Hewitt Quadrangle

The Rotunda, with tablets on the walls commemorating Yale's war dead is a double-sized, domed, colonnaded version of Bramante's Tempietto built in 1502 on the site of St. Peter's martyrdom in Rome.

Its inscription reads: In Memory of the Men of Yale who true to Her Traditions gave their Lives that Freedom might not perish from the Earth.

1914 Anno Domini 1918.Behind the cenotaph, one can see inscribed the names of World War I battles of Cambrai, Argonne, Somme, Chateau-Thierry, Ypres, St. Mihiel and Marne.

Woodbridge Hall, located on the west side of the plaza, was designed by the firm of Howells & Stokes and is French Renaissance in style.

The Beinecke Library's sunken courtyard, visible but not accessible from the plaza, contains Isamu Noguchi's sculpture The Garden (Pyramid, Sun, and Cube).

After students erected the shanty-town, designed to mimic a Soweto shanty and named after Winnie Mandela, the university administration ordered its removal and demolished it.

Eventually the university relented and the town was resurrected, only to be burned down by an irate alumnus two years later and replaced by a "memorial wall".

In April 2024, students under the moniker Occupy Beinecke maintained a weeklong daytime occupation and a weekend overnight encampment of the plaza, calling on Yale to divest its endowment from weapons manufacturers.