The Residential College Plan
In 1930, the Corporation Committee on Architectural Planning authorized the establishment of the Residential College system at Yale.  The approval of the College Plan initiated the construction of six new residential structures and the remodeling of four existing dormitories to accomodate the plan.  The establishment of the Residential Colleges at Yale was motivated by two related factors: overcrowding in the dormitories and the perceived deterioration in undergraduate social life due to growing class size.  During the 1920s, Yale found its facilities increasingly inadequate to accommodate the rapidly growing numbers of students.  In 1900, enrollment for both Yale College and Sheffield Scientific School was 2,000; by 1920, enrollment had reached 3,000.  With the growing Class size, administrators feared that Yale was losing its camaraderie and that classes were ceasing to be intimate communities.  In 1923, the number of freshman admitted was limited to 850 for the first time in Yale's history—but even with the restricted class size and the newly constructed Memorial Quadrangle, freshmen were still forced to find lodgings in rooming houses and to seek their board in restaurants and eating houses. Alumni, university administrators, and the Corporation all agreed that something had to be done to alleviate the housing dilema and restore Yale's atmosphere of collegiality.
In January 1925, President James Rowland Angell proposed that the Corporation consider the establishment of a Residential College Plan, suggesting that “it might ultimately be possible to try out…a plan of dividing the student body into a number of groups ‘somewhat resembling the English Colleges.’ Each ‘quadrangle’ would have its own eating facilities as well as dormitories.  Such a plan could be a solution to the social problems resulting from the large undergraduate registration.” Although the Corporation had its reservations, it agreed that the idea should be explored as one of the solutions to the housing problem.  In 1927, President Angell, Corporation Fellow Samuel Fisher, and James Gamble Rogers traveled to England to visit Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, and other ancient academic institutions to investigate the English residential college concept. 
On 3 January 1930, after two years of negotiations during which donor Edward S. Harkness, YC 1897, almost withdrew his support, Harkness announced he would contribute more than $15 million to the construction, equipment, and endowment of eight Residential Colleges, which were to be completed by 1935.  Yale welcomed the gift, stating that Harkness' gift would enable it to "revive amid the intellectual advantages of the great modern university the social advantages of the small Yale College of earlier generations."  Over the next ten years, 1930-1940, the eight colleges funded by Harkness (Berkeley, Branford, Saybrook, Jonathan Edwards, Davenport, Pierson, Calhoun, and Timothy Dwight) were completed, and two additional colleges (Trumbull and Silliman) were added to the plan and funded by other donors.
 
Jonathan Edwards College 1925/32 (remodeling)
Trumbull College 1929 (remodeling)
Pierson College 1930/31 & Davenport College 1930/32 (new)
Calhoun College 1931/32 (new)		 Branford College & Saybrook College 1932/33 (remodeling)
Berkeley College 1933/34 (new)
Timothy Dwight College 1933/34 (new)
Silliman College 1940 (remodeling)

Sources used for this portion of the exhibit are: Aaron Betsky, James Gamble Rogers and the architecture of pragmatism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); Buildings and grounds of Yale University (New Haven: Yale University, 1979); Thomas Bergin, Yale's Residential Colleges (New Haven: Yale University, 1983).  All photographs are part of the collection of the University Archives, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.  No part of this exhibit may be used without permission of the Archives.
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