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Friday, September 20, 2013

DAVENPORT, Yale

Speranza

DAVENPORT, 248 York Street--

The upper courtyard of Davenport College in Yale University.

Its buildings were completed in 1933 mainly in the Georgian style but with a gothic façade.

The college was named for John Davenport, who founded Yale's home city of New Haven, Connecticut.

An extensive renovation of the college's buildings occurred during the 2004–2005 academic year as part of Yale's comprehensive building renovation project.

Davenport has a rivalry with adjoining Pierson.

 Davenpor  College was, like many of Yale's residential colleges, designed by James Gamble Rogers and has two distinct styles of architecture.

The York Street façade is constructed from gothically-detailed sandstone while the remainder of the college has been built in the red-brick Georgian style of the colonial era.

This "hybridization" is meant to complement the monumental gothic streetscape of York Street, on which the western façades of the Branford and Saybrook College complex along with Jonathan Edwards College stand opposite the gothic-inspired Yale Daily News building and University Theatre.

On the inner, Georgian face, the college entrance has an adaptation of the eastern façade of the original Massachusetts Statehouse, in which the British imperial lion and unicorn have been replaced by a pair of yales.

The inner face was featured in the 2008 movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

The enclosed space of Davenport College features three courtyards:

Kumble Court (usually referred to as the "upper courtyard"), the lower courtyard and a recently created stone courtyard in front of the dean's suite, the result of the annexation of a former Theater Studies building during the 2004–2005 renovations.

A half-story terrace and two house-like residential units (one dubbed "The Cottage") flank the upper courtyard to the north.

Traditionally, the college's sophomores live in the suites bordering the lower courtyard, while most of the juniors and seniors of the College live around the upper courtyard.

Separating the two main courtyards is the Cross Piece, housing both the Dean's and Master's Offices and a classroom space as well as carrels and reading rooms extending from the college's Spitzer Library.

The crosspiece formerly held a second library in the top floor which has since been converted to student housing, with the book holdings moved into the expanded Library. I

ndoor spaces of architectural note include the Davenport Common Room, the aforementioned Spitzer Library and the Dining Hall.

The student buttery, or "The Dive", is the snack shop.

An entertainment centre—and game room is nearby. The Davenport basement also includes a letterpress print-shop, a pottery studio, a digital media arts center, a dance studio, and a small theater with stadium seating.

These are all shared with students in Pierson.

Davenport students also have access to shared facilities on the Pierson side of the basement, including music practice rooms and an exercise room containing treadmills, ellipticals, and free weights.

For a while after Davenport College's inception into the Yale residential college system, students were known as "Hybrids," a reference to the hybrid style of the college's architecture. While the nickname appeared in a few official publications in the 1970s, it was no longer used by either Davenporters or their rivals. Davenport students were without a title or figure to rally behind.

In 1998, then junior Thomas Shaw, upon returning from a semester of mountaineering, brought back from the California Redwood country a five-and-a-half foot tall, several hundred pound carved wooden gnome as a gift to the college.

The gnome, with its green painted shirt and yellow pants, quickly developed a following in the Davenport community, and was soon proudly adopted as the college's official mascot.

The gnome was first placed in the college's courtyard, but after repeated theft by neighbor and unofficial Davenport rival Pierson, the gnome was relocated inside.

It was in the entrance of the administrative offices in Crosspiece for the first semester of the 2005–2006 school year, but was moved to the Davenport Dining Hall.

In April 2011, Davenport students stopped a group of Piersonites from the most recent attempt at stealing the gnome. The gnome was successfully rescued and taken to its home in the Davenport Dining Hall.

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