UPDATE (2:01 p.m.): The links to the PDFs actually work now. Oops.
The pretty PDFs we posted yesterday, courtesy of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, contained some never-before-reported details. (As an aside: “moats” without water and alligators and sharp objects are not moats. They are just depressions filled with shrubbery.) Here’s a rundown:
Students in the new colleges need not worry about getting along with a roommate: ALL bedrooms will be singles. Suites will range from doubles to sextets. And while the new colleges will maintain the entryway system, every entryway will have a hallway connecting to an adjacent entryway on every floor (for use in case of fire or scary monster).
Each of the new colleges will have 468 students and 425 beds. If no one is to be annexed — because the new colleges were meant to alleviate annexing — that means Yale is assuming at least 9.2 percent of students in the colleges will move off campus each year. (In the 2008-’09 school year 12.2 percent of undergraduates moved off campus.)
The mystery “third building” on the site of the new colleges is labeled on the floor plans as a theater. Administrators have said that they hope the “third building” will help draw students up to the site, which many current students have complained is far from the rest of campus.
The unlucky students assigned to the suites in the west corner of the north college — the rooms farthest from central campus — will be freshmen, who will all live around the north college’s main courtyard. Freshmen in the south college will be luckier: they will all live along Prospect Street in the rooms closest to central campus.
It is not clear from the plans whether the new colleges have any elevators. If they don’t, the students living in the double on the eighth floor of one of the north college’s towers will get a good workout.
The new college’s large courtyards will be approximately the size of Jonathan Edwards College’s courtyard (large enough to hold 1,200 people for Commencement). The college’s three main medium size courtyards will be close to the size of Saybrook College’s stone courtyard.