The College was dedicated the following December 7. The College, considered by many architecture critics a masterpiece of American architecture, is built of rubble masonry with buildings and a tower in the style of pre-Gothic Tuscan towers such as still exist in the medieval Italian hill town of San Gimignano. The architect was Eero Saarinen, who did not live to see the buildings completed. The buildings of Ezra Stiles and Morse are arranged in roughly circular form around asymmetrical courts, into which they open from several levels. When first seen from the outside, they create the impression that the interior must be dark and gloomy, because of what appears to be minimal fenestration.
Closer examination reveals, however, that the rooms are flooded with light and air.
The initial impression of darkness is due to the fact that the windows and walls do not form the conventional patterns found in older structures. The changing configuration of lights and shadows, colorings and shadings constitutes one of the singular attributes of the architectural style and contributes to its strength, variety, and texture. The architect has provided a multitude of vistas, with each view outside the colleges enclosed in a frame of other buildings. The resulting spatial illusion generates a simultaneous sense of immediacy and distance. In the walls and standing in the courtyards are a number of molded concrete figures by the Sicilian sculptor, Costantino Nivola.