"We thought of ourselves as architects:" Coeducation and the Yale Campus, 1968-1973

"Are these really colleges?"

 

“What is the University trying to accomplish with its design for the new colleges? It says it is perpetuating the college system and preserving (or perhaps recreating) a centuries old bond between town and gown that has recently been dissolving. But has Yale really accomplished either of these objectives? Are these really colleges?” 

— Stephen Hagan, in an October 1972 Yale Daily News article

 

 

As coeducation passed into its second and third years, tensions between the student body, the Yale administration, and New Haven continued to mount. Students advocated for alleviating overcrowding and improving the wildly unbalanced gender ratio. The Yale administration was willing to address these complaints, but not at the expense of reducing the number of men at Yale (the storied "1000 male leaders" quota). The city of New Haven was determined to preserve the city’s tax base, which was reduced whenever the tax-exempt university acquired new property.

 

The physical constraints of Yale and New Haven created a situation where these needs could not be reconciled without a sacrifice — one of the parties involved: the Yale administration, the undergraduate students, or the city of New Haven, would have to give something up. 

 

 

In the fall of 1972, Yale unveiled their proposed solution to this web of conflicting interests: two new residential colleges, located across from Timothy Dwight College on Grove Street, bounded on the east and west by Whitney Avenue and Temple Street. The two colleges were designed to accommodate 500 students in total. 

 

John Hay Whitney, Class of 1926, the same donor who had helped fund the construction of Stiles and Morse Colleges in 1962, donated 15 million dollars to support the project. A Yale press release on the subject explained that “His (Whitney’s) gift permits the expansion of Yale College in response to the admission of women without abandoning Yale’s unique residential college system as the basis for undergraduate life.” But as Stephen Hagan wrote in an October 1972 issue of the Yale Daily News: “Even a decade ago, when Morse and Stiles were built, there was a feeling that Yale could enter a modern era, with modern architecture, and still retain those qualities of ageless classical charm that characterize the colleges.” 

 

“Joan Ausubel summed up her concerns on the matter [of expanding Yale's campus], in order of importance as: 1) Women’s rights; 2) The right of the community to maintain the integrity of its land and neighborhoods (with regard to the construction of new housing, etc) and 3) The need to improve the environment for Yale students — both living accommodations and social environment.”

 — Notes from a February 1971 meeting of the Women’s Advisory Council

 

Not only was Yale’s student body more skeptical of the residential college system, more critical of Yale’s spatial relationship to New Haven, but the city itself had new leverage to advocate for its own interests. The Guida Amendment, passed in 1969, required that the city Board of Alders vote to approve any construction project that would remove land from city tax rolls. 

 

The design of the proposed colleges seemed a nod to students’ desire to be more connected to the city around them: the combination of brick and fiberglass was supposed to provide an aesthetic link between the new residential colleges and the architecture of nearby buildings in New Haven; the glass wall in each common room sought to provide sweeping views of the city. But both students and city officials found these design features to be evasive of larger issues. As undergraduate Amy Solomon put it in a Yale Daily News Article, “Looking out over New Haven as one of five hundred people living in an eight story building on Whitney Avenue engenders no more sense of community with the people of New Haven or contact with them than living in Crown or University Towers does.” 

The ground floor of the proposed colleges included shops so the block could be partially commercially-zoned, and thus would still contribute to New Haven’s tax rolls. Still, New Haven aldermen remained hesitant to surrender a valuable swath of downtown real estate to an institution with which the city had mixed relations. Amy Solomon argued that “[The proposed colleges are] an obtrusive way of bringing Yale students closer to the city. The University will not ingratiate itself with the community by its token inclusion of shops on the lower level of the complex.” 

 

Though the proposed colleges were ultimately not constructed, the legacy of this moment in Yale-New Haven history is still visible today in the architecture of the Yale Center for British Art.  Designed by Yale Professor of Architecture Louis I. Kahn and completed in 1974, the building includes commercial space on the ground floor so the building would contribute to New Haven’s tax rolls. 

Romaldo Giurgold, one of the architects working on the project, described the proposed colleges as “A vital area where the University merges with the city, a crossroads for the campus and community, a place of encounter.” According to Stephen Hagan: “‘Sluggish, uninspired, chugging and churning on the site’ were words critics used to describe the ultimate solution.” 

 

“The rigidity of the college system forces people to conform to it rather than allowing them to adjust it to their needs… Students will still suffer because they are forced to fit their way of life into the overall pattern of life in the college. This violates a student’s sense of his own individuality as well as his privacy.” — Amy Solomon, in an October 1972 Yale Daily News article

“It is no wonder, then, that student criticism would ensue, when a large segment of the student body wanted escapes from the city and exciting alternative living experiences with graduate students, faculty, and even New Haven residents; and then Yale brought forth a design that packed 500 students into an eight-story high urban structure.” — Stephen Hagan, in an October 1972 Yale Daily News article 

 

 

 

Attempted negotiations between Yale and city officials dragged on for over a year, and drew to a conclusion in 1973 when the New Haven Board of Alders voted against Yale’s plan by a margin of 15-10. This left the University at an impasse: the administration would not be able to both maintain the “1000 male leaders" quota and increase the number of women at Yale College. Yale would have to give something up, over the next decade it did, incrementally chipping away at the “1000 male leaders” quota with each admissions cycle. 

The failure of the proposed colleges was not the only catalyst for this balancing of the undergraduate gender ratio. Steady pressure from students, a broader cultural shift regarding gender norms, and changing attitudes among administrators and alumni all pushed Yale College towards complete coeducation. Still, the March 1973 vote of the New Haven Board of Alders marked a key moment: when Yale could not, through money or influence, manage to maintain every vestige of its past while forging a future.