Cora Colburn: First Director of the University Dining Hall

The Timothy Dwight residential college dining hall, circa 1935-1936.

In 1923, Yale president James Rowland Angell asked Cora Colburn for help: “We are in trouble here at Yale over our Commons.” Coming from a similar position at the University of Chicago, and as acting director at Yale, she rescued the bankrupt food service, providing tasty, nutritious, and economical meals that satisfied students and their parents. Her appointment as director of the University Dining Halls (Commons) in 1926 was at the rank of professor, and she was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree in 1927, only the second Yale professional staff woman to receive one. The first was landscape architect Beatrix Farrand in 1925. The Yale Daily News published a front-page article, “New Dining Hall Director Arrives to Take Position” (left-hand column), welcoming Colburn to campus.

The University Dining Hall (Commons) before Colburn was appointed as director, circa 1905.

The University Dining Hall (Commons) after Colburn was appointed as director, 1927.

Colburn was responsible for the new residential college dining services from the time planning for the colleges began in 1929. As the residential college dining halls grew from five to nine, Colburn met the challenge, serving 1.6 million meals in twelve dining halls in 1938. As acting director, Cora Colburn increased the number of meals served daily from 626 to 1,612. The average cost “never exceeded 42 cents.” The larger residential colleges, Timothy Dwight and Silliman, required jackets and ties for table service by uniformed waitresses, waiters, and busboys.

It was a great shock to the Yale community when she died suddenly in her office in the University Dining Hall on October 2, 1939, at the age of seventy-two. The article noted that she was “one of the country’s leading experts in the field of institution economics.” For sixteen years she had modernized and improved Yale dining. The New York Times, in her obituary, called her “one of the foremost designers of equipment for cooking and serving of food.” Professional women rarely received a Times obituary in that era, but as the Times wrote, Colburn was “nationally known.”