Hewitt Quadrangle

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Hewitt Quadrangle

Hewitt Quad

Commons with spires of the Law School in the backround

Hewitt University Quadrangle (until 1917, University Court; informally, Hewitt Quadrangle or Beinecke Plaza) is a plaza at the center of the Yale University campus which is the home of the administrative buildings.

The Bicentennial Buildings (University Commons, Woolsey Hall, and the Memorial Rotunda) were the first buildings constructed for Yale University as opposed to one of its constituent entities (Yale College, Sheffield Scientific School, or others), reflecting a greater emphasis on central administration initiated by Presidents Timothy Dwight and Arthur Twining Hadley. Constructed in 1901-2 for the University's bicentennial, the limestone Beaux-Arts buildings linked the College buildings on the Old Campus with the Sheffield Scientific buildings on Hillhouse Avenue. They were designed by John M. Carrère and Thomas Hastings.

The Commons is the building in which freshmen take their meals: it replaced a timber-trussed banqueting hall. Woolsey Hall was the University's first secular large assembly hall, with 2,691 seats. The Rotunda, with tablets on the walls commemorating Yale's war dead is a double-sized, domed, colonnaded version of Bramante's Tempietto built in 1502 on the site of St. Peter's martyrdom in Rome. Before the colonade of the Commons is a memorial cenotaph.

Woodbridge Hall, located on the west side of the plaza, was designed by the firm of Howells & Stokes.

The visible portion of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, on the east side of the plaza, designed by Gordon Bunshaft, is like the visible portion of an iceberg: most of the library is underground. A pit, visible but not accessible from the plaza, contains Isamu Noguchi's sculptures.

Beinecke Plaza has been the site of rallies and protests including a recreation of a Soweto shanty, which was burned in protest, and the Claes Oldenburg "Lipstick Ascending on a Caterpillar Tread" (now in Morse College), given to the University by the Colossal Keepsake Corporation.