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Yale: The Future of Town & Gown
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Business New Haven
7/10/2000
By: Michael C. Bingham
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Yale as a region?
Of course not. It's a university, one of many in southern Connecticut.
But beyond the image of Yale in New Haven's mind's eye - 5,300 gifted and very fortunate undergrads in 12 residential colleges - lies much more.
Because Yale exists in multiple dimensions. Yale is also ten professional schools that churn out doctors, lawyers, musicians, architects and business people, many of whom will ascend to the elites of their professions.
There's human dimension: 3,330 faculty members with the best minds money can buy. More than 7,000 employees of all kinds, with (unlike other major area employers) little likelihood of a surprise "downsizing" any time soon.
And the physical dimension: 340 buildings and 12.5 million gross square feet of space across 910 acres (200 at the central campus, 25 at the medical center, 110 at Yale athletic fields and 515 at its golf course and nature preserves). The seventh-largest library system in the world, with more than ten million volumes in 21 libraries.
The historic dimension: Yale is the third oldest institution of higher learning (after Harvard and Virginia's College of William & Mary) in the U.S. Three of the last five U.S. Presidents attended Yale, and there's a 50-50 chance George W. Bush will make it four of six. Modern football was practically invented at Yale. 'Nuff said.
And of course the economic dimension: During FY 1999, Yale's endowment rose to $7.2 billion. More than $200 million was spent on research at Yale during the same year, and operating expenses exceeded $1 billion. Unknown and unseen to most New Haveners, Yale attracts some 550,000 visitors each year.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Yale educated the sons of Connecticut's most privileged families. During the second half of the 20th century, it educated some of the brightest young men and women in the nation. On the cusp of the 21st century, it enjoys a global constituency and a global reputation for educational and research excellence.
What the world today knows as Yale was in 1701 chartered as the Collegiate School to educate youth for "publick employment both in Church and Civil State." Founded by a group of ten ministers, the school originally held classes in houses in Killingworth, then Saybrook.
With the Connecticut Assembly supporting a new school, the formerly separate colonies of New Haven and Hartford competed bitterly to have the school's permanent home within their political jurisdictions. In 1717, the Assembly selected New Haven, and chose as a site for the college's first wooden building a parcel facing the west side of the Green, which today is graced by the entrance to Saybrook College, which each spring erupts for two weeks in a brilliant blaze of daffodils.
During most of its first century Yale grew slowly but steadily, supported by the city (!), the Connecticut Assembly and occasional large private donations, most notably from Elihu Yale, in whose honor the Assembly renamed the college. The original wooden building lasted until 1775, by which time it had been augmented by a brick dormitory and - following a doctrinal dispute with the New Haven congregation's minister - a separate chapel.
As the university's student body grew from single numbers into the dozens, the need to plan the institution's future growth became evident. So in 1792, at the suggestion of painter John Trumbull, Yale's president and treasurer devised a formula for managing growing dormitory and classroom needs in an orderly fashion.
The result was the array of buildings that came to be known as Old Brick Row, which stood in the elm-shaded yard west of College Street. But by 1840 the brick buildings had reached the limit of the block between Elm and Chapel. So, bolstered by new private donations and changing institutional interests, Yale began to construct buildings away from the college's historic center.
During the second half of the 19th century Old Brick Row was gradually demolished and replaced by structures that would eventually ring the block (bounded today by College, Elm, Chapel and High streets) now known as Old Campus. At the same time, growth of the college and the increasing variety of programs that would transform Yale into a true university spurred build outside of that block, mostly in nearby New Haven neighborhoods.
In particular, the Sheffield Scientific School (founded in 1852) and the medical school began to form new centers of Yale building. However, much of this building was haphazard and Yale's physical manifestation - then as now - remained closely enmeshed with surrounding city residences and businesses, symbolizing the symbiotic relationship between gown and town.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Yale was undergoing a dramatic transformation as it grew both in physical size, student population and national prominence. In recognition of this, in 1919 a group of trustees authorized John Russell Pope to create a vision for 20th-century Yale. Pope's grand plan introduced what is now Cross Campus (anchored by Sterling Library) to link recently acquired Prospect Hill to the central campus.
Adopting as its architectural language American Collegiate Gothic, Pope's plan called for streetwall and perimeter block buildings to define Yale's public spaces and form intimate spaces and courtyards - the "inside-out" residential college we see today.
The execution of Pope's sweeping vision (in modified and somewhat scaled-back form) was left in the General Plan of 1921 to James Gamble Rogers, who created - congruent with the decision to assign undergraduates to separate colleges - the central campus as it remains today. That is, according to the most recent Framework for Campus Planning, a Yale of "various detached precincts and isolated moments of coherence that fail to create a physically unified [u]niversity."
Indeed, between the Rogers plan up until publication this year of the new plan, development efforts during the ensuing 79 years focused on discrete portions of the campus - Science Hill, for example - without considering Yale as an integrated organism.
And while the 20th century post-Rogers saw the creation of some brilliant individual elements - Louis Kahn's Center for British Art is one - more attention was paid in recent decades to maintaining and updating existing structures than to understanding and integrating the growing sprawl of disparate Yale functions and communities.
Until now, that is.
New Haven's fear and mistrust of Yale is multi-dimensional and centuries in the making, and no amount of sweet talk from Woodbridge Hall is going to wipe the slate clean any time soon.
There is the fear that Yale secretly dominates New Haven's political, economic and civic affairs for its own ends - and ample historical basis for that fear.
But looking to the future, common sense alone "proves" that Yale wants and needs a safer, more vibrant and more attractive New Haven. When star faculty in places like Palo Alto can't be lured here, Yale loses. When valedictorians choose leafy Princeton or Cantabridgian bustle over the Elm City's singular charms, Yale loses, too.
This spring Yale released a remarkable 188-page document, Yale University: A Framework for Campus Planning, the culmination of three years of planning, consultation and thinking about how the physical Yale of today might best be altered to meet the Yale constituency of tomorrow.
Prepared by the architectural and urban design firm of Cooper, Robertson & Partners, the Yale study represents a revealing lens on how Yale's brain trust views New Haven today and how they may want to see it change.
Among the highlights:
o Entangled as they are by 300 years of haphazard or unplanned growth, the macro-organism that is Yale/New Haven is confusing to visitors and even those already here. There is no "entrance" to Yale, which in any event has grown from one building to 340 buildings on 835 acres spread over three separate and distinct "campuses": the downtown central campus, the medical center/medical school complex and the Yale athletic fields straddling New Haven and West Haven. Many of the 550,000 annual visitors to Yale thus receive an unfavorable first impression of Old Blue - and everyone knows you only get one chance to make a first impression.
• Even if one knows where one is going at Yale, the evolution of the city's transportation infrastructure often make it hard to get there amid a bewildering grid of one-way streets that is unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists and, the Yale study argues, indeed has had a stultifying effect on New Haven's economic development and retail fortunes.
• Yale's facilities themselves present an inconsistent face to the outside world, with inconsistent (or non-existent) signage, as well as poorly conceived lighting that neither enhances a feeling of security nor showcases the university's most distinguished facades after dark (think Newport, or Washington, D.C.).
• Yale supports increased retail activity in the Broadway area, where city and university overlap and share uses. The new study notes that both sides of Broadway have potential sites, as well as the district's periphery (Lake Place, Dixwell Avenue and Ashmun Street). However, traffic volume, traffic speed and parking "need attention."
• While only four blocks removed from the central campus, the medical center seems - and is - isolated from it. The framework study recommends orienting all new research facilities toward Cedar Street, and developing College and York streets as attractive, welcoming pedestrian routes between Cedar Street and the "main" Yale.
In an interview with BNH, Yale President Richard C. Levin emphasizes that the Cooper, Robertson study should be seen as an overlay upon existing building plans. Moreover, its implementation is contingent on further study by the Yale administration, budgetary considerations and negotiations with city officials.
"You have to understand that this is not the master plan for the campus," say Levin, "it's a study of several specific [issues]: the systems that unify the campus - pedestrian circulation, signage, lighting, parking - what happens between the buildings to make the campus work; also, sites for future building; and then the third piece is to give us a characterization of the campus in a way that might [guide] us in thinking about particular buildings and how they might fit in."
Adds Levin: "The building plans for the university aren't actually specified in this plans. We have a plan for the residential colleges; we have a plan for Science Hill; we have a plan for improvement of the athletic facilities; we have a plan for the libraries, we have a plan for the arts area - all done before engaging Cooper, Robertson."
So, which vision will take precedence? "As we proceed with already-developed building plans and any others we formulate in the future," explains Levin, "we wanted somebody to sit back and give us guidance on how to tie it all together, how to make the campus function as a whole."
Part of that solution, of course, involves altering the infrastructure of the city itself. Thus the Cooper, Robertson study in part reflects discussions with city officials about wedding future needs of both town and gown.
"Anything that involves the city is not our decision to make unilaterally," notes Levin. The first small experiment, he notes, will take place this fall when new lighting fixtures on installed on York Street between Chapel and Elm "at Yale's expense," says Levin. "If it works, we may think about expanding it around campus and in fact throughout downtown."
Regarding conversion of city streets to two-way traffic, "There have been a lot of discussions with [city traffic and parking czar] Brian McGrath," says Levin, "and he has very legitimate concerns about traffic flow into downtown."
But will it in fact become reality? "I think it will happen by degrees," Levin says. "I think the mayor has some interest in proceeding with conversion to two-way streets, but I don't think anybody is prepared go forward tomorrow toward full implementation" of the Cooper, Robertson plan.
The principal physical changes, says Levin, beyond Science Hill and the medical center, involve the long-overdue renovation of the residential colleges constructed during the 1920s and '30s. That is in process, although Levin notes, "There are still many hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent finishing that alone."
In addition, Levin points to the renovation of the School of Art & Architecture, especially the former Jewish Community Center on Chapel Street, expanding the Yale University Art Gallery, University Theater and Yale Repertory Theatre as well as improvements to the music school, including Sprague Hall on College Street.
On the precipice of its 300th anniversary, a reasonable question is, Whither goest Yale?
The first agenda item, of course, is a celebration of the university's past, present and future. Yale tercentennial festivities will kick off in October and extend for 12 months.
University officials hope "business leaders will take advantage of what Yale will be offering, to come to our campus, to encourage their employees to come to our campus, and to see the kinds of resources Yale can provide to assist them in their endeavors - not just during the tercentennial year, but as an ongoing partner in the life of this community," says Yale Vice President and Secretary Linda Koch Lorimer.
That's next year. Beyond that? Yale without question will become more diverse (27 percent of students today are minorities, half of these of Asian origin) and, above all, more global.
"At the beginning of the [20th] century," explains Lorimer, "Yale was really a regional institution. Now we have drawing power not just from around the country, but around the world. Yale is one of the greatest importers of human resources in our country."
But there are paradoxes: Yale will become at the same time more meritocratic but more exclusive, more expensive but more bottom line-focused, and certainly more science- and math-oriented (the most popular majors today remain history, economics and political science).
Explains Lorimer: "For Yale to be at the forefront of higher education in the world for the decades ahead, [it] requires us to be at the forefront of science," she says. "If one looks at discoveries emanating today that will advance humankind, they are disproportionately in the arenas of science and medicine. Yale wants to make sure that we are in the vanguard" of advancing those discoveries.
That in part informs the impending $1 billion investment at the medical center and Science Hill. University officials well recognize that, as the earth's economy is increasingly driven by advances in mathematics and science, that is where Yale's fortunes lie.
"Our historic strengths have been in the humanities - which we will maintain - but we want to make sure we will advance even further where the frontiers of knowledge will be increasingly evident," Lorimer says.
But how can the university - or any university, for that matter - do both? "Selective excellence," answers Lorimer. "No institution can be comprehensive in advancing knowledge."
Yale must "reinforce areas where it historically has been strong and claim expertise and leadership - selectively - in a variety of fields. We will not, across every sub-discipline of science, be the world leader," Lorimer acknowledges. "But when any country or any university around the world asks, 'What are the two or three or four greatest places for science and medicine?' we want to be sure Yale will be on that list."
Beyond that, how will the global economy impact the sheer size of Yale? By what measure ought it to educate 5,300 undergrads, as it does now - instead of, say, 53,000 - as the intellectual resources of the entire planet come into play?
Yale's brain trust will address such issues as they arise. On the most immediate level, "We have thought about adding a couple of residential colleges," says Levin. "As we look at a more and more global constituency for the undergraduate body, we want to make sure we're still serving this country adequately."
As always, the priorities remain: For God, for country, for Yale.
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