ABSTRACT
Old Campus remained the psychological heart of the campus, but in the early twentieth century Yale expanded dramatically. From the beginning of the century, a separate science area named Science Hill developed in piecemeal, sprawling fashion to the north of the core. Quickly, though, this type of unbridled growth was recognised as a threat to the intimacy of college life. By the First World War, architectural historian Patrick Pinnell has explained, ‘Yale needed to pull its physical plant together, not only for the sake of its students’ lives, but also for the sake of understanding
itself as a single entity, one community’.7 Between 1917 and the Second World War, Yale undertook a process of momentous reinvention. Under the aegis of architect James Gamble Rogers, it embarked upon a bold plan to expand upon a second of the city’s original nine squares using the medieval colleges of England as its inspiration.
