Yale students almost always access New York City via the Metro-North New Haven Line, a direct connection between the academic and urban campuses. But beyond its convenient transportation connection, New York has long been led by leaders whose names appear on buildings at Yale, and many buildings in New York are named for some of Yale’s brightest alumni. Without a doubt, the city is full of buildings and institutions that can be traced right back to Yale. And, as a Yale student, you should be able to point them out during your next weekend stay or day trip.
Here’s where Yale students should go the next time they find themselves in the Big Apple:
Arriving on the Metro-North in Grand Central Terminal is the first and last connection between the city and the university. It was built by Gilded Age railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt — grandfather of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who gifted Yale the funds to build the namesake Vanderbilt Hall on Old Campus to honor his son who was a student at Yale. Exiting Grand Central Terminal on Vanderbilt Avenue, Yalies are confronted with a more explicit connection than anywhere else: the Yale Club of New York was established in 1897, making the Club almost as old as some Ivy League schools. (It was established three decades after Cornell was instituted in Ithaca, New York.)
After leaving The Yale Club, head north and cross over to Park Avenue to see with your own eyes 270 Park Avenue, designed by Norman Foster ARCH ’62 and his firm, Foster + Partners. Next year, the $2 billion behemoth will open and function as the new headquarters for J. P. Morgan Chase — no doubt a common, yet coveted, workplace for Yale alumni. At completion, the building will stand at 1,388 feet — high enough to reach “supertall” skyscraper status. It will be the sixth tallest building in New York City. But Foster has a reputation for achieving such architectural feats. He designed 50 Hudson Yards, which, at exactly 300 meters tall, is also a “supertall” skyscraper and the fourth largest office building in New York by square footage, occupied by BlackRock. If you are unfamiliar with Foster’s work, consider walking up Whitney Avenue in New Haven and scaling the staircases within the light-drenched atriums of the Yale School of Management’s Edward P. Evans Hall. That was Foster’s 2014 contribution to his alma mater. The architecture style of Yale’s SOM is modernist and isn’t so different from Hearst Tower which was designed by Foster and completed in 2006. Both incorporate steel and glass as construction materials. In Hell’s Kitchen, Hearst Tower sits at the southwest corner of 57th Street and Eighth Avenue, steps from Columbus Circle and the southwest entrance of Central Park, the 843-acre urban hideaway in the middle of Manhattan designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted, like Foster, spent time studying at Yale, and, in September, Travel + Leisure named his verdant vision the No. 1 tourist destination in the United States. While Olmsted was not a Yale graduate, he studied at the Silliman Laboratories on Yale’s campus and his kinsmen, Denison Olmsted, was a Yale professor and the first American to observe Halley’s Comet.
Exiting Central Park’s southeast corner at Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza — not to be confused with Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza — Yalies will see the Plaza Hotel and Bergdorf Goodman’s department stores on either side of Fifth Avenue. On the Central Park and Plaza side of Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman’s women’s department store location sits at the former site of the house of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, Yale benefactor of namesake Vanderbilt Hall. The house, one of the four dozen Gilded Age Mansions in New York City, was built in the châteausque-style and was demolished in 1926 for the construction of the building that is still occupied by Bergdorf Goodman today.
Continuing along 57th Street, traveling seven avenue blocks east, Yalies will arrive at 4 Sutton Place, overlooking the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. This was the home of Time magazine publisher Henry Luce III ’45, son of American magazine magnate Henry R. Luce ’20 who founded Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. If you are not familiar with Luce, you may be familiar with his namesake hall at Yale. 4 Sutton Place was also the home of Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving sibling of John F. Kennedy, the former U.S. president who received an honorary doctorate from Yale Law School in 1962. Kennedy originally matriculated to Yale Law School before his post-grad plans were upended when he went abroad to serve in the military.
Retracing the path to Sutton Place, past Grand Army Plaza, and up Fifth Avenue, the legacy of Henry R. Luce is on full display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, Yalies can visit the American Wing and its Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, containing paintings, sculptures and furniture which capture the essence of American — and New York — life from 1680 through the 20th century.
Yalies should end their Manhattan escapade by trekking back through Central Park to Lincoln Square. There, attend a Lincoln Center performance of the New York Philharmonic in David Geffen Hall. In 2021, Geffen donated $150 million to his namesake drama school at Yale. Not only does the site of the New York Philharmonic share its name with Yale’s drama school, but Robert Moses, class of 1909, Yale graduate and famed New York City planner, led the planning of Lincoln Center after the Upper West Side neighborhood was razed in 1960. Lincoln Square is the site of Juilliard’s performing arts school, which is rivaled only by NYU — and Yale.
Yale is separated from New York City by 60 some odd miles and a two-hour Metro-North ride. But given that proximity and its long history, it is inextricably linked with the city that never sleeps. Yale will always be New Haven’s premier academic institution. But Yale students should consider the island of Manhattan their second, unofficial campus.