News' View: When preservationists go awry
The University is acting responsibly, not recklessly, in demolishing several aging buildings to make way for new colleges.
Over the past few months, a number of preservation groups have complained with increasing volume about the University’s plans to tear down a number of unremarkable buildings located behind the Grove Street Cemetery to make way for its two new residential colleges.
They argue that Yale is destroying centuries of New Haven history in its plans to clear the 6.5-acre site, which currently houses buildings like Hammond Hall and the Mudd Library. In op-eds, in pleading letters to Yale and in public speeches, preservationists have begged that School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern’s...
Hammond and Mudd are university structures. While it is wasteful to destroy them, I agree that in this case, assuming the colleges are built as planned, more is gained from their removal than keeping them. Keeping Hammond or Mudd would remove a massive amount of program space from the new colleges.
The loss of the small house at the corner of Trumbull and Prospect, however, could have been avoided. That house contributes to the understanding of the neighborhood -- Hillhouse Avenue as the nation's first suburb; the Farmington Canal. Removing it from that site takes a way a big part of New Haven's historic fabric. Stern can easily keep that house and have just as much program, without any significant compromises.
Preservation in my view is not about the architecture, it's about preserving the history of the urban fabric so that future generations can understand how their city once was.
Mudd would be a loss, as would Donaldson, but not overwhelming ones. But Yale should take the opportunity, for once, to permit archeological investigations of the site before rebuilding. There is much that could be learned, in a site with much history beneath it.
Your editorial about the new residential college plan bases its conclusion on your perception of the value of the individual buildings. But it gives no regard for other important considerations. What is gone awry is not the preservationists, but the sense that stewardship of resources is part of the duty of good citizens, those which Yale professes to wish to educate more of by demolishing worthy, venerable, interesting buildings (contrary to your assessment), not one of which is in bad condition. Maybe you think the Mudd Library is “undistinguished,” but the sheer wastefulness of trashing a building that cost $28 million barely a generation ago speaks for itself. This while Yale claims with a straight face that it will cost too much money to move the buildings, including an estimated $5 million to move a frame house. The entire plan makes a mockery of the principles of wise use.
As long as Yale continues to have a lot of money, the temptation to demolish and rebuild will likely prove irresistible, until most of the smaller structures that lend the greater campus variety, vitality, and scale will have been eaten up. The architectural homogenization of Yale is hardly something worth celebrating, but that dreary result is inevitable as long as Yale insists it must grow and grow simply because the human population increases.
If you are in college today, you missed the wholesale destruction of the urban fabric of fine old American cities that occurred in the “urban renewal” period of the 1950’s and 1960’s. The Oak Street Connector that slashes New Haven in two is so-called because a vanished and vibrant street once existed there. Bridgeport demolished the finest Gothic Revival mansion in America. New York City permitted the demolition of the finest railroad station in the world. These acts destroyed not just individual buildings but the atmosphere surrounding them. The buildings at issue here sit adjacent to one of the most beautiful urban streets in the country. None of this was considered, nor where Yale plans to expand (the Green?) when it finally runs out of space.
Your editorial reads like an apology for the University's blindfolded attitude towards historic preservation and public relations. Further, it appears biased to the idea that Yale's developments should not be challenged by preservation groups or anyone with an opinion that differs from the University's desire to expand. These differing opinions, valuable for all parties to hear and understand, should help to bind Yale and New Haven into an agreement of honest and open development intentions. Preservationists and the University have a mutual interest and responsibility in the prosperity, respect and protection of the structures and the land on which they sit. Without this relationship, Yale alone wields a heavy sword into the heart of our City.