Worcester morning daily spy., 1898-01-02
+ YALE HALLS TO co.
The Famous Old Brick Row Gives
Way to Modern Buildings.


the old Brick row" of Yale, but one
building of which will be left standing
after next summer. He says:
Two more buildings of the old brick
row, North College and the Lyceum
have. been doomed by the Yale corpora
ton, and the work of demolition will
be begun, it is announced, Immediately
after, the close of the present college
year. 81 OF the seven buildings, there
fore comprising the major part of the
college In 1890, there will be but a single
survivor when the students return
from, their vacation next September.
The most famous of them all, old South,
and its neighbor for over, hundred
years. the Athenaeum, were sacrificed
to make room for Vanderbilt Hall in
1893; North Middle followed the sue
ceeding year. and in the summer of
1895 the Old Chapel, erected in 1924, sur
rendered to the superior convenienceS
and glaces of Phelps Hall. Next sep
tembeI therefore, South Middle will be
the sole representative of the old brick
row, whose preservation has seemed to
so many college philosophers Identical
with0the preservation of the college it
self, and whose destruction, rendered
possible by the procurement of more
modern and eommodious facilities, has
beenwone of the chief attachments of
the Dwight regime. 1t is also an inter-
esting fact that the building which, for
variety of reasons. has longest stood
the strain, is the oldest of them all.
South Middle was erected in 1751 as a
large iybfownstone inserted in the front
wall declares, while of the two build
ings marked for immediate destruction,
one is younger by half a century and
the other by nearly three-quarters.
North College, which for 10 years has
marked the northern limit of the old
brick row, has for some time been re-
garded as the most prosaic of the an
cient structures The angry townsmen
never threatened to storm it with shot
and shell as, in the exciting ante-bellum
4 days, they threatened its extreme south
! ern companion; the expense of its cree
ton was not betrayed by pious Puri-
N tan lottery, as in the case Of South Mid
die; nor has its existence been marked
by those heroic struggles against adj
verse circumstances of which it's pre-
decessors have been the silent specta-
tors. North Middle, indeed, was erect
Il ed in one of the most Furnishing peri
n DDS of the colleges history and from
the day of Its completion, the progress
of the institution has been unques-
toned
In 1920 James Hfllhouse and Stephen
Twining of New Haven, with the pru-
Dental committee, We're appointed by
81 the corporation to provide for the cree
q ton of the new dor1nitory, which the in
4 creased attendance at the college had
rendered imperative The general funds
of the college were appropriated to this
end, and the building was constructed
upon lines almost identical with those
of the buildings already under way
4 South Middle, with its door caps and
window caps of brown sandstone, was
nearly duplicated in this new architec-
tural splendor which was ready for oc-
cupancy in 1921. 1t did not take the
building long, however to accommodate
I itself to the ways of college life, and it's
chief distinction for many years was
that 1t was the birthplace of nearly all
the deviltry which gave picturesque
ness to undergraduate Yale in those
days which the present age can already
emulate.
One of the most distinguished of its
earlier occupants was n. P. Willis the
dapper scriDturals poet and magazine
writer who during the senior year, occu-
pied a room in North Entry with Horace
Bushnell One of the faVorite under
graduate diversions at that time con-
sisted in smoking and Squirting the
freshmen, as we'll as the tutors, and
Willis was suspended for declining to
divulge the name of a sophomore in
whose possession he had detected the
forbidden "sqpirt." The attic of North
was one of the chief rendezvous of col
lege men, and was especially famous for
it's cooking mains and midnight celebra-
tions Of classmates birthdays.
The attic, too, was for many years
the arsenal of the Bully Club, an insti-
tuition whose origin runs far back into
the last century. 1t was on the green in
front of North College that the body of
undergraduates used to assemble an
nually to listen to the bombastic and
fria addrpcc of the class h1ll1V as
he detailed the history of the club and
the honor Of being intrusted with its
keeping, concluding by waving the
mighty cudgel three times about his
head and handing it to the man in the
succeeding class whom he deemed most
worthy. Occasionally his selection was
called into question. and the whole coll
Iege would be entertained by hearty
f1sticuff between the eX-bully's nominee
and his self-appointed rival, the victor
bearing off in triumph the emblem OF
his office.
North College, however, was frequent
Nv the scene of the more refined mani
festations of college life. One evening
in the fall of 1885, two juniors, Horace
Cotton and w. T. Bacon, sat upon the
old fence directly in front Of North and
discussed the plans for the college pc
riodical which finally developed into the
Yale Literary Magazine. Other mem
~
bilee, which had its origin in the pro-
life attic, and the religious revival of
1S57-5S, which awoke the devotional
sense of Yale men as it was never
awakened before and has never been
awakened since. North College has al
ways borne this simple title, and has
never been enlbellished by the more
fanciful names which the other build
ings of the brick row have been COM
PEELED to lay aside
The Lyceum, for example, which VIII
also be demolished in few months, was
for several years known as the Connec-
ticut Lyceum. This name was bestowed
as a tribute to the state by whpse gem
crosby its erection was made possible.
The grant which President Stiles Sc
cured from the Connecticut legislature
IN 1892 was increased to $4,000 in 1897,
and from this fund Union Hall (South),
Berkley Hall (South middle), and the
Connecticut Lyceum were built. In 1900
the college bought the land north of
South which was occupied by barn, a
BARRIERS shop. several cheap taverns
and boarding houses, the New Haven
poor house, house of correction and Jail
used for criminals, debtors and naniacs.
The Connecticut Lyeeum was one of the
buildings which replaced these rather
hlconvenient and dlsquieting append
ages, to an institution of learning Thy
Lyceum begun in 1903, and one of the
earliest triumphs of the first President
Dwight's administration. was demanded
by the increased attendance, a demand
made graphic by the fact that many or
the students were obliged to recite from
benches arranged in the, entries OF
South Middle and South. The new
building was intended for recitation
rooms, for the college library and for
large room at the west end of the sec