Yale Armory

The Yale Armory, originally built as a training site for the university’s reserve officers at the outset of World War I, now stands vacant due to years of neglect and deterioration.

The armory building and attached stables are aggressively simple and utilitarian in style. The structure bears no architectural adornment save for the main entry which has some castellations, as in the fashion of other armories. Once housing military equipment and 120 horses, the whole apparatus has fallen into disrepair. Dead ivy clings to its walls and the metal sash windows have cracks and scratches. In 2009, the armory closed for good. The university estimated at the time that it would cost $5 million to repair. The armory has since stood vacant and untouched, awaiting rejuvenation or destruction

Yale University 1917-present

Yale ROTC with supplies from the War Department (1917–end of WWII)

Yale Polo Team and Rifle & Pistol Club (end of WWII–2009)

Unoccupied due to disrepair (2009–present)

There’s no accessible evidence of what occupied the Yale Fields and the armory space prior to the current structures. The Sanborn Maps from before 1923 do not include the land on the far side of the West River. It seems that the land was an empty field from when Yale students purchased it in 1881 (6) until the university started the armory in 1916.

In February 1917, the Yale Daily News reported that fire burned down a storage shed and threatened the brand new armory. A boy scout troop came to help put out the fire when the groundskeeper discovered the flames. Though the source of the flames is unknown, it ultimately got little other coverage as the fire was completely contained. Only the storage shed was affected. (2)

The 1923 Sanborn Map shows a veterans’ camp in the field adjacent to the armory. The camp was still active when the map was updated in 1938, but the university and ROTC operation running the site cut down on the available housing for vets. You can see the faint remains of the extra housing through the thinly pasted over paper (3). It’s also clear that there used to be a “burial” place where some current Yale fields are. There is an active cemetery nearby that may have replaced the burial site near the armory.

Yale finished the armory in 1917 and has occupied it in some form or another ever since. In 1918, A. Conger Goodyear, Yale class of 1899, donated $14,000  — roughly $300,000 in 2017 valuation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — to finance the endeavor (7). Goodyear would go on to found the Museum of Modern Art (8), interesting in light of the fact that his earlier project — the armory — had so little to recommend itself artistically.

The Yale Armory was, for all intents and purposes, not designed. The architect, Duane Lyman — a Yale Sheffield School graduate of 1903 — took up the project at no cost (1). Built in 1916 to house the Yale troops, guns and horses, the armory was intended as an instrument for the upcoming world war. There’s little evidence that it would have ever been constructed if not for the militarization in anticipation of the European fight.

Despite the extreme utilitarianism that governed the construction of the armory, it was — at the time — state of the art. In Yale: A History, Brooks Mathers Kelley characterized it as “one of the finest armories in the country” (12).

Yale’s newly founded ROTC, under the auspices of what was then called the United States Department of War, occupied the building from its beginnings during World War I until the army no longer saw use for a real military presence on Yale’s campus, after World War II (14). At the time of its introduction, it was the only college campus in America with an armory of its own — other than West Point, of course (13).

Paul Kennedy, a Yale professor of military history, noted that the entire Yale campus mobilized for the First World War in a way that would be unfamiliar to current students: “By 1919 Yale was a sort of giant Gothic training camp, hardly a university at all.”(9)

Following the Second World War, the armory took on a new role, one much less serious than its original. Where before the stables served as home to cavalry steeds for a army regiments, now they would house ponies for the Yale Polo team. Where before the armory had protected an arsenal of soldiers’ arms, now it would stock the weapons of the recreational Rifle and Pistol Club. It even masqueraded under the name “Yale Polo and Equestrian Center.” (14)

It continued in this fashion until 2009, when the university determined that the Polo Club could no longer safely house its some 50 horses in the stables at the armory. The Polo Club had to quickly deaccession and find a new home for horses and practice. Though the stables were unusable, the team was able to use the drill hall as an exhibition space for the time being. Use of the armory has since been discontinued entirely for all extracurricular purposes. (10)

According to the Yale Athletics website, the Yale football team, neighbors across the street, also used the armory as locker rooms at one point in its early history. There’s no evidence of what time period this was (11).

The armory stands within New Haven city limits but just barely so. The 1923 Sanborn Maps clearly show the West Haven border just past the main structure (3). The setting is entirely rural, and was probably even more so when the armory was constructed. There are no residential or commercial structures in sight. The armory is set back from Central Avenue and accessible by two driveways. One that goes up to its main archway and another the goes around the south side to a parking lot. The parking lot also services the nearby fields.

Most interaction with the armory’s likely comes by way of athletes and spectators heading to events at the Yale Athletic Fields or the Bowl.

The New Haven Department’s documents register many changes and updates to the fields, such as the introduction of a softball field and field hockey field in 2001 (5), but seem to ignore the armory almost entirely.

Yale students bought the 30 acres that now house the armory and Yale Bowl after the university sold the Hamilton Park, where Yale students formerly held extracurricular games, in 1881 (6).