Marsh Hall

The Othniel C. Marsh House, commonly known as Marsh Hall, was built in 1878–1880 as the personal residence of Yale faculty member Othniel Charles Marsh, one of the leading paleontologists of the 19th-century. Designed by architect J. Cleaveland Cady, the mansion blended High Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne elements and overlooked the rapidly expanding Sheffield Scientific School, where Marsh taught. During Marsh’s lifetime it housed not only living quarters but also offices, specimen storage, and workrooms connected to his fossil expeditions in the American West. After his death in 1899, the house passed to Yale along with his collections, which became a substantial portion of the collection at the Peabody Museum.  Today, Marsh Hall serves as part of the Yale School of Forestry, and survives as one of Prospect Street’s most architecturally distinctive residences.