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.