As the University inches closer to its tercentennial in 2001, the Sterling Memorial Library has mounted Part I of "Building a university: 1919-1940," a two-year, eight-part exhibit celebrating Yale's architecture.
The first part of the exhibit, titled "John Russell Pope: a plan for the future, 1919," is now on display in the Memorabilia Room of Sterling Library, 120 High Street. The exhibit is also available on a mirror site on the World Wide Web.
Coordinated by Kirsten M. Jensen, archivist for media, publications, and architecture, the exhibit showcases some of the Yale structures built during its 20-year construction boom, including 10 of the 12 residential colleges, Sterling Library, the Sterling Law Buildings, the Hewitt Memorial Quadrangle and the Hall of Graduate Studies.
In 1919, John Russell Pope was commissioned by the University to propose a development plan for Yale that would accommodate its needs and plans for development within a coherent guiding principle for future growth.
The exhibit now on display at the Sterling Library includes plans, sketches of buildings and building interiors, as well as "before" and "after" bird's-eye-views of campus which articulate Pope's vision of the University. Pope presented these drawings in a bound volume to the Architectural Plan Committee.
The exhibit features Pope's proposals for various buildings such as the library, the gymnasium (Pope later served as the architect for Payne Whitney Gymnasium) and the observatory. While Pope's vision was instrumental in determining the direction of Yale's development, it was modified significantly in the following years by James Gamble Rogers, notes Jensen.
"Part I: John Russell Pope: a plan for building, 1919" will be on
display through July; the web exhibit will run indefinitely. Part 2 of
the exibit, "Memorial Quadrangle, 1921 (Branford & Saybrook Colleges,
1933)" will be on view August through October. The Memorabilia Room is
open 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Monday-Friday.
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