Table of Contents
Original Campus
Trinity College's first campus was located in downtown Hartford on the site of the present State Capitol Building. Initially named Washington College, the campus consisted of three buildings. For 50 years, “College Hill” was a defining feature of downtown Hartford until the City purchased the land to build the State Capitol. The three College buildings were demolished in 1878, and Trinity moved to its current location on Summit Street. Today, Trinity Street marks the “front entrance” of the old College campus.
The College's site was chosen from a pool of three towns: Hartford, Middletown, and New Haven. During a fundraising campaign, Hartford pledged far more than other towns, and in a Trustees vote on May 6, 1824, Hartford won with nine votes (against Middletown's five and New Haven's two). A committee was appointed to select the site of the College, and the men chose a 14-acre piece of land called the Whiting-Seymour place, “on West street fronting Buckingham Street about one-hundred rods west of the South Meetinghouse.” The lot was purchased for $4,000 (about $106,000 today).
Washington College's first term of classes began September 23, 1824, but the college buildings were still under construction, so course instruction began in the basement of the Baptist Meeting House at Temple and Market Streets, and a private house on Main Street was taken over as a dormitory.
Buildings
Derivative of Yale College's “Old Brick Row,” a campus plan that was implemented by many New England Colleges in the early 19th century,1) the original campus plan consisted of a chapel flanked by two identical dormitories. Two of the buildings, called the College and the Chapel, were constructed quickly and completed by 1825, but remained unnamed until the third and final building was erected in 1845.
Trinity's buildings were constructed of yellow pine and brownstone in the Ionic order / Greek Revival style. This was unusual for Episcopalians, who typically favored Gothic style; for example, Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford (1827) was one of the earliest known examples of Gothic Revival architecture in the United States. 17th and 18th century Colleges in the United States first used the Federal style, but Greek Revival became the preferred style for academia during the early 19th century. Colleges including Yale, Brown, Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Wesleyan and Williams utilized it as they added to or built their first constructions during the 1820s-1840s. 2)
1845 was a momentous year for the College. Not only did it change its name to Trinity College, but the third building was erected, completing the vision of College Hill in Hartford, and all three buildings received their names. the “College” was named Jarvis Hall and contained dormitories and club rooms to support 100 students; the central building was named Seabury and contained the Chapel, library, Cabinet (Natural History Museum), dormitories and classrooms; and the newest building was called Brownell and contained 38 student rooms, a recitation hall, and faculty apartments. “The whole front of Trinity College is 450 feet in extent,” the Hartford Courant wrote on November 23, 1846. “Other institutions, as Yale and Harvard, have a greater number of separate edifices, but we know of no single mass more solid and imposing.”
Jarvis Hall was designed by Solomon Willard, the architect of the Bunker Hill Monument. According to Trinity legend, as relayed by various sources including alumni Maitland Armstrong, Class of 1858, and W.C. Brocklesby, Class of 1869, Seabury Hall was designed by Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. However, there is no substantial evidence to support Morse's involvement in designing the campus or that he had dabbled in architecture at all. Willard, rather, is most likely to have designed both buildings. He was a practiced architect during the 1820-1840s period, and did construct in Greek Revival. Brownell Hall was likely designed by Silas Totten, and drew inspiration from Willard's original drawings. 3)
Campus Life
With the college buildings constructed, students flocked to occupy the on-campus dormitories. Student rooms which measured 12 x 20 feet “were considered spacious and even luxurious compared with the off-campus, temporary quarters first occupied by Washington College students.” 4) Heated by a coal stove and lit with kerosene lamps, the rooms were divided into sleeping and common areas by a curtain. Running water was not introduced to campus until 1856, and as such, rooms contained chamber pots and water had to be acquired by a common well.
Students arrived in Hartford in the early days either by steamboat, which took them up the Connecticut River, stagecoach or horsecar, until railroad was constructed in the 1830s. The boys were expected to provide their own furniture, which sometimes meant acquiring used items from stores in Hartford or buying from prior students. Nearby houses, often owned by widows, were often boarded to Trinity students and meals were provided to them, as the College did not do so. According to Robert Tomes, Class of 1839:
For one dollar and seventy-five cents a week, the highest price charged, these hungry youths were supplied daily with three substantial meals, at every one of which there was a satisfactory allowance of meat, while in addition there never was wanting a plenitude of mush and milk, buckwheat, Indian cakes and slap-jacks, apple, pumpkin, and mince pies, codfish balls, and all the other delectable contrivances of the ingenious culinary art of New England.
Robert Tomes, a classmate of Rev. John Williams, entered Washington College in 1835 and his first impression of the buildings “built of rough-hewn stone, was by no means cheerful.” He was one of 17 freshmen, but his class had “dwindled down” to a mere 10 by senior year. As a freshman, Tomes occupied the first floor of Jarvis Hall. The College, only twelve years old, was “rough battered,” with stone sill, steps, and hallway. Tomes described his sinking feeling as he entered his dorm room for the first time: “such an aspect of solitary blankness was presented by the rudely planked floor, and the stained and broken plaster of the ceiling and walls of the long empty and neglected room.”
At the time Tomes attended, the grounds, which were “picturesque” were also “very much neglected,” filled with overgrown weeds. The botanical garden was unkempt and forgotten as well. Many of Tomes' classmates were much older than him, having chosen to attend the College “already been engaged in various trades and pursuits of life, as is common in New England Colleges.”
Student Maitland Armstrong, Class of 1858, recalled leaving his wick lit while refilling a camphene lamp in Jarvis Hall: “it exploded, and can, lamp, and all shot across the room, leaving a trail of fire behind it and burning a broad swath in the carpet.” Charles H. Proctor, Class of 1873, reminisced that his Franklin stove's pipe had a chalk skeleton drawn on it, and some student before him had written “liberty” across the ceiling. 5)
In the early days, the academic year was divided into three terms: Fall, Spring, and Summer. Students followed a strict schedule, structured by the toll of the Chapel bell, which commanded them to get up, go to morning prayer, go to class, go to evening prayer, and go to bed. However, students were forbidden to enter buildings before the bell tolled or to stay late; while in classes they were “to maintain a becoming posture; they are not to talk, whisper, or cause any manner of disturbance. They are to be seated in the order of the Catalogue, and retire from the rooms in such order as the Faculty shall direct.” The students were expected to remain in their rooms during study hours and to refrain from “amusements and all noise which may cause interruption.” In a militaristic fashion, the students were expected to stand when an officer or Trustee entered a room, and were not permitted to have student gatherings or sing without the President of the College's approval. Armstrong also relayed that, in the winter, students had to make their way through the dark to morning prayer and often brought small pieces of candle as lights while they trudged in the snow at 6 a.m. to morning Chapel.
However, the rules did not stop the students from enjoying fun together in the dormitories and out on the town. According to Robert Tomes, during the 1830s:
We were eating doughy mince and apple pies, and washing them down with eggnog and punch, which we mixed in our wash-basins, stirred with the handles of our tooth-brushes, and drank out of our soap-boats, during the night and throughout the small hours of the morning, when we should have been fast asleep in our beds. If not in our college rooms, we were probably in the town taverns and confectionaries, doing worse. 6)
In the 1850s, some of the strict rules were relaxed and students could enjoy first classes at 8 a.m. instead of 6 a.m., and class recitations ended at 4 p.m., which left much more recreational time until the now-later 10:30 p.m. curfew. However, mandatory Chapel in mornings and evenings remained, even after it was no longer in vogue for the majority of other colleges.
The students greatly enjoyed elaborate rituals, such as the burial of the conic sections or the Grand Tribunal and Class Day, pranks, and horseplay. There was much drinking on the grounds as well as tobacco chewing. The different classes were tight-knit and competitive, with freshman hazing as a staple. Several military organizations, such as the Phalanx were organized, as well as various literary and debate clubs, College Choir, fraternities, and secret societies.
Thomas Church Brownell, the first president of Washington (Trinity) College, hoped that students would be engaged outdoors in a variety of activities that would become part of the curriculum: farming, gardening, surveying, minerology, and even military drill. While at first Trinity students had a reputation of being “educated men” that were “sadly deficient in manly robustness,” the students found physical things to do. The Little River or Park River, which flowed just past the campus, was nicknamed “The Hog” by students and was a great place to swim or take out a boat in the summer, or go ice skating in the winter. Other students preferred to hire horses and ride, sometimes as far as Avon, or go boxing.
Due to its location downtown, students were also easily able to access Hartford's nightlife, including parties, dance halls, bars and saloons, concerts and operas, lectures and readings, horse races, and seasonal fairs. Students enjoyed traveling to Wadsworth's Tower, or rode in sleighs to Wethersfield, which was apparently famous for “onions, pretty girls, and delicious 'flip,'” a popular mixed drink at the time.7)
The first Trinity athletics team was formed in 1856, the “Minnehaha Club,” which was a rowing team, following the fad of “boating clubs” which swept Hartford in the years before the Civil War. A wicket (American cricket) team formed in 1858, and the first recorded football game took place September 26, 1857, between the freshmen and sophomores. Baseball did not reach Trinity until 1868.
To the New Campus
The 1866 Trinity College Catalogue shows a map of the old campus with the addition of several buildings labeled “Pres. House, Proposed Library, Tower, and Proposed Chapel,” demonstrating that the intent was for Trinity to remain and grow at its downtown location. However, these plans soon changed.
Historically, both New Haven and Hartford had served as Connecticut's state capitals beginning in 1701. In 1866, a contest began for a single capital city. In order to sway public opinion, Hartford wished to erect a new, handsome state Capitol, as well as acquire “the most desirable site in the city”–the Trinity campus–for the new building. Hartford originally offered $374,375 to Trinity for the site, which was rejected, but raised the price to $600,000 during negotiations. On March 21, 1872, the Trinity Trustees accepted the offer, and immediately began looking for a new site. At the same time, President Abner Jackson was sent to England to confer with an architect to design the new campus.
The first site the Trustees considered, called the “Penfield Farm” or “Babcock Farm” was arguably closest to the current site, south of the Old Campus on Park Street, but the Trustees' lowball offer of $2,000 was rejected in October 1872. In February 1873, the Trustees tried again and selected a site on Summit Street by Zion Hill Cemetery, and their offer of $225,000 was accepted.
The decision to move to the “Rocky Hill” or “Gallows Hill” site was decidedly unpopular among faculty, staff, alumni, students, and even the public. Though the College was only 50 years old, Trinity alumni had quickly developed a wistful nostalgia about their time on College Hill.
The students expressed their displeasure in various publications of the Trinity Tablet from 1872 to 1873: “we object 1st to the neighborhood…we consider that the worst of evils,” they wrote, including the “proximity of two burying grounds” and “nearness of the stone pits” (quarry), but also that it was filled with people “not of the kind to induce people of wealth and culture to build there…fine residences do not move towards Pigvilles, neither should colleges.” The term “Pigville” was used to describe impoverished immigrant and minority communities in the north and east ends of Hartford.
The students also were dismayed to be moving out of downtown Hartford. “We think, therefore,” they wrote, “if we must have a suburban site, that it would be better to have it in the direction of the city's growth instead of going to the south end trying to make the city grow backwards.” Another student, under the pseudonym “Jake,” wrote an editorial in the Tablet in which he contemplated “the misery in store for the poor unfortunates who should chance to be students of the Trinity of Rocky Hill.”
Members of the Hartford community, too, were unhappy with the decision, and felt the Trustees had “wholly ignored the Hartford public.” Community member “X,” writing to the Hartford Courant, said that the Penfield site would have been the most central location for the campus and was “selected as excelling all others by Frederick Law Olmsted.” X also was greatly concerned that the College was no longer “easily accessible to those living here who desire to avail themselves of its advantages…this motive should have controlling weight.” 8) Community member “E” also chastised the decision, saying: “To say the least, the erection of college buildings on any other site [than Penfield] is a grave error,” as “there are no advantages, and with no prospect that the location there will influence people of means to come to Hartford to reside for the purpose of educating their sons, or even place their sons at Trinity College in consequence of the unfortunate site selected by the college authorities.” 9) Despite the dissenters, however, the decision was finalized–the Trinity Campus would move to the Rocky Hill site.
Final Years
Excavation work for the new state capitol building began in 1873. Brownell Hall was partially vacated and demolished, rendering the west side of campus a large unsightly hole. Abner Jackson, who died unexpectedly in 1874, had worked with architect William Burges to plan an exquisite gothic campus. Burges never traveled to America, but worked with American architect Francis Hatch Kimball to revise the campus plans in order to fit within budgetary constraints and the new plot of land. The groundbreaking ceremony for the new buildings took place during 1875 Commencement. By 1878, the first two buildings–part of the Long Walk–were completed. Just like the first College Hill buildings 50 years before, they were named Seabury and Jarvis.
In its final years of operation, the old campus suffered from exceptionally unruly student behavior.
President Thomas Pynchon wrote in the 1879 President's Report:
As portions of the buildings were taken down, the students were obliged to move into lodgings in the neighbouring streets and were entirely withdrawn from College control and the operation of Rules of Order. During the last years of occupancy (of the old campus) all the more wealthy students, i.e. all those who especially required control, were living outside, not singly, but gathered in large bodies, in houses which they completely fitted and where they lived entirely without direction from us, so that when we moved to the new buildings a great majority of the students and all the more restless ones had never been under the control of any College rules of order except those which governed the Chapel and the Recitation rooms and were unaware practically that there were any such rules in existence. This complicated the problem very much…it would require at least three years or until all the students who had ever lived under the old regime, at the old campus, had graduated before the College could be brought into a thoroughly well-ordered condition.
The students were noisy and often took to venturing into the city and playing music or singing, their favorite pastimes. In an unprecedented move, faculty brought down an edict forbidding all singing, which kicked off a struggle between themselves and the raucous and rebellious students. As students became more disobedient and destructive, faculty became stricter, which only worsened their behavior in a vicious cycle that continued for months. The students (primarily freshmen) hung skeletons in front of the Chapel, brought kittens to chapel, tore down bulletin boards, participated in forbidden hat rush, plugged gas burners, rang the bell late at night, and lit bonfires. 10) In March 1878, the students went on a rampage tearing down bulletin boards, rendering the College bell defunct, and skipping or “cutting” mandatory chapel. Freshmen participated in a forbidden hat rush and lit bonfires. The students skipped classes and marched through Hartford, singing. As a result, many students were fined, suspended, or had their scholarships revoked. As Pynchon stated in his report, this behavior continued even after the move to the new campus, with administrators struggling to contain it.
At the same time, the student body suffered two tragic deaths. Joseph Mosgrove Truby, Class of 1879, died on September 15, 1877 “after a very brief illness.” 11) A pew end in the Chapel is dedicated to him, and “represents…young Truby sitting at his desk at the College with the hour-glass almost run out and his candle guttering in its socket.” 12). Edward Ingersoll Warren, Class of 1880, died of peritonitis on April 8, 1878, after being sick for several days. On Monday, May 21, James Williams (“Professor Jim”), died after nearly 60 years of service to the school. Other students that spring season suffered from pneumonia and pleurisy, but recovered.
A final commencement was held on the old campus in 1878, after which the College Hill buildings were quickly demolished. Though none of the stones used in the old buildings were incorporated into the Summit Campus buildings, a large piece of Portland brownstone was made into a headstone for Williams. The October 5, 1878 Tablet also describes “relic hunters” who collected wood, metal, and stone, but “perhaps the most interesting of all are the canes made from the old staircases. The owner of one of these possesses a genuine treasure.”
Where College Hill once imposed itself over the Little River, the State Capitol building stands on its foundations. In 1923, the year of Trinity's Centennial, a tablet was erected in the State Capitol's East portico facing Trinity Street, memorializing the College's original location.
Bits and Pieces
Though it has been stated occasionally that no trace of the old campus remained once it was demolished, there are a few bits and pieces that surfaced.
- The chapel bell, much chagrined by students and the subject of pranks, was moved to the new campus. However, it does not appear that it was ever used, and the Cheshire Academy purchased it in June 1883.
- The Class of 1872 gifted the old campus a sundial, which was a fixture that traveled to the new campus. It was located on the main quad in front of Seabury Hall. At some point in the late 19th century, it fell into disrepair and disappeared.
- The old gymnasium, which was both adored and despised by students, was dismantled, relocated, and reassembled on the new Trinity campus. It stood until 1896, when a fire destroyed it.
- The capital surmounting one of the columns in the façade of the old Seabury Hall was formed into the credence table in the Chapel of Perfect Friendship in the Trinity College Chapel when it was completed in 1932.
- A single brownstone brick was uncovered in Seabury Hall in 2007. It was discovered to be the cornerstone to Brownell Hall. In 2008, the stone was mounted inside the Downes Clock Tower where it remains today.
- Two inconspicuous brownstone pillar gate posts mark the entrance to a pathway on Vernon Street next to the former President's House. They are engraved with “TC” for Trinity College and are a relic from the old campus, where they had stood at the corner of Washington Street and Rifle (Capitol) Avenue. Originally, the gate posts had iron gates attached to them.
- The Natural History Museum collections moved from the old campus into new Seabury Hall until Boardman Hall of Natural History was completed in 1900. Originally called the Cabinet, the museum heavily featured mineral and geological collections, fossils, and animal skeletons.
- According to the Trinity Ivy (1923), “the hearthstone in the I.K.A. Lodge was formerly the doorstep of one of the buildings.”
- In the summer of 1921, also according to the 1923 Ivy, workmen laying new sidewalks at the State Capitol discovered debris from the old buildings was used as the foundation the old sidewalk.
Sources
Connecticut's Capitals, Connecticut State Library.
Trinity Tripod: "Sunday Feature: Trinity College and the Old Campus" (2021) by Garrett Kirk ’24.
Architecture & Academe: College Buildings in New England before 1860 (2011) by Bryant F. Tolles, Jr., pp. 136-142.
The History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, pp. 24-186.
The Day Before Yesterday, Reminisces of a Varied Life (1920) by Maitland Armstrong and Margaret Armstrong.
The Trinity Tablet (various issues in 1872, 1873, 1878).
The Life of James Williams, Better Known As Professor Jim, for Half a Century Janitor of Trinity College (1873) by Charles H. Proctor, Class of 1873.
The Laws of Washington College (1838).
The Connecticut Courant (06/15/1824).