483 College Street
The Yale building at 483 College Street was described by the New York Times as "the most expensive and elaborate secret society building in the United States" when donated by Frederick William Vanderbilt in 1913.
483 College Street represents only one half of Vanderbilt's original gift to his literary society. 493 College Street, which houses Yale academic offices, was the dormitory of the society until the mid-1940s, when the Anthony Trust Association donated the building to Yale University.
Saint Anthony Hall's Gothic home is an embodiment of the Hall's private-public dichotomy. As were the dormitories on either side of it, the Hall's building was designed by Charles C. Haight, a New York architect known at Yale as "the peace-maker," given his ability to reconcile contrasting styles and unify the campus with buildings such as Phelps and Chittenden Halls. Seven years later, when the Hall replaced its dark Romanesque building, Haight had the opportunity to create a harmonious grouping, and the Hall's building was conceived less as a freestanding object than a continuation of the Gothic streetscape.
"The intersection of College and Wall Streets shows off the heterogeneous results of the 50-year transformation from a New Haven to a Yale identity. Of the four corners, Scroll and Key went earliest, in 1870. In 1894 St. Anthony Hall, a Sheff society, went up at the northeast corner, but not the building seen today. The earlier building was a Richardsonian brownstone design by Heins and LaFarge (son of the painter and stained glass artist); its ornamental iron gate was recycled for the corner entrance on the present octagonal tower. The ubiquitous Charles C. Haight designed the second St. A's in 1913, built to provide more space and to fit better with the two limestone Vanderbilt-donated halls (1903-06) flanking it."
--Patrick L. Pinnell
Yale University
Princeton Architectural Press, 1999