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Gate Posts
Two brownstone gate posts, which originated from the old campus, are located on Vernon Street marking the entrance to a pathway next to the English Department building (formerly the President's house). They are engraved with “TC” for Trinity College.
The posts originally stood “facing towards the north across the driveway which ran back of the old college buildings.” 1) An 1866 map from the Trinity Catalogue shows the locations of the College gates. Local painter Charles R. Loomis captured the gate posts in an 1876 sketch, in which the posts have iron gates hanging on them. According to a 1932 Tripod article, this sketch was prominently displayed in President Ogilby's office.
The gates found their way back to campus by happenstance, as they were not intentionally preserved when the old campus was demolished during the 1878 move to Summit Street. In the 1880s or 1890s, John James McCook Jr., Class of 1863 and Professor of Modern Languages, found the iron gates in the Taylor and Fenn ironworkers yard, and Walter S. Schutz, Class of 1894, found the brownstone gate posts which had been separated from the gates. Schutz had the gate posts installed at Vernon Street and Broad Street, marking the East entrance to the College. However, the road was too wide to hang the iron gates, so they were put into storage in Northam Towers.
The 1897 Ivy stated that the iron gates were “at Lincoln's foundry on Arch Street, Hartford,” and that the posts were at the Vernon street entrance; a sketch in the Ivy was made with Mr. Lincoln's permission. A 1918 Tripod article details that the gates “closed forever” in 1897, and that they were in the basement of Jarvis Hall.
The gate posts were relocated to Vernon Street beside the President's House sometime in the early 1900s. In 1932, the iron gates were restored and placed back on the posts. During this project, a road leading to Alumni Hall from Vernon street was eliminated and a flagstone walk installed “with the old stone gate posts brought into a position on either side of the walk” and “the original iron gates, after 55 years of rusting and resting in obscurity, were once more hung on their ancient hinges.”
Today, the stone posts remain on Vernon Street. However, the iron gates have been removed and their whereabouts are unknown.