Old Campus

First building: Yale College House When Yale College moved to New Haven in 1718, the town constructed its first building, the "College House," at the corner of College and Chapel Streets, where Bingham Hall now stands. The wood-framed structure contained all the functions of the college: student rooms, a library, and a combined chapel and dining hall. Falling into disrepair, this building was torn down in stages from 1775 to 1782. Old Brick Row construction . Left to right: South College, First Chapel, South Middle College, Connecticut Lyceum, and North Middle College. Beginning in 1750 with the state-financed construction of Connecticut Hall, a student dormitory, the buildings of Old Brick Row were built over the next one hundred years. A chapel, later known as the Atheneum, joined the dormitory in 1761. During a 1792 disagreement over whether the next building should follow a linear pattern, preferred by Yale President Ezra Stiles, or right-angular pattern, preferred by the Yale Corporation and the town, Stiles commissioned James Hillhouse and John Trumbull to draft first college campus plan in the United States. Trumbull's drawings chose Stiles' linear pattern, interleaving narrow, steepled buildings between long student dormitories. By 1824, Old Brick Row included four student dormitories, then known as "colleges," and between them the Atheneum (First Chapel), Connecticut Lyceum, and Second Chapel. Around the Brick Row at this time were a chemical laboratory, a mineralogical building (the Cabinet), and the Second President's House, replacing one north of Elm Street. The college gradually purchased parcels of land until it controlled the whole block by 1857. Properties owned by Amos Doolittle and Benjamin Franklin were consolidated and demolished, as were the town jail and poorhouse. On newly acquired land surrounding Old Brick Row, administrators built the Trumbull Gallery (1832), Divinity College (1835), the College Library (1849), and Alumni Hall (1850). Of the fourteen Yale buildings completed by 1850, only two, Connecticut Hall and the College Library (now Dwight Hall), would stand fifty years later, and both survive today. Quadrangle plan In 1870, Yale President Noah Porter announced the "gradual abandonment and removal of the present buildings of the Brick Row," beginning with the construction of Farnam Hall. From 1870 to 1928, the college undertook a wholesale reconfiguration of its campus, tearing down the Old Brick Row and its satellites and erecting a perimeter of Victorian Gothic student dormitories around a central enclosure. Where before it had been most prestigious to live off campus, the new dormitories became fashionable as the preserve of seniors. When Yale's residential colleges were opened in 1933, the Old Campus transitioned to a home for the common First Year, with upperclassmen living in the colleges. ==Yale Fence==

In 1833, a picket fence encircling the campus was replaced with a rail fence, causing a major shift in the social patterns of the Old Campus. The Yale Fence, a wood fence with square posts and round rails that ran three sides of Old Brick Row, was the college's primary gathering place thereafter. Students would claim sections by class year, with seniors taking choice seats along Chapel Street. However, as the modern quadrangle took form, the fence was gradually uprooted. In 1888, the displacement of its last section for Osborn Hall caused 2,100 alumni to write in protest. The Yale Fence Club, an undergraduate fraternal organization, was named in its memory. The fence currently lining the Old Campus' interior courtyard is modeled after the old fence, and pieces of the original are held in Sterling Memorial Library. ==Student life==

in front of Connecticut Hall Old Campus houses first years from ten of Yale College's fourteen residential colleges. These students are assigned a residential college before starting their studies at Yale, live in Old Campus dormitories during their first year, and move into their colleges at the beginning of sophomore year. Students assigned to Silliman, Timothy Dwight, Benjamin Franklin, and Pauli Murray do not live on Old Campus but rather in their colleges for all four years. Since the 18th century, Yale's Commencement ceremony has been held on the grounds of the Old Campus. Every May, approximately 10,000 chairs are set up for the event and college's Class Day, held the day before and featuring a distinguished speaker. During the late 19th century, the Old Campus hosted an annual Tap Night for the upperclassmen on the Old Campus, where juniors were inducted into secret societies. An echo of the event occurs with the annual fall a cappella rush, where singing groups race to first year dorms to choose new members. Old Campus hosts several curricular activities, including First Year Olympics, a competition among the residential colleges, and Spring Fling, an outdoor concert. ==Statues==

There are bronze statues on Old Campus of Nathan Hale (1913, Bela Pratt), Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1896, John Ferguson Weir), and Abraham Pierson (1874, Launt Thompson). There are also statues of lions at the entrance to Lanman-Wright Hall. Before it was moved to Science Hill, a statue of Benjamin Silliman stood in front of Dwight Hall. Copies of the Nathan Hale statue were cast for the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice (see Statue of Nathan Hale (New York City)), the Tribune Tower in Chicago (see Statue of Nathan Hale (Chicago)), and Fort Nathan Hale. ==Current buildings==