Left on the drawing board

Manuscript and Archives

Manuscript and Archives

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Michael Marsland

Michael Marsland

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Class Day courtyard

Yale celebrated its 200th anniversary in 1901 with the construction of a set of Beaux-Arts classical buildings: Commons, Memorial Hall, Woolsey Hall, and Woodbridge Hall. The original plan (by architects Carrère and Hastings) called for completing the entire block with similar structures. The plan also included a sunken grassy lawn “for Class Day exercises.” (It would have been much too small for today’s student body.)

In the short term, a simpler plaza was built, paved with small stone blocks, and named Hewitt Quadrangle. Plans for a classical administration building to complete the quad were floated in the 1920s, but Yale never got around to it. By the time the university cast its eye on the site again in the 1960s, architectural fashions had changed. The Beinecke Library was built in 1963, in a style that probably would have flabbergasted Carrère and Hastings, and Hewitt Quadrangle was made over to match it.