When the cemetery first opened in 1796, it was on the outskirts of New Haven—and Yale was a good two blocks away. But by 1902, when Woolsey Hall and Commons were completed, the university had expanded up to the cemetery’s front gate. The medical school had been a neighbor earlier, when it was housed at Prospect and Grove from 1814 to 1860. At a time when medical students in the United States were known to plunder cemeteries for cadavers, there were longstanding rumors (never substantiated) of a tunnel under Prospect Street that insured a steady supply of bodies.

Photograph by Jake Wyman