Yale University Computer Science Department

51 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT

• 1894-1895 -- Cady, Berg and See, New York, Architects. The original four-story brick Romanesque Revival building, trimmed with East Haven sandstone and terra cotta, was constructed as the Sheffield Chemical Laboratory.

• ca. 1905-1910 -- Postcard of the ``Buildings of Sheffield Scientific School, Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn." (Those were the days when domestic postage cost 1 penny and foreign postage cost 2!) 51 Prospect Street is the building at the left; the building at center was razed to accommodate Marcel Breuer's Becton Center for Engineering, finished in 1970.

  (Image restoration by Eric Freeman.)

• 1923 -- After the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory was constructed on Science Hill, the building at 51 Prospect was remodeled and renamed to ``Sheffield Laboratory of Engineering Mechanics." It supplied classrooms for the School of Engineering, offices for Army ROTC, and the national headquarters of the Scientific Research Society of America and the Sigma Xi honor society.

• 1969-1973 -- These activities concluded or were relocated, and the building provided classrooms and studios for the School of Music.

• 1986 -- Roth & Moore, New Haven, Architects. A multi-million dollar complete gutting and interior reconstruction was completed, and the building became ``Arthur K. Watson Hall," dedicated to the memory of Arthur K. Watson (Yale College Class of 1942, Chairman of the Board of IBM World Trade Corporation, U.S. Ambassador to France) and home of the Yale C.S. Department.
  ``A four-square, no-nonsense science building of unpretentious grandeur, lightened with slim arches, terra cotta garlands, and a wonderful skyline."

  (from: New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design, Elizabeth Mills Brown)

  (© H. Morrow Long) (© CT Architect & Specifier, Oct./Nov. 1990)

  (© CT Architect & Specifier, Oct./Nov. 1990)

  -- Watson History & Reconstruction HTML pages by Susanne Hupfer --