This photograph, circa 1879, shows students engaged in one of their favorite pastimes during the era: sitting on the Yale fence.

Exhibit of photographs shows Yale as 'a place of changes'

The changing face of life on the Yale campus over the last century is explored in an exhibition being offered as part of the University's Tercentennial in the Jonathan Edwards College (JE) master's house. Titled "A Yale Album: The Third Century," the exhibit explores many facets of life in the Yale community through both vintage and more recent images. Among the more than 60 photographs on view are a group of newly unearthed documents related to the building of JE. "These photographs have been gathered here for the pure pleasure of viewing, for they show Yale and New Haven as a thriving and growing environment, a place of changes," writes Timothy Young, an archivist at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and guest curator of the exhibit, in the catalog for the show. JE master Gary Haller also helped organize the exhibit. Connecticut photographer John Hill researched some of the archival images featured in the show. The exhibition's title was taken from a recent book of photographs of Yale during the last century put together by Richard Benson, dean of the School of Art, as part of the University's Tercentennial celebration. Divided into three sections, the exhibit's first section, on view in the main entry of the master's house, is a selection of photographs from Benson's book, many of which were drawn from the Sterling Memorial Library's Manuscript and Archives Department. "This group of new computer-generated prints, culled from Benson's wonderfully sequenced book, shows the Yale community in many lights: celebrating; rioting; preparing for war; playing; studying," Young says in the catalog. Specifically, among the images that are on view in this section are a photograph showing the corner of York and Elm streets before the residential colleges were built; an 1893 shot of students playing cards in Connecticut Hall; pictures depicting the construction of Sterling Memorial Library; photos of soldiers and artillery on campus during World War I; a St. Patrick's Day snowball riot in the mid-1950s; and shots of a bladderball game. In the second section, also on view in the main entry, are six photographs of JE under construction in 1931, as well as an aerial view of the college. These images were recently discovered by Haller -- in the form of photographic negatives -- in the college's print shop library, where they apparently had lain undeveloped since 1948, Young says. The photographs of JE "reveal the story behind the building of this great structure," Young comments in the catalog. The final section of the exhibit, drawn entirely from the Manuscripts and Archives Department, is devoted to "candid and iconic photographs of the campus and its inhabitants," Young says. Displayed in the anteroom of Haller's study, the images are divided into the categories "People," "Places" and "Things," and feature shots of such noted Yale individuals as dramatist Thornton Wilder and Yale professor William Lyon Phelps; old and new images of the Beinecke Plaza, Yale Bowl and the Marsh Hall botanical gardens, among other places; and such scenes as a Durfee Hall stairway, an interior of Coxe Cage, an artist's studio in Street Hall; and the Yale bulldog Handsome Dan staring at a stuffed version of the Yale mascot. Commenting on the exhibition as a whole, Young wrote, "Photographs share a power with books in that they can provoke us to remember a time we never actually experienced: because we weren't alive then; because we didn't go to Yale; because the [Yale] fence had already been torn down. Photography has now been around long enough that it serves to record ancient history, events so distant that we only learn about them because someone with a camera stopped and clicked the shutter." Funding for "A Yale Album: The Third Century" and the exhibition catalog was provided by the Jonathan Edwards Trust and the Robert C. Bates Fund. The exhibit is on view in the JE master's house, 70 High St., through Oct. 21. It is open most Thursdays, 4-6 p.m., and can also be viewed by appointment by calling (203) 432-0356. 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