Product Description

Yale College, founded in 1701, is one of America's most revered historic campuses. Three centuries of Yale architecture cover a dynamic history of design, education, and national leadership. The conservative Yale of early colonial and Gothic buildings evolved to become a mecca for modern architects in the 1950s and the site of such notable works as Louis I. Kahn's Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art, Paul Rudolph's Yale Art + Architecture Building, and Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink. Author and photographer Patrick L. Pinnell beautifully captures Yale's and New Haven's architecture and urbanism across 300 years. The guide also reveals much about the academic aspirations and educational philosophy that helped shape the buildings of Yale. The visitor will be guided on an insider's tour of the campus, and alumni will delight in new insights about their alma mater.

This beautifully photographed guide reveals the stories behind more than 85 buildings, historic gardens, art galleries, theaters, athletic facilities, and works of sculpture on the Yale University campus.

qExquisitely painted three-dimensional maps locate featured buildings on the campus and eight sub-districts-Old Campus; Arts Area; Memorial Quadrangle; Cross Campus and North Green; Law School, Graduate School, and Saarinen Colleges; Beinecke Library to Timothy Dwight College; Hillhouse Avenue and Lower Prospect Streets; Science Hill and Divinity School; Oak Street and Medical Campus; and Yale Bowl and the Athletic Fields. Archival photographs and drawings recapture fragments of "lost" buildings and recall notable historic moments.

In all, this guide is for anyone familiar (or who wants to be) with the treasures of the Yale campus, whether student, alum, prospective student, or architecture buff.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #848275 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

Review
Princeton Architectural Press's new series will do much to enrich our understanding of this particular architectural genre. -- William Morgan, Architecture Boston, Winter 99

Customer Reviews

Architectural guide of the very highest quality
Many authors would wilt under the task of tying together the nearly 300 year historical development of what is widely recognized to be the finest assemblage of buildings to be found on any American college campus. Fortunately, Pinnell, a Yale alumnus and professor of architecture, is up to the challenge. Bringing to his subject matter a depth of feeling and complexity of thought borne of his many years of close interaction with the Yale built environment, Pinnell pulls off the difficult task of creating a guide that will offer fresh insight and intellectual challenge to those who know the campus well while retaining the interest of even first time visitors. As this is an architectural and not a travel guide, the author assumes that the reader's primary interest is in the school's buildings, its public spaces, and its historical and urbanistic relationship to New Haven. As a result, a less architecturally-concerned reader may be better served by another sort of book. However, for those of us who share Pinnell's passion for building generally and the magnificent Yale campus, in particular, this is the book we've been waiting for.

Buy It
This is a prodigious and learned work. Anyone visiting Yale can learn a lot from it.

One interesting thing about this campus series is that as we continue to turn America into sprawl -- what James Howard Kunstler calls "the National Automobile Slum" -- campuses are the first urban experience for many Americans.

Note to Princeton Architectural Press: you should let the authors talk more about the outdoor public realm and not make them focus so much on individual buildings.

The book should also have many plans (there are none). The best architecture guidebooks have plans for every building.

Charming
A charming book. Clear photographs and sensitive analysis of buildings familiar, new, and vanished. Pinnell sets his stories of each structure in its context with due attention to historical development. I would have liked seeing more photos of sets of buildings together. Note how the two large pictures of Harkness Tower are especially engaging for their backgrounds. It would also have been nice to see a drawing of Venturi's famously unbuilt Math building. If you can get to New Haven easily, carry this book around to enrich your visit.