About

We introduce you to Pat Marino.  Pat Marino served our Yale with great devotion throughout his professional life, working for 24 years in Yale facilities before retiring as Association Director of Facilities for Construction Management in 2000.  Through Pat’s many years of service to Yale, he developed a great affection for the University’s architecture ‒ a passion that would, in turn, inspire Pat to undertake a remarkable historical project.

Sometime during his tenure with Yale, Pat started to collect antique postcards showing how the University looked around the turn of the 20th century, building a rich collection of some of the very earliest-available photographic records of Yale.  He built his collection one postcard at a time, finding new additions at tag sales or during his travels.  All postcards were hand-selected by Pat in person, with none of them bought online (Pat even remarked a few years ago:  “I’m 83.  How do I even turn on a computer?”).  What began as a few postcards eventually grew to a vast collection of more than 1,000 postcards and photos ‒ “The Pat Marino Postcard Collection” ‒ highlighting earlier chapters of some of Yale’s most recognizable spaces, while also preserving the memory of other buildings and places long since removed from Yale’s landscape.  

In late 2021, Pat’s collection was featured in a frontpage story in the Yale Alumni Magazine, showcasing a few postcards that depicted “views of a Yale most of us never saw.”  The article, drew tremendous praise from our Yale alumni community for Pat and his collection, and closed by noting that Pat “wants to find a good home for his collection.”

Pat’s collection found a temporary home shortly after with his good friend Tom Strong, an alum of the School of Art, and co-founder of New Haven design firm Strong Cohen, which frequently works with the University on architectural signage projects.  In tandem, early efforts began among Yale’s alumni community in the months after the Alumni Magazine article ran to figure out a more permanent future for the collection.  The Yale College Class of 2008, led by Secretary Bradford Galiette ‘08, made a particularly concerted effort over two to three years to organize a set of alumni groups to acquire and digitize the collection, hoping to make it widely available online for the Yale community and for all those with an interest in Yale’s history.  Ultimately, the Yale Club of Hartford ‒ one of the oldest of Yale’s regional alumni clubs ‒ partnered with Brad for the effort.  Meanwhile, Tom Strong ‒ inspired by the idea of an online version of Pat’s collection ‒ made the very generous decision in early 2025 to give the collection to the Yale Club of Hartford, with every hope that the collection would be made available as an online gallery.  After a few months of work imaging the collection and preparing the gallery, an announcement was made on the Yale Alumni Facebook group on October 9th ‒ the 324th anniversary of Yale ‒ hinting at an upcoming launch.  A few weeks later, the project was made available to YAA delegates as a preview the week of YAA Assembly.  With full release planned for the holiday season, the hope is for the gallery may be enjoyed for almost a year before the University’s 325th celebrations, helping preserve the memory of how the University looked nearly half its life ago.

The physical postcard collection remains in the care of the Yale Club of Hartford as plans are made for its next steps now that the online gallery is ready.  The club is making every effort to ensure that the collection remains curated within the Yale community.  And importantly, the club is looking forward to celebrating Pat Marino for the latest milestone with his collection, and for his above-and-beyond efforts For Yale.

Thank you for, Pat, for your many years of hard work building this wonderful collection ‒ and for your many years of service “building a great cathedral” that is our Yale at 325!  May Yalies the world over treasure the memories you have collected of Yale’s earlier chapters, and may these memories help inspire those who follow in your footsteps!