Yale College (Newhaven)

Title

Yale College (Newhaven)

Description

View showing the entrance to Yale College in New Have,n Connecticut, USA.

c. 1838

Artist

Bartlett (1809-1854)

William Henry Bartlett (1809 – 1854) was a British artist, best known for his numerous steel engravings. The finely detailed steel engravings Bartlett produced were published uncolored with a text by Nathaniel Parker Willis as American Scenery. Bartlett made sepia wash drawings the exact size to be engraved. His engraved views were widely copied by artists, but no signed oil painting by his hand is known. Engravings based on Bartlett's views were later used in his posthumous History of the United States of North America, continued by Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward and published around 1856.

Historical Description

In 1633, the first Englishmen arrived in the country from Massachusetts. Two years later, the settlements of Windsor and Wethersfield were founded. Thomas Hooker founded Hartford in 1636. The three settlements joined together in 1639 to form the colony of Connecticut. In the same year, the colony of New Haven was founded. In 1662, Connecticut received autonomy approved by King Charles II and its own constitution. In 1665, Connecticut and New Haven were merged. Planning for a merger with the Dominion of New England occurred in 1685. In July 1776, Connecticut declared independence from Great Britain as one of the Thirteen Colonies and became the fifth state of the United States on January 9, 1788. Yale University is the third oldest American institution of higher education, after Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Yale's beginnings lie in the An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School resolution of the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut in 1701, whereby a collegiate school was to be established. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalists donated their materials received as Harvard students to the institution as a foundation for the library. Years earlier, Harvard University was the only institution of higher learning in North America. Yale was founded to educate leaders. Originally called the Collegiate School, the institution opened for teaching in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson (1646-1707), in Killingworth, now Clinton, Connecticut. In 1716, the Collegiate School moved to New Haven and was renamed Yale College in 1718 due to a substantial donation from Elihu Yale.