University of New Haven

COLLECTION HISTORY

The people behind the place.

The university began in 1920 with a different kind of campus life: a YMCA-operated branch of Northeastern University in New Haven. Its beginnings lay in education fitted into an existing city, rather than a purpose-built residential campus. The institution’s own history describes decades of shared buildings, laboratories and faculty connections with Yale. That urban beginning explains why the name New Haven remained important even after the college crossed into West Haven. [SGC90-S2]

The move in 1960 gave the college a place it could shape. The Board of Governors purchased three buildings and twenty-five acres formerly belonging to the New Haven County Orphanage. A site associated with care for children became a setting for higher education. The change was more than an address: the buildings and grounds became the foundation for an expanding campus and a visible identity of its own. [SGC90-S2]

In 1970, New Haven College became the University of New Haven. The gallery follows that identity through a period name-change record, a 1976 campaign visit and later campus and community photographs. Each picture belongs to a particular moment. Recent views show the institution that grew from those earlier rooms and grounds; they should not be mistaken for photographs of the founding campus. [SGC90-S1]