New Haven gets an extra $52 million, and Yale gets to close a single block to traffic. The city’s mayor and the university’s president shook hands on these terms in November of 2021, cementing a deal to significantly increase Yale’s voluntary financial contribution to the city for the next six years. It had taken a year of wrangling for the agreement to make it out of the negotiating room. A quarter-mile stretch of High Street—a shady, tree-lined block with one-way traffic and nothing but dorms and academic buildings on either side—seemed to be Yale’s sole upside. The street would even still technically remain under the city’s ownership, as Yale only won the right to redesign it as a pedestrian walkway. Out of everything, why would Yale ask for this? And what does it reveal about the clash between urban university campuses and the streets that they occupy?
As a bargaining chip, the High Street conversion is part of a larger effort by Yale to strike deals with New Haven to pave and pedestrianize the blocks in and around its campus. A few months before the planned conversion of High Street was announced, the University finished construction on Alexander Walk, which replaced two blocks of Wall Street. “It feels like a continuous college campus, not a city,” Yale’s associate director of planning and construction Michael Douyard said in the announcement of the project’s completion. “It went from an urban streetscape to a lush and tidy campus landscape.”
Unlike Ivy League counterparts, which boast gated campuses arranged along a pastoral hillside in Princeton or elevated on a marble platform in Morningside Heights, New Haven’s streets cut through Yale. Walking around Yale generally feels, as Douyard noted, like walking through a city. The University is working to change that. In interviews, New Haven politicians, local residents, and Yale architecture faculty shared their concerns about the power that Yale has to reshape the urban landscape that surrounds it, stretching the lines of campus further—and making them harder to cross.
“Those gestures send clear messages that ‘this is campus, and this is not campus,” said Elihu Rubin, who directs the undergraduate urban studies program at Yale. “When you have a street that runs through it that is accessible to cars, I think that it feels a little bit more porous to a broader public…This was maybe a way of insulating the campus from the surrounding city.”
Alex Guzhnay ’24, a New Haven alder representing a ward that includes most of Yale’s campus, is a senior at Yale himself. In high school, he visited Yale from nearby Fair Haven, a predominantly Latine neighborhood. He said he felt uncomfortable walking through the technically-public central paths of Yale’s campus, wondering if he was even allowed to be there.
“Even when classes aren’t in session, it’s like, can I be here, do I feel comfortable being here?” Guzhnay said. “It’s an unknown sort of territory. It’s a different sort of environment than what I’ve grown up in and what other people have grown up in.”
Yale has already converted two blocks of High Street nearer to the center of campus into walkways through deals struck in 1990 and 2013. In the latter case, the city packaged one block of High Street and two blocks of Wall Street into a $3 million sale to the university. Yale now has permanent control over the thoroughfares, reserving the legal right to close them to passersby not affiliated with the university, though it has not articulated any plans to do so.
The city’s current mayor, Justin Elicker, voted against selling these streets to Yale while serving on the Board of Alders during the 2013 negotiations. Eight years later, he then presided over the deal that will allow Yale to pedestrianize another downtown block. In a recent interview, he said that his objections to the 2013 sale determined the parameters under which he was willing to negotiate with regard to High Street. The outright sale of public assets to Yale is “irresponsible,” he said, noting that Yale’s permanent ownership rights could then “potentially be used to gate off the public from the street.” And $3 million was too small a sum.
Crucially, city and university officials have emphasized, this most recent deal is not like the one that came before it: New Haven is not selling the street, and Yale is not buying it. Yale will produce the design for the walkway, subject to the approval of New Haven’s City Plan Commission, and will fully fund the renovations and future maintenance, but ownership over the street will be retained by the city. University President Salovey told the Yale Daily News on February 16 that construction will likely begin late in the spring of 2024.
However, Yale did initially float the idea of purchasing High Street, according to officials who were present in the negotiating room. The city then managed to talk them down.
Once the negotiations for the 2021 deal began, Yale expressed an interest in closing High Street and converting it into a walkway—a request that not even the mayor had heard prior. “I made clear that selling the street was a red line that we would not cross,” Elicker said.
Henry Fernandez, who was the city’s lead negotiator during the proceedings, said that after the city set a hard limit against a permanent purchase, Yale “negotiated in good faith,” leading to the final compromise that was able to pass unanimously through the Board of Alders. Yale assented to High Street remaining a public asset “once they thought about it, and understood why it mattered to the city,” Fernandez said.
Yale’s Office of New Haven Affairs confirmed in an emailed statement: “As with past transactions, the university was initially interested in purchasing; however, given the strength of the overall partnership, we were happy to accept the city’s novel offer to work together to create a pleasant community space.”
By the time that the deal went in front of the alders, the conversion of High Street drew little controversy, said Yale alum and Ward 7 alder Eli Sabin ’22. Sabin was initially surprised to hear about the change, as it had never been mentioned to him before, and some alders were concerned about the loss of revenue from parking spaces. However, the primary focus was on the funding increase, not on High Street. “It came as part of a package that saw the city getting tens of millions of dollars that we desperately need to provide services and keep property taxes down,” Sabin said.
During the negotiations, Fernandez said, Yale’s priorities for the High Street conversion were pedestrian safety and walkability, as well as creating the visual effect of a campus that, though urban, is “bound together.”
The block of High Street that will soon be converted, between Elm Street and Chapel Street, is already quite integrated with Yale’s campus. It is flanked on one side by the university’s historic Old Campus complex, which houses students during their first year. On the other side sit three of the university’s oldest residential colleges, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the tomb of the undergraduate secret society Skull and Bones. Other than the private tomb, Yale owns and manages every single property on the street.
At one end, High Street intersects with the commercially-focused Chapel Street. There, both Yale affiliates and New Haven residents frequent locally-owned shops and restaurants, as well as chains like Panera Bread and Starbucks. The tables in front of the Yale University Art Gallery, on the corner of Chapel and High, are a popular gathering space for local residents.
Yale’s influence on urban planning extends onto Chapel Street. More than two-thirds of the businesses within a block of the High Street intersection are part of the “Shops at Yale,” complexes of restaurants and stores owned by Yale University Properties. When interviewed, multiple small business owners on Chapel Street said that their employees currently make use of High Street’s parking spaces—31, to be exact—in order to commute to work.
Yale architecture professor Alan Plattus described Chapel Street as “the real shared main street of Yale and the city.” However, High Street thereby runs the risk of acting as a boundary. The point where High Street meets Chapel Street is literally marked with a gate: an ornate Gothic archway with carved angels on either side. “It’s a clear sense of crossing a threshold and being in somebody else’s backyard,” Plattus said.
In a statement, Lauren Zucker, Yale’s associate vice president for New Haven affairs, wrote that this block of High Street “affords a unique opportunity to create that welcoming invitation where this edge of campus interfaces with New Haven’s vibrant Chapel commercial district.”
“Both Yale and the City continue to focus on ways to strengthen New Haven as it relates to both sustainability and pedestrian-friendly initiatives,” Zucker wrote. “Turning High Street into a pedestrian-friendly corridor serves this function.”
In 2019, a driver struck two prospective students during Yale’s annual Bulldog Days for accepted students at the intersection of Elm and High. A similar accident occurred closer to the Chapel and High intersection in 2008, injuring a visiting professor. There are currently no crosswalks present along the block in question, which students said encourages jaywalking as first-years head from Old Campus to class or the dining halls.
Leet Miller ’24, a senior architecture major at Yale, spent the summer of 2022 studying usage patterns on High Street as an intern with Yale Facilities, assisting with preliminary research for the conversion. He found that cars only use the street periodically when compared to other nearby parallels, but will often speed, particularly late at night. Crashes or near-misses are not uncommon. Though not a major road, Miller added that High Street is still an important artery for cars due to the prevalence of one-way streets in downtown New Haven.
“But also, ultimately, pedestrianizing Yale’s campus allows it to compete better with other elite universities and their campuses,” Miller said. “When that pre-frosh is on campus and they see certain things, when they see more pathways and this beautiful gothic architecture, these are selling points for the school. What I learned a lot at campus planning is that a lot of work is done to make it competitive.”
Plattus emphasized that High Street is also highly visible during key moments for Yale students: it is where parents drop off their children during their freshman year, watching them enter the dorms for the first time. The street is already closed each year during commencement, which takes place on Old Campus. The critical position of High Street in campus life may have put it on Yale’s “wish list” for pedestrianization, he said.
Despite the university’s concerns about their safety, students interviewed on High Street said that they didn’t find the current traffic on the street to be a disturbance. Sure, they admitted, students jaywalk — but the flow of cars is light, so they tend to be able to cross unimpeded. The only negative that Alicia Shen ’26 could name was the occasional noise.
Shen said that she does find the walkway that has replaced Wall Street to be “idyllic,” but added, “I also really like the areas where we feel closer to the city and people who aren’t part of the school, and [converting High Street] would take that away.” Her friend Jane Park ’26 added that closing the street would be a drastic visual change.
Ashvin Trehan ’27, a first-year student currently living on Old Campus, said that though he found it easy to cross the street in its current form, transforming it into a walkway will “make campus feel more like a campus rather than part of a city, which I think would be a nice little addition.”
No one believes that the High Street conversion will cause a crisis in and of itself. The street already looks like it belongs to Yale, according to both local residents and urbanism experts. Closing the street will cause some disturbance in traffic patterns—inconveniencing drivers during their left turns off of Chapel Street—but is not predicted to significantly disrupt them. With this, the true impact of the conversion, according to urban studies professor Rubin, may not necessarily be tangible.
“It could be viewed as a symbolic sign of Yale’s control of urban space,” he said. “In many ways it is symbolic, but symbols are important.”
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If closing a city street acts as a symbol, then, what message does it send?
Since the announcement of the voluntary contribution deal in 2021, Yale officials have evoked Alexander Walk—the converted walkway that now covers two blocks of Wall Street—as a core model for future renovations on High Street. In a virtual press conference after the agreement was publicized, President Peter Salovey told reporters that “when all is said and done,” High Street will likely resemble the now-renovated Wall Street, which he said was a beautiful space. High Street will be “city-owned, but similarly landscaped,” according to Salovey, encouraging pedestrians to travel both north to south and east to west through walkways that unite Yale’s central campus.
Today’s Wall Street is heavily trafficked by students heading to classes and framed by greenery and park benches, as well as the grand marble structures of the nearby Beinecke Plaza. It’s hard to imagine that a street existed on the land previously. The design deliberately resembles the interlocking Rose Walk in front of Sterling Memorial Library — formerly part of High Street—down to the sepia color of the paving stones.
Alexander Walk is public, yet New Haveners rarely use it. Why? Rubin, the Yale urban studies professor, said that this is a spillover of a greater “management” of social activities in the public areas of Yale’s campus, both through architectural signals and at times through intervention by campus security and police. Cross Campus and the New Haven Green, the two major open green spaces in New Haven, are only half a block away from each other, he said, but do not see the same usage patterns at all.
“There is no reason why a family from New Haven can’t put a blanket on the ground and have a picnic [on Cross Campus], and I don’t think anyone would stop them from doing it,” he said. “But the architecture and the urban design of campus makes it very clear that you’re on Yale turf.”
In the statement she provided, Zucker, the Yale vice president for New Haven affairs, wrote that the university’s goal with regard to High Street is to “create a beautiful public space that will welcome students, New Haven residents, and people from around the world.” She added that the university has assembled a planning committee that includes members of the New Haven community, seeking local input on their design.
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The push to convert streets central to Yale’s campus into paved walkways began in earnest just over three decades prior, in 1990. A cash-strapped New Haven struck a deal with the university which first established the voluntary contribution model to partially compensate the city for lost revenue from tax-exempt academic buildings. In return, New Haven granted Yale de facto control over two blocks of High Street and two blocks of Wall Street. They agreed to revisit the status of the properties in 20 years.
Yale’s first order of business was to construct Rose Walk on the block of High Street that passed in front of its central library. Meanwhile, they closed the other three blocks to all vehicles—excluding emergency services, deliveries, and Yale’s maintenance and security teams.
“The principle was that [the blocks] were ours to convert, we literally bought and literally owned the rights to do that,” said former university president Richard Levin, who took office in 1993. “Many people thought it would be an enhancement of the college life, as this was right in the heart of the campus.”
After Rose Walk was completed, Levin decided to hold off on converting the other blocks during his tenure, as they were necessary corridors for carrying building materials during the renovations of Sterling Memorial Library and the Yale Law School. In the meantime, he said, Rose Walk had created a “wonderful academic space, and a very inviting one.”
Once the agreed-upon 20 years had passed, the city and the university went back to the negotiating table, eventually striking a deal for the sale of the three yet-to-be-converted blocks. Levin, who left office just before the 2013 sale was finalized, questioned why Yale “paid twice for the same thing.” The university already had the right to convert the streets based on the terms set in 1990, but now it owns them completely and permanently.
Levin said that closing a third block of High Street was never something that his administration had considered. “I’m less convinced that it’s important than I was about the previous parts,” he said, describing how the road is “useful” to city residents due to the vehicle traffic and usually-full parking spaces.
His administration produced a comprehensive master plan for campus design in 2000, working with New Haven’s mayor at the time, John DeStefano, as well as architecture firm Cooper Robertson. The 200-page document outlines ways for Yale to make its campus more cohesive and attractive, suggesting interventions including street closures, conversions of one-way streets to two-ways, and new crosswalks. Many of these have already come to fruition. The plan recommends that Yale “improve the character of High and Wall Streets, particularly along High Street between Elm and Chapel Streets, to make it more attractive to pedestrians,” and make High Street a “more prominent gateway to Yale.”
The document reveals the extent to which redesigning Yale’s campus is intertwined with a redesign of the city. The university even decides the retail environment that surrounds it, said Michael Lee-Murphy, a former journalist who reported on Yale’s transformation of the Broadway shopping district. Chapel Street isn’t within Yale’s campus like the adjoining High Street, he said, but because Yale owns the vast majority of its properties, “they can determine what kind of street it becomes.”
Urban policy in New Haven’s downtown is set, at least in part, by Yale’s decisions, as it works to become a more attractive place for prospective students.
Bruce Alexander, who served as Yale’s vice president for New Haven and state affairs for two decades, spearheaded the Wall Street purchase and the expansion of Yale’s commercial real estate portfolio. Alexander Walk is named after him. In an interview, he said that Yale’s efforts to influence New Haven’s urbanism “grew out of a sense that the environment around the campus was becoming a significant detriment to the university.” They lost many admitted students to their competitors for this very reason, Alexander said. So Yale changed the environment.
“There are dynamics of economic oppression in the city that are more stark than they are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, or certainly than in Ithaca,” Lee-Murphy said. “Yale keeps bumping up against that reality. So they, as they see it, have to lessen that reality or create a bubble around the university where students can feel safe to shop, walk around, and enjoy the entertainments that Yale thinks are suitable.”
Yale “desperately wants to be more like their peer institutions,” said architecture professor Plattus. Princeton only has a single gate to its adjoining town, he said, while the majority of Columbia’s campus is placed on a “fortified” block raised above street level. Even Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have a greater number of open spaces and pathways that are removed from the infrastructure of their surrounding cities. Yale, on the other hand, is fundamentally situated on an urban street grid.
Though he carried out pedestrianization projects in his own term, former university president Levin cautioned that Yale should avoid changing the essence of the campus by going to extremes with their walkway conversions. “It’s part of the fabric of the place we are,” Levin said. “We’re part of a city, that’s what Yale is.”
Some city leaders expressed optimism that the High Street conversion could make Yale feel more public instead of less so — if executed with the right principle in mind. Guzhnay, from the Board of Alders, noted that High Street is already not the most inviting space for New Haven residents. Murals by New Haven artists, picnic tables, or events like street markets and concerts could “activate” the new walkway and welcome community members, he said.
Mayor Elicker said that it is crucial for Yale to be deliberate about demonstrating to New Haveners that they belong on High Street. This will happen not just through design, he added, but also through how Yale affiliates choose to interact with the community they live in.
When it comes to pedestrianizing further streets, Elicker said that the city is happy to have conversations with Yale as future requests arise. “I’m confident that the university is not going to produce something outrageous.”