Barnes & Noble (Yale Co-Op)

Over the last two centuries the parcels of 65-77 Broadway have always been the transition point between the Broadway commercial strip and the rest of the city.  These properties have had both periods of longtime tenants and quick changeovers, but this turnover is almost unobservable in the sanitized and seeming whole structure that exists today.



The first documentation of this location described two major mansions, the E.T. Fitch Mansion (81 Broadway) and Henry Rogers House (75 Broadway) (Figure 1).  These were standard models with living and entertaining on the ground floor and three bedrooms on the upper floor.  The adjacent lot down Broadway was empty and at 61/63 Broadway there were wood-framed buildings that came right up to the lot line.  The 1901 Sanborn map shows a dramatic change on these lots, extending the street frontage up Broadway with a new set of buildings from 65-81 Broadway, culminating in the Boardman Manual Training School at the corner of York Square Place and Broadway (Figure 2).  By 1911 the Hillhouse High School was built behind, changing the grain and signaling a larger intervention to come (Figure 3).  The directories from 1913 show the range of businesses from a druggist to dry goods.  Over the next two decades these programs stay consistent, though changing names and owners.  The 1933 directory indicates the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company to the Connecticut Automatic Cigarette Vending Machine Company, and by 1953 it consisted of Gordon Hardware and Hatry & Young Radios.



After acquisition by Yale University, the 1962 construction of Morse and Stiles colleges by Eero Saarinen imbued the area with a new feel.  Along Broadway, Saarinen placed the Stiles College masters house at the corner of York Street / Tower Parkway and designed the end piece to the chain of Broadway stores.  This six bay structure consisted of the same rubble concrete as the colleges and provided a small tunnel-like passage on the acquired property connecting to the central passageway between the colleges and to the gym.  In the original design, this block was completely facing Broadway with large entrances at each end of the building, recessed under concrete canopies.  This was originally filled by Yale Co-op, a longstanding bookstore founded by a group of instructors and students in 1885 (1).



The low storefronts at 63-69 Broadway consisted of a series of small shops and in 1974 was bought by the Yale Co-op to be an eastern extension and renovated with a postmodern front by Herbert Newman Architects.  According to the Historical Building report it was “intended to harmonize with earlier co-op building at 77 Broadway as well as Morse and Stiles Colleges behind.”  It rises to correspond with roofline of the earlier building more abstract in its application, highly planar with offset entry cuts supplemented by illusionistic painting (2).



The story of the Yale Co-op’s transition to Barnes and Noble in 1999 was a controversial affair.  Their supposed complacency in service, disorganization, unwilling to stay open for later hours implicated their move to Chapel Street across from the green, eventually going out of business in 2002.  Barnes in Noble on the other hand renovated the set of buildings, reconstructed the passageway and rearranged the entrances, connecting the buildings underground.  They also added the restaurant on the backside of the buildings.  There are rumors in the current local papers of new discussions; the Yale Bookstore is looking for a new makeover and that among other changes, the side of the store that houses Yale merchandise will get a new tenant (3).



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1. Connecticut Historical Commission Building Resource Survey, Item 46.



2. Connecticut Historical Commission Building Resource Survey, Item 44.



3. Yale Daily News, Front  Page Notes, Feb. 16, 2011