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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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What Should a College Look Like? “Charm and delight, solidity and whimsy” In recent years of interviewing candidates for admission to Yale College, I’ve found the depth of the talent pool of extraordinary young individuals seeking admission so impressive that I wholeheartedly support the addition of two more residential colleges. I also believe, in spite of some controversy concerning the location of these new colleges, that the Prospect/Sachem Triangle site is an appropriate location. The campus will undoubtedly grow around Grove Street Cemetery, in time, and make the setting of these new colleges seem as natural as Morse and Stiles seem today. As an Old Blue whose dim and distant recollections of those “shortest, gladdest years of life” are still among my fondest, as the parent of a next generation Yalie (Ann '98, '04MBA), and as an architect, I may be excused for having strong opinions about the shape and nature of these two new colleges. I believe it is imperative that they maintain all of the fundamentals of the current college system, that they have the traditional inward-looking courtyard-based plan form, that they consist of a mix of student suites of no more than four individual bedrooms surrounding a living room and private bath, and that the suites should be organized around the traditional entryway format. As an undergraduate, I was an active protester against the original construction of the Cross Campus Library, an architectural mistake that has only recently been corrected in part. I urge the university to learn from that error and to avoid at all costs the generic, flat-footed, soulless, featureless contemporary architecture that was embodied not only in the original design of the Cross Campus Library, but was also so clearly evident in the proposal for addition of colleges that was made in the early 1970s. Avoid, at all cost, anything that resembles the bland and characterless work at Rice that was referenced in the alumni magazine article. Remember that a college is first and foremost a residential occupancy. It should evince the characteristics of warmth and comfort, charm and delight, solidity and whimsy. There must be a variety of spaces for group interaction, both boisterous and solemn, as well as quiet and comfortable nooks and retreats for private study and contemplation. I recommend that Yale look to the hospitality industry, where I practice, for inspiration, both programmatic and aesthetic. The colleges have always resembled hotels in their mix of uses and spaces. No one who has experienced the college system thinks of them as “dormitories” or “student housing.” I agree with Bob Stern that these new colleges “have to look like Yale Colleges.” Among architects of prominence currently practicing, Stern may, in fact, be the best choice to design these colleges. His appreciation of contextual architecture without slavish imitation of historical styles is second to none. I strongly urge the university to return to the promise of on-campus residence for all undergraduates and recommend that more faculty and graduate students not be housed in the colleges at the expense of undergraduate housing. In my generation, at least, resident graduate fellows added very little to undergraduate life, as consumed as they often were by their own endeavors. I would gladly volunteer my time and professional expertise to help make this expansion of Yale a reality. I hope that the university will call upon the relevant experience of interested alumni in a variety of disciplines to advise and assist in this process.
Think twice about a new cemetery gate My thoughts and prayers, as they say, concern the Grove Street Cemetery. On your map, there is mention that a new gate into the cemetery on the Canal Street side could make the cemetery passable during daylight hours. The Grove Street Cemetery can, certainly, be regarded as a “walled, impassable island.” It is also a place where many people are buried, including my parents and my maternal grandparents. Of those, the two men, Charlton M. Lewis and Arthur E. Case, each graduated from Yale and also taught English there. I once had an experience in the cemetery that was saddening in an unusual way. I was there to visit one of the graves, and I was driving a car along a lane toward it. A jogger, in the course of getting out of the way of my car, ran over one or more graves. If a gate is created for the purpose of letting students pass through the cemetery, such intrusions are bound to become more frequent. Looking at your map, I judge that the buildings most directly across the cemetery from the proposed site of the new colleges are the Law School and the Graduate School, neither of which is much used by undergraduates. In the absence of a new gate, most nonscience classrooms could be reached fairly directly via Prospect Street, while Payne Whitney could be reached by going around the back of the cemetery. Meanwhile, Science Hill would be as convenient—or, granted, inconvenient—to the other colleges as it has always been. If there are negotiations over whether a gate can and should be constructed, who will the parties at interest be? If descendants of the original owners of plots have a say, I can produce a deed to at least one of the plots in my family. This is not to say that I or other descendants, of whom there must be a huge number, would, necessarily, want to obstruct things. I do hope, however, that if we have a rightful say, we will be given it.
Make sure the colleges are carbon-neutral In regard to the global climate crisis, Yale can lead or Yale can follow. Currently buildings are believed to be responsible for 30 to 40 percent of CO2 emissions! Thus, all the buildings of the two new colleges must, at minimum, be carbon-neutral. What a fabulous opportunity for Yale—not only to serve as a role model for other institutions and businesses, but also to make a smart long-term investment. Yale can commit to carbon-neutral construction and operation now, or it can take on the much more costly necessity of retrofitting buildings later, when energy costs have skyrocketed. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has unanimously approved the goal of having all new buildings and major renovations in the U.S. be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030. Great Britain is requiring that new buildings be carbon neutral by 2016. Step up to the plate, Yale! Of course Yale can choose to go beyond carbon-neutral building. For example, the new colleges could have slow-food dining halls serving locally-grown, organic food (remember how popular Berkeley College was a few years back when it was serving organic food?). They could sponsor residential fellows and visitors specializing in alternative energy, carbon-neutral architecture, small-farm agriculture, and other green-living, climate-friendly disciplines. (The colleges could even be named after sustainability notables like Wendell Berry, Wangari Maathai, or Vandana Shiva.) Yale can choose now to be at the forefront of the new direction our world is taking.
A list of ideas, from rooftop gardens to Taco Bell
Thanks for the chance to share!
Don’t isolate science students Your article in the Mar/Apr 2008 magazine, in discussing the location for the new colleges on Prospect Street near Science Hill, asked “What if they were geared towards students with a passion for science?” Please do everything you can NOT to focus the residential college population on science students. The residential colleges should continue to be a random mixture (insofar as that is possible) of students from all walks of life. That to me was one of the beauties of college life, the ability to mix and mingle with a variety of students. As a chemistry major I found it difficult enough to maintain a life “down the hill,” what with lab courses that lasted all afternoon. I enjoyed my years in Davenport College with friends whose majors were widely varied.
New colleges must be “most beautiful” Responding to your call for comments on the plan for the two new residential colleges, here are my scattered thoughts. Being in the midst of a college tour with my high-school-junior daughter, I have recently had the opportunity to visit several college campuses. From the perspective of potential applicants and their parents, it is clear that the beauty of a school’s campus is a critical factor in the application decision for many people. (Even my daughter rejected Georgetown out of hand—despite its match with her academic interests—because she found much of the campus to be aesthetically unappealing.) Most campuses these days—at least the ones we’ve been visiting—are indeed beautiful. Duke stands out from the recent batch we visited as particularly gorgeous (at least its main campus buildings—the relegation of the humanities to a less-appealing and far-flung separate campus is problematic). Much of Cornell—with its stunning hilltop setting—is breathtaking. So how does Yale compete on this level with these other schools (if you accept my premise that this kind of aesthetic competition is appropriate and reasonable)? Luckily, Yale is blessed with some of the most stunning academic architecture in the country. I was pleased to hear high school students and their parents at a summer program housed in Davenport last summer universally commenting on how beautiful they thought Yale was. However, many alumni know that if you want to impress a visitor with the beauty of Yale, you have to be very selective about what buildings you show them and very cunning in the walking route you select for such a tour. Two factors make such a tour challenging. One is the urban setting. I, for one, love the interaction between Yale and its immediate surroundings—the fact that city streets slice through the campus makes it a much more exciting and vital campus than, say, that of Duke or Princeton. Nevertheless, this works better in some cases than in others. To my mind, for example, Chapel Street works extremely well. The juxtaposition of beautiful campus buildings on one side of the street and stores on the other provides a perfect college setting. Elm Street, on the other hand, is extremely problematic. The heavy traffic slicing through the Gothic architecture seriously undermines the attractiveness of that architecture—at least for me. Imagine what a beautiful corridor Elm Street would be if there were no traffic at all, but walkways and plantings instead. (It would look something like Library Walk between Branford and Jonathan Edwards, arguably the most beautiful spot on campus.) I believe Robert Moses once proposed putting the traffic into a tunnel that would run under Elm Street, leaving the campus undisturbed above. That may not be such a bad idea. At any rate, though, there’s not much we can—or perhaps should—do about the fact that city streets run through our campus. The other factor is the wide discrepancy in the aesthetic quality of our buildings. When people comment on the stunning architecture at Yale, I think they are referring primarily to buildings in the central campus—in particular, the Old Campus, some of the residential colleges, and the library. As you move away from the center, the quality of the buildings drops off. There are many exceptions, of course (the upper block of Hillhouse Avenue, for one). But by and large, I don’t think you hear people praising the beauty of Becton Center or some of the buildings on Science Hill or some of the buildings around the Medical School. This brings me—finally—to my main point about the proposed residential colleges. Since these would be slightly removed from the center of campus and in proximity to several lesser buildings, I believe it is imperative that these be among the most beautiful of our residential colleges. We really need something magnificent, like another Branford College or another Davenport. At the University of Pennsylvania, for example, the freshmen housing quadrangle is the most beautiful building on campus. To get there, you have to cross a busy street and pass by some lesser buildings. But once you enter the quadrangle, you can hear the appreciative response of the visiting students and parents. (At least that was my experience.) Two final points unrelated to the new colleges:
Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts. I hope that my love for the beauty of (most of) Yale’s campus is clear—as well as my concern that we take advantage of the opportunity posed by the new colleges to enhance that beauty.
No experiments this time I lived in Ezra Stiles College, graduating in 1988. I loved my ES friends, the masters, the deans, the resident faculty, and the other staff. However, from beginning to end I found nothing about the architecture remotely appealing. I well remember my dismay when I received the letter that gave me my college assignment; as you note in your article, I did feel cheated out of a part of the Yale experience, and that feeling did not go away as I lived in the buildings. They were ugly inside and out, at every season of the year. The rooms were horrendously impractical, the floors were cold, and the dark colors were just dreary. They were an experiment that failed, and students have had to suffer in them ever since. Please don’t inflict that upon new generations of Yale students! There is nothing wrong with rectangular rooms, or architecture that looks harmonious; I shudder to think what might result from whatever the current architectural fads are. Even my subsequent PhD in art history failed to give me an appreciation of these buildings. I don’t think I became a medievalist because I lived in Stiles, but it perhaps gave me a greater appreciation of both Gothic and neo-Gothic aesthetics.
How about a Yale beach? Thanks to marriage to my husband, Dick, who was teaching at nearby Wesleyan, I finished my M.A. in art history in 1955. We then went together on his London Fulbright. This was his turn for completing research on his art history PhD. What we'd not counted on was our baby boy, born in London. We owe eternal thanks to professor George Hamilton, for getting us a front-row Yale Bowl Quonset. After my Yale research and London, pushing a buggy in the Quonsets was some letdown. But we Yale housewives made friends as we waited for washers. My Quonset neighbor hosted a sewing-knitting group. I put more hours into my pair of socks than I’d put into any term paper. So what does Yale offer married students in the way of housing? Also, is Yale housing available off campus to those who wouldn’t mind the distance, or might even prefer it? Can Yale get waterfront land into its clutches? This could result in alternative housing, with a beach open to all who have anything to do with Yale. Married students can find housing in university-owned apartments, mostly in the Prospect Street area, or in a variety of off-campus locations not managed by Yale. All graduate and professional students—and undergraduates who are 21 years old, married, or have completed their sophomore year—may live off campus.—Eds.
More detail, more materials, more variety As an architecture major living in Ezra Stiles College 21 years ago, I was haunted by the feeling that Saarinen’s modern architecture did not quite live up to the older residential colleges. Despite basic similarities to the others (courtyards, entryways, dining halls), the buildings of Stiles always had a strange coldness, a repetitive sameness to everything, a disappointing lack of detail and craft. The older colleges were infinitely better. They had fascinating and exquisite details with an endless variation of elements—different sizes and shapes of courtyards, towers, bay windows, archways, wonderfully crafted stonework, carved woodwork, wrought ironwork, each unique corner offering a different vista. There was something intriguing and worthwhile to see every time you turned your head, all carrying your thoughts away to myriad places and times when viewed up close or from afar. It was architecture that made you think. Stiles and Morse were a commendable experiment that unfortunately fell short of this lofty standard. Why did it have to be this way?
My suggestion for the new colleges, shown in the above sketch, is a direct reaction to my experience as a Stilesian and tries to reclaim the richness of the originals. There is a variety of sizes of courtyards, towers, large and small elements, archways leading off to other spaces, an organic asymmetry, with an unexpected surprise around each corner. The challenging question becomes, how could the architecture of new colleges rise to that level of richness and quality in this day and age? Could it do so without copying Gothic and Georgian styles and all their irretrievably expensive hand-carved craftsmanship of a bygone era? Instead of carved stone turrets and gargoyles, maybe that exquisite attention to detail and subtle variety can be built anew with inventive modern details and materials which transcend questions of historic style—the arts and crafts of a new modern ornament. Sustainable green design, for example, suggests a whole new range of new building materials, innovative energy-saving technology, landscaping, and sun-shading devices. Perhaps that same variety and interest in the details can be found while trying to answer these new criteria. An inclusive sensibility is required—more details, more materials, more variety—where Saarinen tried to do the opposite, to exclude and to reduce in order to find some elusive distilled essence of a residential college. And, of course, a very robust budget is required for exquisite craftsmanship in any era.
It’s all about the quad I have had the possibly unique experience of living on the Lawn at the University of Virginia, on the Old Campus at Yale, in the Yale Law School quadrangle, and in the Queens' College Cambridge quadrangle. The common denominator of all of these beautiful academic settings was the quadrangle.
A good time to think about grad student life The current issue raises interesting questions about the physical redesign of the Hillhouse end of campus, linked with the building of two new undergraduate colleges. Since this also gives Yale the opportunity (perhaps a once-in-a-generation opportunity?) for fresh thinking about the quality of the graduate experience at the traditionally social science/physical science end of campus, may I offer some suggestions? 1) The Virtues of Old, Rabbit-Warren Buildings and Low-Quality Spaces I may be a romantic at heart, but could I enter a plea for remembering the virtues of old rabbit-warren buildings and low-quality space, especially for graduate student offices and work space? One of the most personally and professionally valuable parts of my graduate experience at Yale was spent in a basement office at the old Political Science Research Library building on Trumbull Street. I was one of three TA “computer expert"/statistically-oriented graduate students who shared the office. An adjacent larger room also had old wooden desks and tables and was used for studying and thesis work by three or four other graduate students. I learned a great deal about other fields in political science in this area. I also had discussions that strengthened (and added at least another year to) my doctoral thesis. Almost always, there would be people around in the evenings or weekends—so it was attractive to work there, rather than at home. If I think, sociologically, about the graduate experience, this is one of the touchstones of what I would like to see available. The package includes both old wooden desks and shared small offices, a physical “home” somewhere on campus for each graduate student who is interested—nothing fancy or expensive, please! For the package to work it also needs other features like convenient parking and personal safety that make it natural to come to the office (both for graduate students and junior faculty). An interesting option might be to convert the old School of Management buildings to a Graduate Student Research Building. Each of the old faculty offices could acquire three or four old wooden desks and chairs—and very happy graduate students! It also would be natural to assign part of the space to faculty members for use by their research assistants and research projects. There may be enough space that it can also be used by graduate students in Yale’s other professional schools, etc. 2) Nearby Parking for Faculty and Graduate Students This brings me to the question of parking! Yes, it is true that there is no more uncreative and boring use for a high-quality piece of campus real estate than to construct a parking garage! But I view the campus sociologically, with the goal of attracting graduate students and junior faculty to be around in the evenings and weekends—not to mention during the day (for senior faculty with well-established home offices). Plus, New England winters can be cold, and this is underscored if you park at Science Hill. So whatever mindset consigns parking to the farthest ends of campus real estate needs to be unstuck from its assumptions. And architects need to be challenged to find creative (multi-use?) designs. I’m not sure what needs currently exist for Yale faculty and graduate students with offices at different parts of the campus but I expect they will be increasing. The underground parking in the old Health Services building—assuming that the new Health Services building on Lock Street also will give doctors adequate parking there—ought to become available for faculty, with free evening and weekend parking permits to all graduate students and faculty! Yale’s consultants might design creative options using the Farmington Canal Trail that extends behind the Grove Street Cemetery and for several blocks through campus: Yale could acquire rights for underground parking levels by creating and maintaining the ground-level trail as a landscaped bicycle and jogging path for the public. Several sections of the trail might be “open air” at ground level with two-story parking facilities above (especially along the back of the Grove Street Cemetery, which is a solid wall.) 3) Experiments with small parks, water features, flowers Undergraduates have green courtyards at their colleges but otherwise the amount of open space/green area on campus continues to erode. So it might be attractive, in redesigning the Hillhouse end of campus, to include a small park with a water feature (fountain?) and flowers as a public green space that also could be available to everybody, including graduate students. (Parks, water features, and flowers also add to Yale’s traditional design repertoire.) Where? One option would be to combine two green areas behind the Hillhouse mansions at the end adjacent to the old School of Management buildings. In the aerial photograph in the alumni magazine there already is a formal garden that could be part of the design—at the moment, not very open or accessible or used by anyone. A couple of stone tables with chessboard tops could add an interesting option for campus culture. And the water feature and a beautiful, changing palette of flowers would be nice. This end of Hillhouse could, with the redesignated Graduate Student Research Building, become a student-friendly area. 4) The Sense of Physical Security I doubt that Yale has paid enough attention to the sense of physical security at the Hillhouse end of campus. It was a mistake, in the 1970s, when cost-cutting eliminated human beings at the gates of the residential colleges and substituted electronic key systems. The human beings could walk outside, get a bit of exercise, and keep an eye on the street. They also assured women that, almost everywhere in the central campus, there was a human being within earshot (and not just a security telephone). I’ve known two graduate students who had knives or guns pulled on them on campus or within a block of Prospect St. (Mansfield)—and word gets around. It deteriorates the quality of experience if this isn’t solved. And it also affects whether graduate students are at the office at the Hillhouse end of campus on evenings or weekends. Yes, I understand that human labor costs are expensive and that “walking the beat” and street patrols can be less cost-effective than call boxes and responding to incidents when they occur. But we are dealing with both a reality and a sense of security-and a feeling by undergraduate women that they can walk safely from the new colleges to the Cross Campus Library or a lecture at night. Or that a student or campus employee can work late and walk to Science Hill parking garage after dark. At a minimum, I think that both of the new undergraduate colleges should restore 24/7 human beings at their front gates, with a mandate to be a presence on the streets outside (Sachem, Prospect, and now Canal) and in the area around the undergraduate-oriented Seeley Mudd Library. They will benefit everyone, including graduate students. 5) A 24/7 Fitness Center plus Security Office I notice that the site for the two new undergraduate colleges carries an annotation that a third building also can be constructed on the parcel of land. One option might be to convert the corner at Canal and Prospect, the current location of the Political Science Department, into a 24/7 fitness facility. Each of Yale’s current (renovated) undergraduate colleges has its own fitness center. The two nearby new colleges could share this new fitness center (using their freed-up internal space for other purposes)—and the new fitness facility also could be open to graduate students (and faculty), a design that would justify a larger and better-equipped facility than could be justified individually. I’d like to see something with a lot of glass and light where you could see people on treadmills and cross-trainers through windows. If it operated 24/7, a portion of the campus security office might naturally be located at the facility on the top floor at Canal and Prospect with the new ability of duty officers to look out above the Hillhouse end of campus, and along the street by Becton, etc. 6) Bicycle-Friendly Options It might be interesting to consider bicycle-friendly options, especially landscaped high-speed bicycle thruways that would, safely, keep a flow of bicycle traffic away from the major public streets. The Farmington Canal Trail, with an entrance across from the new colleges, could have a new branch curving around the Grove Street Cemetery to Payne Whitney Gymnasium and HGS. 7) A Graduate Residence College/Hall I spent a year on visiting appointment to the University of Toronto as a resident in Massey College, its graduate student residence. It was a pleasant experience, and it seemed to work well for the students. One of my best friends met his future wife when they were both residents at Yale at HGS, and it’s one of the dimensions of the graduate work at Yale to which at least one new graduate residence/dining hall could contribute. It should be part of the range of options. It might especially benefit foreign graduate students. Perhaps near the new undergraduate colleges and 24/7 campus facilities at the science/social science end? A bit further along the Farmington Canal Trail? Unlike classroom buildings or faculty offices, my impression is that residence halls generate tagged income and pay for themselves over time. My guess is that, given a free choice, a very significant number of unmarried graduate and professional school students would prefer Yale-based options. It used to be that the graduate experience at Yale was a bit grim compared to the undergraduate experience, and these options could help.
First, make them green First and foremost, I would strongly urge the corporation to adopt a “green” approach to the architecture of the new colleges. This is especially appropriate in light of the proximity of the site to the School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences. If, as I and others have suggested, one of the colleges were to be named after the pioneering conservationist Gifford Pinchot, the “green” approach would be almost mandatory. Regarding arrangement of rooms, I would urge against the use of singles as in the original design of Morse and Stiles. Upon reflection after over 40 years, I feel that the use of singles encourages those of us who are naturally less gregarious to isolate ourselves too much. Acquaintance and camaraderie are perhaps more valuable than the facts and processes learned at Yale, and they should be encouraged. I like very much the suggestion that colleges should find ways to involve more graduate and professional students in their society. However, I’m not wild about the idea of pairing schools or disciplines with colleges as it would leave many of the undergraduates high and dry with no connections to their own interests. Students from many graduate and professional disciplines should be available to students in each college. As for the whining of English and philosophy majors that the location of the new colleges is too far from their classes, I say, “What’s the matter with that. Now it’s your turn. I had to walk up to Science Hill every day for classes. (Would you believe me if I claimed it was uphill both ways?)” I might add that the idea of ethnically divided colleges seems like exactly the wrong approach to arbitrary divisions in the continuum of human genetics. We’re all part of the same family—and family is something you are, not something you choose.
Don’t expand the college, shrink it Yale should be thinking shrinkage, not growth, of Yale College. Building additional residential colleges would just jam more people onto an already fairly crowded campus. There is no need for Yale College to expand. In fact, Yale ought to shrink the College a bit to reduce overcrowding in the residential colleges and some of the most popular courses. When I matriculated as a freshman in July 1942, residential college housing reflected Harkness’s idea that two students shared a living room but each had a separate bedroom. Yale should try to get back to that mode. Global population is growing, and pollution due to global economic expansion is growing. These two forces can not continue forever. Dean Speth has it absolutely right in his article on page 28 of the March/April 2008 issue of the alumni magazine. Unless global population is plateaued—and preferably reduced—and unless global pollution is reduced, no technological progress will avert an eventual catastrophe from which none will escape. (These two forces are examined ruthlessly in the Club of Rome’s 1972 book The Limits to Growth.) Yale should not grow just because America and many other countries are growing. Yale has no obligation to anyone to get bigger at the undergraduate level. Yale College should shrink slightly and remain dedicated to being at the core of one of the world’s highest quality universities.
Convert HGS and the Law School As a resident of Pierson in the late 1960s and early '70s, I grew to love the Georgian architecture shared by Pierson and Davenport (internally). As an architecture major, I also found a high appreciation for the Gothic structures all around. But with my tastes firmly grounded in the here-and-now, I envied the denizens of Morse and Stiles and their thoroughly modern surrounds. (Am I the only person who actually enjoyed the A&A building of the time?) Whatever the architectural theme employed, I believe the most important characteristic must be that it create a sense of place for its residents. I recall that after a long day in which I might journey from Pierson up to Science Hill, back to HGS, down to Hendrie Hall and a few other locations, it was comforting to stroll down the passageway from York, under the tower, and into the Pierson courtyard. With bustling city all around, the courtyard offered that place of relative quiet and retreat. Yet it could be a busy place itself, hosting at one time of year a skating rink, and at other times sunbathing, Frisbee, or simply casual conversation. In the basement below the common room was a snack bar, similar to the Durfee Buttery, that was often a late-night destination. It was very convenient that we could make our way underground to our next door neighbor’s place—Davenport—where a nicely equipped game room was to be found. I spent much more time in Davenport than nearby Branford, Saybrook, or JE, simply because of this linking tunnel. In my opinion, both Yale and its students would be ill-served by creating sub-cultures in the residential college system. The blending of people from all walks of life brings a liveliness to a place and a community, a social and cultural diversity that would be missing if the new colleges were devoted to students of a particular sub-group. One of the advantages of being “downtown” is the ready access to various commercial facilities, such as eateries, the theaters and shops. This poses an issue for the proposed site, which is significantly isolated from such opportunities. Perhaps university planners should consider more radical alternatives. For instance, the site between Canal, Sachem and Prospect could be used to build new facilities for the Graduate School and the Law School, with the current facilities for those schools then being renovated into new residential colleges. The Law School would seem to be well-suited to this conversion, while HGS might not. But HGS has never been particularly interesting architecturally, and its replacement would not likely generate much passionate resistance. This approach keeps the new colleges in closer proximity with the others, but unfortunately would significantly delay their availability.
Another site for the colleges I have read with great interest your article about the possibility of two new residential colleges, with suggestions requested. Mine are radically different, rather lengthy, and are as follows:
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
So let’s do it.
Rethink the site As long as you asked for my opinion, I think a better location would be the block bordered by Chapel, Park, Howe, and Crown streets. It is surrounded by Yale buildings and more convenient to the other colleges, Broadway, and the action in general. The other location is somewhat out of it.
Room for growth Columbia has been putting up new buildings ; two of them have grass planted on their flat roofs. Yale could do better. In this month’s Alumni Magazine, there is an aerial photo of part of the campus with a lot of flat roofs—and no evidence of anything growing on them. Why not try gardens on the new buildings cared for by the botanic part of the science curriculum? We all know that green plants put oxygen into the air and take some pollutants out, putting sun and rain to a good use! Thousands of trees are being planted world-wide, but not enough to replace the many thousands that are being cut down. Set an example! Cities with a lot of green roofs could improve the air downwind for healthier breathing. Only a small step, but well worth it for the publicity.
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