College Street

College Street is one of the oldest parts of the Yale and New Haven street grid — laid out in the original nine-square plan of 1638 — and by the early 19th century it had become Yale’s southern academic frontage, the threshold between “the Green” and the growing university. In the 1800s it was lined with boarding houses, scientific buildings, small shops, lecture halls, and hotels serving both Yale and the city; for decades the street functioned as Yale’s main public face to New Haven commerce and travel. Over the 20th century, the buildings along College were repeatedly re-fronted and modernized as Yale expanded south and west. Today College Street is still the symbolic line where Yale meets the New Haven Green — a place where Commencement parades march, where students cross every day between campus and downtown, and where Yale’s identity is most visibly on display for the most iconic parts of the City of New Haven.