ezra Stiles College at Yale.
Farnam Hall is Yale University’s oldest dormitory still in use. Designed by New York architect Russell Sturgis in a Ruskinian High Victorian Gothic style, Farnam Hall is considered Sturgis’s most important work and was completed in 1871, marking a new direction toward an enclosed campus, shielded off from the surrounding downtown district of New Haven. Named for Henry Farnam, its construction required the removal of the Second President’s House and a section of the Yale Fence, which was met with some trepidation. The red brick, four-story building originally consisted of twenty suites and ten common rooms on each floor. Sturgis, who was influenced by John Ruskin’s ideals put forward in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, used a variety of brick and stone on the facade all with hand carved detailing. Farnam Hall was renovated in 1977 by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and today serves as a dormitory for first-year students belonging to Yale’s Jonathan Edwards College.
One of my (many) favorite buildings at Yale University is Bingham Hall, a monumental and landmark example of the Collegiate Gothic architecture style. Built in 1928, replacing the 1888 Osborn Hall (last post), Bingham Hall was constructed as an inward-facing freshman dormitory by architect, Walter B. Chambers, who had just overseen the completion of his first building at Yale, the Colonial Revival style McClellan Hall. Built of Longmeadow brownstone, Bingham Hall largely constructed from funds donated by the children of Charles W. Bingham (Yale, 1868), a Cleveland based businessman. The building stands five stories with a massive nine-story corner tower and helped solidify Yale’s iconic Collegiate Gothic architecture for the future buildings and growth as well.
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.
Just 15 years after the Chittenden Memorial Library (last post) was constructed to provide overflow space for Yale’s Old Library, the college overseers sought to expand yet again. Linsly Hall was built in 1906 as an addition to the 1880s Richardsonian Romanesque Chittenden library building, but in the Collegiate Gothic style, which was quickly becoming a preferred architecture style for the campus. Linsly Hall was built as a connector between the two library buildings with a tunnel-like passage between the structures. This was quickly deemed inadequate for a college of this stature, and the 1930s Sterling Library was built outside of the yard decades later. Architect Charles C. Haight designed Linsly Hall following the same design elements as his popular Vanderbilt Hall, built 10 years prior nearby. Today, the Linsly Hall (and the adjoining Chittenden Hall) is classroom space.
Buildings of New England 
