YUAG: New Favorite Place.

piano music: "My Kind of Window" by ian "L.S. Aristotle" (circa 2002)

I had no idea that the museum extended beyond the High Street Arch to the corner of Old Campus.  It was one of the more surreal moments I've ever experienced.   Can you imagine flinging rubber bands at someone else down a spiral staircase when you're 12?  Sitting in run-down classrooms in the corner of a building in 1993, then walking past but not entering for 20 years, and finally going in again to find that it's completely been restored into the most amazing place you've ever been?

When I was a child, at the age of 12, the Italian nuns who ran the Catholic School I attended on Whalley Avenue advised my parents to enroll me in a program down the street.  It was called "The Ulysses S. Grant" Program, and it allowed middle school students from within the city limits, who fell into a lower income bracket, to participate where they'd be taught directly by Yale undergrads.  Our home base was in the corner of Old Campus behind the Hawthorne statue.

A view of New Haven I've never seen before. 

Anyway, some of those classes at that program (the ones that I attended) took place in a building in the far corner of Old Campus, the one we called Street Hall.  I remember particularly playing in the spiral staircases.  The ones where the doors exit under the arch.   I would exit from those doors at 5:25pm in the middle of Autumn, skateboard in hand, getting down to the Daily to skate with the kids in town.

On Visiting
Hope on your first visit, it will be a memorable experience.  I think that the best idea, if you're coming from anywhere else in Connecticut, is to arrive in New Haven around 10am.  It's quiet and you can get something to eat before you go to the museum.  You can try Willoughby's which is in the Arts and Architecture Building, on York Street.  And you can also try the delicious home-made soups by Jen at Booktrader, or the awesomely original vegan muffins produced by Sara Neal (wife of Mr. Ray from Miracle Legion).

This rusty door on the roof of next door Skull N' Bones is equipped with a padlock.

About Hours
If the website says "Holiday Hours All Day" that means they're closed.  Here is their actual schedule and this is their actual website:
YUAG Official Site