Hillhouse Avenue

Hillhouse Avenue began in the early 19th century as a private street laid out by James Hillhouse — conceived as a carefully planted elm-lined “garden street” of large villas just north of the Green — and it immediately became one of the most prestigious residential addresses in America. Charles Dickens famously called it “the most beautiful street in America” when he toured the U.S. in the 1840s. Yale began acquiring houses on the avenue in the late 19th and early 20th century, and by mid-century most of Hillhouse had become institutional. Today nearly every address along Hillhouse Avenue is part of Yale — economics, engineering, and data/tech research, all in former mansions — but the avenue above all endures as a vignette of the 19th century America, playing host to a 21st-century global research university.