Davenport College

Davenport College opened in 1933 as part of Yale’s first-wave residential college system, and was named for John Davenport, the Puritan minister who co-founded New Haven in 1638. Its site on York Street was a dense, irregular block of small commercial buildings, boarding houses, service shops and brick row structures — all cleared to make way for what James Gamble Rogers then reimagined as an inward-facing “town within walls.” Architecturally, Davenport is more eclectic than many of its Gothic siblings: its principal façades are Georgian Revival, while the west quadrangle has deliberately London-townhouse / Mews-street energy. This design that remains a cornerstone of Davenport — half-urban, half-collegiate — is in fact a direct inheritance from what was in Davenport’s footprint before Yale built the college.