Google maps, 2015, with overlay by author

What is the history of the site to be occupied by two new residential colleges (fig. 1), and how did it come to be constituted as a site as such? 

This post covers the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a subsequent post will cover the changes over the past 15 years.

The triangular piece of land bordered by Prospect Street to the east, Sachem Street on the north, and Canal Street and the Farmingham Canal Trail on the southwest only recently became a cohesive “site” for campus development. For most of the past two hundred years, it was more like an in-between space, defined only in relation to what was nearby, and by a series of now-demolished buildings that were designed and built separately.

Figure 2. Doolittle Plan, 1824. Yale University Library, Map Collection, with overlay by author.

The 1824 Doolittle Plan (fig. 2) shows two notable features in relation to the present construction site. One, there is a pronounced topographic feature described by sinuous course of hashed lines. It appears to be a naturally occurring creek or depression, which no doubt became the path of the Farmington Canal, begun in 1825 and opened in 1828. And two, just to the south lies the Grove Street Cemetery, established in the 1790s as the city began to phase out burials in the New Haven Green. The cemetery’s area then was smaller than it is today; its northern boundary was Second (Trumbull) Street and its western boundary lay at a now-vanished street. The Doolittle Plan thus indicates the primacy of topography, infrastructure, and municipal planning in shaping the boundaries of the future site.

By the time of the 1851 Hartley and Whiteford map (fig. 3), the cemetery has expanded northward and westward, and the Farmington Canal has already become a railroad. The northeast tip of the expanded cemetery, lying on the other side of the canal/railway, occupies what will soon be one of the two new colleges. This parcel was not in fact used as a cemetery, but soon reverted to ordinary municipal development. Hillhouse Avenue is lined with stately houses, while Smith Avenue (Prospect Street) appears relatively undeveloped. A few hundred yards to the northeast, “Sachem’s Wood” occupies what would later become Yale’s Science Hill.

The 1868 Beers Plan (fig. 4), from the Atlas of New Haven County, shows the corner of the cemetery trimmed off, leaving the wedge-shaped parcel that is today’s construction site. Second Street has become Trumbull Street; Third Street has become Sachem’s Lane. Lock Street and Mansfield Street slice through the triangle.

The 1869 Thompson Plan (fig. 5) shows a little more detail, such as individual buildings along Prospect Street. The triangular parcel above the cemetery, however, remains apparently unoccupied.

Streuli and_Puckhafer’s 1911 Atlas of New Haven (fig. 6) shows the site occupied by scattered buildings with no apparent relation to each other. The largest of these is Hammond Laboratories, a branch of the Sheffield Scientific School. Numerous private residences and a fraternity house line the peripheral and through-streets. The color-coding of pink and yellow buildings indicate fire-proof (masonry) versus fire-prone (wood) structures, reflecting the use of such maps for insurance assessments. Also notable here is the appearance of an “electric railroad” or trolley line following Prospect Street, Sachem Street, and Winchester Ave. The parcels that compose today’s construction site appear thoroughly urbanized, if still marginal and not a cohesive ensemble.

John Russell Pope’s 1919 Plan of Existing Conditions (fig. 7) shows much the same, but strictly in relation to other Yale buildings to the south and north. Pope criticized the “haphazardly placed buildings that should have been more reasonably designed with reference to one other.” The academic buildings appear isolated from the other campus groups, and separated from the Winchester/Dixwell neighborhoods by the Farmington rail trench.

James Gamble Rogers’s 1921 “Sketch Plan for the Future Development of the University” (fig. 8) did not even bother to show any buildings on the site.

1973 Sunburn Map, Yale University Library, Maps Collection. Overlay by author.

The 1973 Sanborn map (fig. 9) reflects the addition of buildings along Prospect Street, and the marked presence of Saarinen’s Ingalls Rink across Sachem Street. Still, the provisional or “in-between” quality of the site is underscored by the cartographer’s choice to cut the map sheet just below the now-defunct Prospect Place, right through what is now “the site.” It was not at that time construed as a site, and had no unifying logic or plan for future development.