Street Hall is a historic building on

Old Campus The Old Campus is the oldest area of the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut. It is the principal residence of Yale College freshmen and also contains offices for the academic departments of Classics, English, History, Comparative Li ...

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

. It housed the first collegiate art school in the United States, a gift from

Augustus Russell Street Augustus Russell Street (5 November 1792 – 12 June 1866) was a philanthropist who made significant donations to Yale University. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Titus Street (1758-1842), the founder of Streetsboro Township, Oh ...

, a native of

New Haven 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 134,023 ...

and graduate of the Class of 1812, to Yale for the establishment its School of Fine Arts. It 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 ...

in 1864. Street Hall is described as a "beacon of Yale's then-nascent engagement with New Haven" due to Augustus Russell Street's request that the building have entrances facing both

and the city sidewalk. When the renovation is complete, visitors will be able to enter it from the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

. The Art Gallery plans to expand across the bridge over High Street into Street Hall. The building's facade is characterized by restless, asymmetrical

massing Massing is a term in architecture which refers to the perception of the general shape and form as well as size of a building. Massing in architectural theory Massing refers to the structure in three dimensions (form), not just its outline from ...

, and a combination of dark and light stones. The building is the final resting place of John Trumbull, the famed American painter.

References

Yale University buildings Yale School of Art School buildings completed in 1864 {{Connecticut-struct-stub