Augustus Russell Street (5 November 1792 – 12 June 1866) was a

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

who made significant donations to

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. He was born in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

, the son of Titus Street (1758-1842), the founder of Streetsboro Township, Ohio, and his wife, née Amaryllis Atwater (1764-1812). He was graduated from Yale in 1812 where he studied law, but he abandoned the profession for health reasons. He traveled in Europe from 1843 to 1848 studying art and modern languages. He inherited a fortune and used it for philanthropic endeavors. He gave Yale its School of Fine Arts; Street Hall, named for him, was designed by

Peter Bonnett Wight Peter B. Wight (1838–1925) was an American 19th-century architect from New York City who worked there and in Chicago. Biography Wight's career "flourished in the 1860s and early 1870s in New York, where he developed a decorative, historicist ...

. He also established the Street Professorship of Modern Languages and the Titus Street Professorship in the Yale Theological department. He married Caroline Mary Leffingwell on 16 October 1815; they had seven daughters, all of whom predeceased them. Only the eldest, Caroline Augusta Street, married and had children; her husband was Admiral

Andrew Hull Foote Andrew Hull Foote (September 12, 1806 – June 26, 1863) was an American naval officer who was noted for his service in the American Civil War and also for his contributions to several naval reforms in the years prior to the war. When the war cam ...

References

*''Yale Obituary Record'', 1865-6, p. 195. {{DEFAULTSORT:Street, Augustus Russell 1792 births 1866 deaths Yale University alumni 19th-century American philanthropists