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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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New colleges will be Gothic, sketches reveal The much-anticipated design of Yale's new residential colleges has suddenly come into focus -- and it's a familiar look indeed. An artist's sketches of the two colleges, posted on the artist's website and spotted by the Yale Daily News, reveal a highly traditional approach in the neo-Gothic style of Branford, Saybrook, and Berkeley. Tall towers, courtyards, and a wide walkway recreate the feeling of central campus in the triangular area between Ingalls Rink and the Grove Street cemetery. The sketches also seem to confirm that the project will involve demolishing not only Hammond Hall and the political science department's historic Brewster Hall, but also Seeley G. Mudd Library, built in 1982. The drawings show new buildings where those three structures now stand. Commissioned by the firm of architect Robert A. M. Stern '65MArch, which is designing the colleges, the sketches are not final and have not been officially released. "It's just a schematic," says Stern, who is also dean of the School of Architecture. "But, yes, that's what we're proposing." University planner Laura Cruickshank notes that the drawings are "iterative" -- representing parts of an evolving process -- and says Yale will unveil more information by month's end. The university decided last year to build two new colleges to accommodate an expansion of Yale College enrollment. Construction, originally scheduled to finish in 2013, will be postponed "until conditions in credit markets improve or until gift funding is received," President Richard C. Levin wrote in February. Many undergraduates perceive the colleges' planned Prospect Street location as remote and obscure. To address that concern, the drawings reflect a classic Ivy League profile in the vein of James Gamble Rogers, Class of 1889, who designed much of the central campus. In fact, "I have never seen James Gamble Rogers channeled more completely, from the style of drawing to the copy of Library Walk," comments Aaron Betsky '79, '83MArch, in an e-mail. Author of the book James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism, Betsky is director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. It's hard to know how literally to take the drawings, observes Paul Goldberger '72, architecture critic for the New Yorker, in a phone interview. Artists' renderings "are sort of the equivalent of heavily retouched photographs," he cautions. "Everything is tweaked to make it look especially pretty." That said, Goldberger continues, "what's very clear is that Stern has decided to go head to head with the master" of Yale Gothic architecture. And "if anybody can pull off James Gamble Rogers in the twenty-first century, it's Bob Stern." But, Goldberger notes, that raises two additional questions. First, does it make sense to imitate 80-year-old buildings that are themselves imitations of the centuries-old University of Oxford? Goldberger says he's "split right down the middle" on that question. "I have a little bit of worry that the whole thing might be like Yale's greatest hits," he says. "I might have preferred something that would have continued Yale's [more recent] tradition of being more on the cutting edge." Goldberger's other main concern is practical. Because Gothic architecture depends on fine detailing by both designers and craftsmen, "this is a very bad kind of architecture to do on a tight budget," he says. He's "slightly surprised" that, having decided on a traditional approach, the university didn't go with a cheaper red-brick Georgian style. "On the other hand," Goldberger notes, "I think of Gothic as the heart of Yale. So if you want to tie this area to the heart of campus, it's the right choice." Architect and critic Patrick Pinnell '71, '74MArch, laments the planned demolition of Mudd Library and Hammond Hall. "For God's sake, all the green credits that they've stored up in architecture heaven with Kroon Hall are gone" if Yale tears down those buildings, exclaims Pinnell, author of The Campus Guide: Yale University. Pointing out that Silliman College incorporated parts of older buildings, he says, "I'd like to know why it couldn't be done" here. Perhaps there's a good reason, one that Yale has yet to explain, Pinnell adds. And, like Goldberger, he notes that it's impossible to gauge how closely the drawings represent the expected final product. So "the jury should still be out." |
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