When we walk around campus today, even in the midst of constant construction activity near Beinecke, on Science Hill, our built environment feels strangely constant. For buildings change slowly and imperceptibly. However the Yale we walk about today is very different from the Yale that existed 50, 100 and 150 years ago. Large buildings have been built and demolished in the university’s history, and the surrounding landscape irreversibly changed. Only Connecticut Hall remains of the Old Brick Row which formed the foundation of Yale College in New Haven. Residential college housing in its present state didn’t exist till the 1930s, over two centuries after the College was founded. Over the years, we have expanded northwards — building Science Hill where once stood John Hillhouse’s estate - Sachem’s Wood, and the new residential colleges in the place of Mudd Library and Brewster Hall of the Berkeley Divinity School. Yale’s history can, atleast in part, be told in the stories of the buildings that have risen and fallen within it. Photos courtesy of Yale University Press and Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
