With Pierson College renovations nearly complete and Davenport College plans set to become a reality this summer, Yale planners are still looking forward to future building projects. Architects presented their plans to renovate Trumbull and Silliman colleges at last weekend’s Yale Corporation meeting, where Yale Planner Pamela Delphenich said Buildings and Grounds Committee members were “very supportive” of the designs. Renovations on the next two residential colleges — Trumbull in 2005-2006 and Silliman in 2006-2007 — will be determined by the remarkable size of each college, planners said.

“You’ve got two extremes,” University Senior Architect and Planner Laura Cruickshank said. “You’ve got a really large space in Silliman, and a really small space in Trumbull.”

Yale will create an “underground addition” in Trumbull in order to create enough space for the college’s current facilities and the new mechanical rooms it will be required to install, Cruickshank said. Silliman is so large that the University will begin performing enabling projects this summer in order to renovate the college within the allotted 15-month period, Delphenich said.

Delphenich said that Yale will probably renovate Jonathan Edwards College after Silliman, though the University has not made a definite decision and has not yet prepared any plans. Yale also plans to renovate Calhoun, Morse, and Ezra Stiles colleges in the near future.

Trumbull’s underground addition will extend about 30 feet from the side of the college’s dining hall into the courtyard toward Sterling Memorial Library and will extend the full east-to-west length of the area, Cruickshank said. She said the courtyard itself will be restored afterward.

“It will look exactly the way it looks right now,” Cruickshank said.

Cruickshank said that Nick Chapel, the college’s theater, will be moved to the addition from its current location and will be expanded from its current 40 seats to approximately 60. The college’s art gallery and buttery will be located near the theater, she said.

Other changes include the creation of additional music space and a pottery studio, Cruickshank said. While Trumbull will gain those facilities, it will lose its print shop and basketball court, which formerly shared a space with a dance studio.

“A lot of students were saying if you have a floor designed for dance and basketball, it doesn’t work for either one,” Cruickshank said.

She said workers will also increase the college’s housing capacity by about 20 beds by moving some faculty offices into the basement areas. Builders will also add between 50 and 60 seats to the dining hall, Cruickshank said.

Some space will also be added to Silliman. University Senior Construction Administrator Jeffrey Brown said that dormers — windows installed in a slanted roof — will be added this summer to create attic bedrooms in the buildings along Temple and Grove streets. Delphenich said the rooms will not be available until after renovations are complete in 2007.

New space will be needed for Sillimanders because some student housing will be eliminated as part of other work that will be done on the college. After renovations, the fourth floor of Byers Hall –which currently contains student rooms — will feature faculty offices, the fellows’ lounge and seminar rooms, Brown said. He said the University will also move the college dean’s apartment, which is currently located on the building’s third floor, into another part of the college.

While the work may be extensive, it will not provide relief for students in Silliman’s “tower” on College Street hoping to stay dry on their way to the college’s dining hall. Builders will connect the college’s Vanderbilt-Sheffield buildings along Wall Street to the master’s house and from there to the rest of the college’s main tunnel system, Brown said, but the tower will not be joined to the rest of the college, and there will be no direct connection from the Van-Sheff buildings to the dining hall.

“You’ll have to go all the way around,” Brown said. “There won’t be a short cut across the middle of the courtyard.”

Silliman’s basement facilities will also be rearranged, he said, noting that renovators currently plan to move Silliflicks, the college’s movie theater, to a space under the Van-Sheff building. He said that the new basketball court, climbing wall and buttery might be placed at the current location of the squash courts. One of the courts may be divided into two floors, with Maya’s Room, the college’s art gallery, moving to the higher of the two sections.

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