Library Walk

Library Walk, the quiet passage between today’s Branford College and Jonathan Edwards College, traces its origins to a small 19th-century roadway once known as Library Street as Yale’s early library buildings rose nearby. In the early 1930s, when Yale created its first residential colleges, the University cleared the old block north of Old Campus and closed Library Street to traffic. Its footprint was preserved but narrowed and landscaped, becoming a pedestrian path woven into the new Gothic colleges designed by James Gamble Rogers. Over time, the former street evolved into the intimate walkway officially Library Walk—one of Yale’s most scenic paths between two of its most iconic residential colleges.