Old Campus

It is the principal residence of Yale College freshmen and also contains offices for the academic departments of Classics, English, History, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy.

[2] Beginning in 1750 with the state-financed construction of Connecticut Hall, a student dormitory, the buildings of Old Brick Row were built over the next one hundred years.

[3] Trumbull's drawings chose Stiles' linear pattern, interleaving narrow, steepled buildings between long student dormitories.

[4] Around the Brick Row at this time were a chemical laboratory, a mineralogical building (the Cabinet), and the Second President's House, replacing one north of Elm Street.

In 1870, Yale President Noah Porter announced the "gradual abandonment and removal of the present buildings of the Brick Row," beginning with the construction of Farnam Hall.

[5] From 1870 to 1928, the college undertook a wholesale reconfiguration of its campus, tearing down the Old Brick Row and its satellites and erecting a perimeter of Victorian Gothic student dormitories around a central enclosure.

An echo of the event occurs with the annual fall a cappella rush, where singing groups race to freshman dorms to choose new members.

Old Campus hosts several curricular activities, including Freshman Olympics, a competition among the residential colleges, and Spring Fling, an outdoor concert.

There are bronze statues on Old Campus of Nathan Hale (1913, Bela Pratt), Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1896, John Ferguson Weir), and Abraham Pierson (1874, Launt Thompson).

Connecticut Hall on the left and Welch Hall on the right.
Reconstructed view of the College House, which stood from 1718 to 1782
Old Brick Row in 1807, viewed from the New Haven Green . Left to right: South College, First Chapel, South Middle College , Connecticut Lyceum, and North Middle College.
Yale College in 1879, with Old Brick Row buildings and first new dorms. Of the depicted buildings only the Art School, College Library (L.), Connecticut Hall (S.M.), Farnam (F.), Battell Chapel (B.C.) and Durfee (D.) now stand.
Seniors socializing on the fence around 1880
Statue of Nathan Hale in front of Connecticut Hall