Yale University

The university occupies more than 405 hectares (1001 acres) in and around New Haven. The oldest existing structure is Connecticut Hall, on the Old Campus, built in 1752. Other prominent structures include Harkness Tower, housing a 54-bell carillon, one of the largest in the world; the Payne Whitney Gymnasium; and the School of Art and Architecture (the work of American architect Paul Rudolph). Ezra Stiles College, Morse College, and the Yale Cooperative Corporation are other 20th-century buildings designed by an alumnus, noted architect Eero Saarinen. Yale is the site of several notable museums, including the Yale University Art Gallery (the oldest college-affiliated art museum in the United States) and the Yale Center for British Art, both designed by noted American architect Louis I. Kahn, and the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Home football games of the Yale team are played at the Yale Bowl, which has a seating capacity of 75,000; the annual game with Yale’s rival, Harvard University, always attracts a capacity crowd.

The libraries of Yale University contain more than ten million volumes, most of them housed in the Sterling Memorial Library, the main library. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by American architect Gordon Bunshaft, holds many collections of ancient works and other papers and books of particular scholarly interest. Outstanding among the special collections housed in the Yale libraries are the William Robertson Coe collection of western Americana, the manuscript journals of 18th-century Scottish biographer James Boswell, and the papers of American writer Gertrude Stein.

University publications include the Yale Daily News, the nation’s oldest college daily newspaper, founded in 1878; Yale Review, a quarterly literary journal; the Yale Literary Magazine; and the Yale Law Journal. Yale University Press, established in 1908, annually publishes a distinguished list of general and scholarly books.