A Walking Tour of Yale College

An amazing number of Yale’s memorials honor those who carried on the spiritual purposes for which she was founded. We have outlined a 16-stop walking tour of such Yale sites, keyed to the map above.

1. (B1) Timothy Dwight memorial plaque in Dwight Hall (enter from Old Campus). Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Jonathan Edwards’s grandson, became President of Yale College in 1795, when French skepticism was sweeping the campus. He accepted a student challenge to debate the authority of the Bible. The French philosophy swiftly fell to Dwight’s logic, and by 1802, widespread spiritual renewal graced students and professors alike.
2. (B1) Inside Dwight Hall, Borden fountain outside Library door. Bill Borden (Yale, 1909) toured the globe just after graduating high school, and came to Yale deeply impressed by the world’s need for the Gospel. On campus, Borden targeted the most rebellious and dissolute students as his own special mission field. A millionaire, he gave of his wealth to start a student-run rescue mission in New Haven. After graduation from Yale he prepared to take the Gospel to the Muslims of northwest China. While studying Arabic in Cairo, Egypt, he was struck by cerebral meningitis and died at age 25. He left most of his fortune to sup-port Gospel missions.
3. (B1) In Dwight Hall Library, Wright plaque over fireplace. Henry Burt Wright (1877-1923) was the son of the College’s first Dean. Esteemed for his outstanding scholarship by the faculties of Classics and Divinity, his years at Yale were most memorable for his Bible classes, support of foreign missions, public addresses, and Christian counsel to individuals. His personal example affected hundreds of people in the community and University.
4. (C2) Elm Street, between Berkeley and Calhoun Colleges. The Porter Memorial Gateway, is named for Noah Porter (1811-1892), Yale’s eleventh President. As the nation’s colleges became more and more secular, Porter (himself converted at Yale) continued unremittingly to point each Yale class to Christ, and to encourage personal evangelism on campus.
5. (C3) Wall Street, between High and College Streets. Along the cornice of Woodbridge Hall are the names of all the first Yale trustees, each one a minister of the Gospel in Connecticut.
6. (C3) Center of Grove and College Streets, Woolsey Hall. Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801-1889), Timothy Dwight’s nephew, was President of Yale from 1846 to 1871. His sermons to students show an unflinching realism about sin, but also a sympathetic readiness to help any student genuinely seeking after God. The breadth of his scholarship was amazing: he taught Greek, History, Political Science, and International Law. His last years were spent in helping revise the English version of the Bible. Though Woolsey was ridiculed for it, a Biblical understanding of the world remained central to his scholarship and his life.
7. (C3) Inside Woolsey Hall rotunda, Pitkin memorial. Tracy Pitkin’s classmates built his memorial, because he so influenced his peers and his generation of college students. A vigorous, active Christian at Yale, he later visited colleges throughout New England as a spokesman for foreign missions. A missionary to China, he was martyred during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
8. (D3) College Street between Wall Street and Grove Street, Silliman College. “The father of American scientific education,” Benjamin Silliman became Professor of Chemistry and Natural History two years after graduating from Yale College, just two days after becoming a Christian. He established chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at Yale, helped found the Yale Medical School, and launched the American Journal of Science. His commitment to Christ influenced everything he undertook.
9. (D3) Wall of Silliman College, Temple Street near Grove Street. A plaque here (where his house in New Haven originally stood) and a Saybrook entryway remind us of Noah Webster (Yale, 1778). Famous for his American dictionary, Noah was a skeptic for years but was converted in the Yale-New Haven revival of 1808. His editions of the dictionary are filled with Biblical wisdom and Biblical references.
10. (D3) Temple Street, between Wall and Grove Streets. Timothy Dwight College.
11. (A3) York Street, entered from Walkway opposite Sterling Library. Morse College. (see article on Morse)
12. (A3) Between Morse College and Broadway, Ezra Stiles College. Ezra Stiles (1727-1795) was President of Yale from 1778 to 1795. A rationalist early on, he gradually came to trust the truth of the Gospel, and to believe wisdom lay in submitting human reason to the authority of Scripture. Stiles, a master of many languages, possessed an endlessly inquisitive mind. He sought out Jewish rabbis, with whom he eagerly discussed the Bible and the identity of the Messiah.
13. (B2) Grass courtyard inside Saybrook college, entered from Elm Street near York Street, Noah Webster entryway.
14. (A2) York Street between Elm and Chapel Streets, Davenport College. John Davenport (1597-1670) was the spiritual leader among the original founders of New Haven Colony. Desiring to see the colony’s affairs driven “as near to the precept and pattern of Scripture” as possible, he strove for thirty years to establish a col-lege in New Haven, that youth might be fitted for “the service of God in Church and Commonwealth.” Yale’s birth realized his long-held vision.
15. (A1) Entered by Pierson Gateway from York Street opposite Branford College. Abraham Pierson, Jr. (1641-1707), for whom Pierson College is named, was Yale’s. first Rector (equivalent to today’s President). When asked to guide the fledgling school, Pierson said he “durst not refuse such a service to God and his generation.”
16. (B1) Entered from walkway between York and High Streets, Jonathan Edwards College. Graduating from Yale College in 1720, Jonathan Edwards reported he was “filled with an inward, secret delight in God.” He went on to be one of the greatest voices for the Christian faith in America in the eighteenth century. The First Great Awakening began under his preaching, and he later became a missionary to the Indians of western Massachusetts.