Weir Hall

Weir Hall (66 High Street) is visible as a building of brownstone set back from High Street between Skull and Bones and Jonathon Edwards College. It is in the gothic style. An outdoor path running through the building leads up to Weir Court, the building’s courtyard that has been appropriated as the university’s sculpture garden.

In 1912 George Douglas Miller set out to build a dormitory for Skull and Bones, but quickly ran out of money (2). After 1914, it lay abandoned for ten years until Yale’s architecture department made use of it. Today, the building is part of Jonathon Edwards College taking on the roles of dormitory, library and dining hall kitchen. Included in the building are the towers of (the now demolished) Old Alumni Hall (2). Originally built in 1851, they make up the third oldest structure on Yale’s campus (1).

Miller constructed the building on previously unused land, save for an abandoned livery stable. As it sits in the center of the block, the property of Weir Hall and Court was an amalgamation of six separate residential private back lots (10).

In 1912, Yale College Alumnus George Douglas Miller (1870), set out to recreate Magdalen College of Oxford University’s arched gates and courtyards in New Haven (3). He bought the towers of Old Alumni Hall (that was concurrently being demolished) and relocated them across high street. Miller also built a courtyard one story above ground level. However, in 1914, he ran out of money, leaving the building incomplete and selling it to Yale University (9). Between 1914 and 1924, the building lay empty, used mainly for storage and occasionally military training classes (9). Between that time, the building (at the time called, The Miller Property) earned a mysterious reputation. A 1924 alumni magazine article noted, “few people have ever seen this structure, which, behind barred doors and a high wall, occupied the center of the block… As a consequence, there has been much rumor and an air of mystery about it” (2). In 1924, the university’s architecture department moved in. They named it Weir Hall after the art department’s founding director (2). Many prominent architects passed through the building. Notably, modern architect Eero Saarinen, designer of Ingalls Rink, earned his degree in Weir Hall. Philip Johnson, designer of Kline Biology Tower, taught classes in the building (3). The building then became a library and dormitory for Jonathon Edwards College after the completion of Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building. Yale School of Art and Yale School of Architecture maintain their connection to Weir Court; every year, the schools hold their commencement ceremony in the picturesque sculpture garden.

Set back from high street, Weir Hall is entirely enveloped in the Yale Campus. Originally, Weir court was meant as a retreat from the clamor of the city (1). Miller surrounded the court with 20 foot walls and raised it one story above the rest of the city (7). Abandoned and isolated, New Haven residents thought the building one of the most mysterious in New Haven. Today, Weir Court serves as one of the gallery’s sculpture gardens. In 1953, Louis Kahn’s addition to the Yale University Art Gallery opened the court to the court by replacing the stone wall in the south with its glass doors and windows (3). To its north and West is Jonathon Edwards College. To the east sits the clubhouse of the Skull and Bones society.

Visible from the street only as a small façade, Weir Hall sits between the Skull and Bones tomb and Jonathan Edwards College. During the Yale Art Gallery’s hours, the outdoor path through the building is open to the public. It leads between the eastern wing of the building and its towers, up a set of stairs and to the building’s associated courtyard. There, the building is fully visible. It is of a gothic style and built of brownstone. From the south (within Weir court) it shows its delicacy with a windowed façade of large windows and pointed arches. From the north (within Jonathon Edwards College Courtyard) it is fortress-like, expressing the weight of its load-bearing masonry. The southern walls feature small windows and large, rough-cut stone.

The building is in good condition; however, Lichen covers portions of the exterior and the brownstone towers of Alumni Hall corrode by touch.

Originally built to be a dormitory for Skull and Bones between 1912, the building was abandoned in 1914 (3). In 1924, Yale University completed the building to house the university’s architecture department (4). The building was finished according to the original architects’ plans with only slight adjustments to repurpose it as an academic building. In 1932, James Gamble Rogers altered the building, adding a tower to the (5). And in 1965, architect Charles Brewer redesigned the building to be used as a library and classroom-space for Jonathon Edwards College (6). In 2007, Weir Hall made its final transformation when Newman Architects completed the annexation process. The renovations transformed the basement into the Jonathon Edwards kitchen and the office spaces into student bedrooms. A glass rooftop hallway between the eastern and northern wings and smooth, light-brown sandstone evidence the 2007 renovation.

The Courtyard has also had its fair share of changes. Originally, twenty-foot sandstone walls surrounded Weir Court (7). The Kahn-designed art gallery addition replaced the southern and eastern walls (8). Today some of those walls’ stones make up a bench, lining the courtyard. In 1975, Newman Architects built the Yale University Art Gallery’s auditorium beneath Weir Court, but managed to preserve the large shade-trees now occupying the site. Where a Chinese tea-house sits today originally sat the building’s driveway (its door into the basement has since been filled) (5).

Within the building today, the library maintains its gothic style, featuring a series of vaulted ceilings and the stone of its exterior walls. In the stairwells, living spaces and kitchens are styled in a contemporary vernacular with white walls and concrete or hardwood floors. 

1.    Elizabeth Mills Brown, New Haven, a Guide to Architecture and Urban Design (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976), 125.

2.    Vincent Scully, Yale in New Haven: Architecture & Urbanism (New Haven: Yale University, 2004).

3.    Patrick Pinnell, The Campus Guide, Yale University (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 43-48.

4.    “YALE DEPARTMENT TO SHIFT LOCATION: Architecture Building Will Be Situated On Miller Property,” The Hartford Courant, 13 June, 1924, ProQuest.

5.    James Gamble Rogers, Weir Hall Floorplans (1932).

6.    Charles H Brewer, Weir Hall Floorplans (1964).

7.    Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut (New York: Sanborn Map & Publishing Company, 1923)

8.    Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut (New York: Sanborn Map & Publishing Company, 1973)

9.    “NEW ARCHITECTURE BUILDING AT YALE: Weir Hall to Be Dedicated When University Opens Sept. 25,” The Hartford Courant, 14 September, 1924, ProQuest.

10. Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut (New York: Sanborn Map & Publishing Company, 1973)