A short while ago, when coming down Prospect Street in New Haven, you would have spied a sleek, one-story, silver classroom and office building with horizontal metal siding and long patterns of windows that seemed to race by each other. It was an intriguing curiosity, boldly announcing that it was having fun. And yet its demure profile let it nestle neatly into a residential neighborhood. Long and sinuous, it meandered around a flagstone-paved entry court with floor-to-ceiling glass under a short porch, welcoming academics to enter.
There was more than a hint of acceleration. Designed a decade ago and constructed in only 9 months (and at half the going cost), this was a temporary building to house Yale’s Political Science Department, which was homeless following the demolition of its old digs and before the establishment of a permanent base.
The department was willing to stay in this “Amtrak Acela,” as the Dean of the College wryly called it, so long as it uplifted them and didn’t leave a generation of students feeling as if they’d been mistreated. Mother Yale worried, too, that a typical, homely mobile building might offend neighbors. Instead, its clean lines and simple concept proffered a break in the campus tradition of Gothic gravitas in favor of some enlightened exuberance.
The secret here was to take crisply designed modular trailers, built in a nearby factory, and clad them onsite to look like one structure. Inside, a central hall connected them all. It felt substantial thanks to the precise detailing of minimal trim and playful patterns of standard elements. It was high style on a low budget.
Against all odds, the building became a campus favorite. Poly Sci members affectionately dubbed their intellectual home the “Diner” and contributed an architectural flourish: “Political Science” spelled out in neon. The building garnered nine design awards, while casual observers and architectural critics lamented its truncated fate. One media wag called it “the best doomed building in the city.”
Despite its popularity, it didn’t live on, making way recently for Yale’s two new residential colleges being designed by Architectural School Dean Robert A.M. Stern. The new duo will look to the past as much as this looked to the future. Progress comes in many forms, and the train of history cannot be stopped.
Alas, this beloved Acela was on a non-tenured track.
One Comment
We did manage to save 42 interior doors from this building ( and the bike rack). Unfortunately the birch flush doors do not in themselves identify the building very much. Maybe the loop aluminum bike rack says more about the building. Too bad I couldn’t get the windows and siding, but we got called only a few days before the track hoe showed up.