Yale To Demolish Grad Student Dorm

Yale is getting ready to knock down a six-story graduate student housing building on Temple Street to make way for a coming expansion to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

That’s the near-future fate for Helen Hadley Hall at 420 Temple St. between Trumbull and Grove, right off of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

The decades-old dormitory, which includes 177 single rooms for grad students, has been on the chopping block for over a year.

Yale first announced its intention to close the building back in February 2023, several weeks before the university also announced plans to build up its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

As part of its latest monthly meeting towards the end of June, the East Rock Community Management Team distributed to its members a copy of a ​“Notice Of Intent To Demolish” for 420 Temple St. That notice, dated June 19, indicates that the building is subject to a mandatory city 90-day delay of demolition because Hadley Hall is on the New Haven Historic Resources Inventory.

In an email comment provided to the Independent for this story, a university spokesperson said that Hadley Hall will be torn down this coming fall.

Yale’s original February 2023 announcement of Hadley Hall’s closure stated that, to replace the beds lost at this building, ​“Yale Graduate Housing and University Properties will partner to provide alternative accommodations, to which graduate and professional students will be given priority.”

This replacement housing ​“will upgrade the graduate and professional residential experience from a dorm setting to apartment-style living and will be close to campus, priced affordably, and have furnished and unfurnished options.”

Asked for details on ​“alternative accommodations” for graduate student housing, the Yale spokesperson recently told the Independent that the university has made 188 additional beds available to graduate and professional students who would have been eligible to live at Hadley Hall. ​“These new beds are located in other Yale-owned buildings.”