New Haven Green

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas is a 15-day festival that takes place in New Haven, Connecticut. The festival presents performing arts, lectures, and conversations that celebrate influential artists and thinkers from around the world. The Festival's free headliner concerts on the New Haven Green attracts thousands of spectators.

Downtown New Haven is the neighborhood located in the heart of the city of New Haven, Connecticut. It is made up of the original nine squares laid out in 1638 to form New Haven, including the New Haven Green, and the immediate surrounding central business district, as well as a significant portion of the Yale University campus. The area includes many restaurants, cafes, theaters and stores. Downtown is bordered by Wooster Square to the east, Long Wharf to the southeast, the Hill neighborhood to the south, the Dwight neighborhood to the west, the Dixwell neighborhood to the northwest, the Prospect Hill area to the north, and East Rock to the northeast. Downtown New Haven is one of the most residential downtown areas in the United States, with nearly 7,000 inhabitants. The expansion of housing options in recent years has helped support downtown businesses and has brought about a surge in economic activity. Secondary streets and areas at the periphery of the neighborhood that once contained vacant storefronts are now almost entirely leased to restaurants and retailers, and the office vacancy rate has dramatically fallen as well.

Battell Chapel is the largest chapel of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Built in 1874–76, it was funded primarily with gifts from Joseph Battell and others of his family. Succeeding two previous chapel buildings on Yale's Old Campus, it provided space for daily chapel services, which were mandatory for Yale College students until 1926 (all-male, mostly Protestant). Together with Durfee Hall and Farnam Hall, the chapel was part of a program begun in the 1870s to build up the perimeter of Old Campus and separate it from the rest of the city. These three buildings, all by the same architect, were among the first at Yale to be named for donors rather than function, location, or legislative funding. Battell Chapel is one of the locations on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

The New Haven Free Public Library (also known as the NHFPL) is the public library system serving New Haven, Connecticut. The system began in 1887 in a leased location but quickly outgrew its space. The Ives Memorial Library is the main branch of the system and is located on the New Haven Green. The neo-Georgian building was designed by Cass Gilbert and finished in 1911. This building was renovated and expanded in 1990.Murals in the main library originated as Public Works Administration projects. Two lunettes in the main hall, designed by Bancel LaFarge of Mt. Carmel, Connecticut, depict scenes from New Haven's history. The Rip Van Winkle murals in the meeting room were painted in 1934 by a team of artists led by Salvatore DiNaio and Frank J. Rutkowski. There is also a set of stained glass windows in the Ives Library designed by David Wilson of South New Berlin, New York including circular and rectangular laylights as well as rectangular and half-round windows.There are also neighborhood branches in Westville (Mitchell), Fair Haven, Dixwell (Stetson) and The Hill (Wilson). The Wilson branch features an art installation by Leila Daw depicting patterns of immigration.In April 2012, the library underwent a significant rebranding effort in celebration of its 125th anniversary. In addition to updates in design and significant changes in borrowing policies, the library also adopted a retitled NHFPL125+ classification.

Harmanus Welch Hall is a freshman dormitory at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. The building is located on Yale University's Old Campus. Pierce N. Welch, an 1862 graduate of Yale College, Mrs. Cora Van Milligan, and Mrs. Grace M. Davies, heirs of Harmanus M. Welch, mayor of New Haven from 1860 to 1863, donated the building to Yale in 1891 in accordance with their father's wishes. The architect Bruce Price designed the building. Welch Hall faces College Street and the New Haven Green on one side and the interior of Yale's Old Campus on the other. Carved above the first-floor windows at both ends of the College Street façade is the inscription AD 1891. The dormitory is Victorian English Collegiate in style and built of Longmeadow freestone. The building has been altered and renovated several times. The first floor, converted in 1938 for the Office of Admissions and the Freshman Year, was restored to use as a dormitory in 1962 and 1964. In 1976, the building underwent a major renovation led by architect Herbert S. Newman and funded by John Hay Whitney, a 1926 graduate of Yale College.Welch Hall is currently occupied by Davenport College freshmen. It is considered among Yale students to be one of the more desirable freshman residence halls because it has many single bedrooms, large common rooms, and internal emergency exit doors without alarms, allowing residents to move freely between different parts of the building without having to go outside or through the basement. On the building's first floor are two suites, nicknamed the "10-pack" and the "12-pack," that are two of Yale's largest freshmen suites. On the building's fourth and fifth floors are the coveted female-only "Princess Suites," which feature two-story common areas, skylights, and spacious bedrooms.

The Old Campus is the oldest area of the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut. It is the principal residence of Yale College freshmen and also contains offices for the academic departments of Classics, English, History, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy. Fourteen buildings—including eight dormitories and two chapels—surround a 4-acre (1.6 ha) courtyard with a main entrance from the New Haven Green known as Phelps Gate. The Old Campus comprised most of Yale College's grounds between its arrival in New Haven in 1718 and its 20th-century expansion. Yale's first building in New Haven, the College House, was erected in 1718 on the Old Campus' southeast corner, fulfilling the city founders' wish to have a college near New Haven's Congregational church. It was joined by Connecticut Hall in 1750, a student dormitory and Yale's only surviving building from the colonial era. A linear building plan established in 1792, known as Old Brick Row, was the first campus plan in the United States and became a template for many American college campuses built in the 19th century. After 1870, the original plan gave way to the current quadrangle of dormitories, academic buildings, and chapels. In addition to Connecticut Hall, the current buildings of Old Campus include most of the freshman dormitories of Yale College, Street Hall of the Yale University Art Gallery, and two buildings used for religious purpose: Battell Chapel, third in a succession of college chapels, and Dwight Hall, formerly the College Library. Although the current buildings have been renovated and their uses changed during the twentieth century, all were completed before 1928.

The Yale School of Music (often abbreviated to YSM) is one of the 12 professional schools at Yale University. It offers three graduate degrees: Master of Music (MM), Master of Musical Arts (MMA), and Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), as well as a joint Bachelor of Arts—Master of Music program in conjunction with Yale College, a Certificate in Performance, and an Artist Diploma.Yale is the only Ivy League school with a separate school of music; the university also has a separate Department of Music in the Division of Humanities of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The School of Music is considered one of the best and most prestigious music schools in the world and has an acceptance rate of 6–8%. It has 200 students. From 1995 to 2022, the Yale School of Music’s endowment rose from $29 million to $574 million (source: Dean Blocker retirement email sent to all Yale affiliates by Peter Salovey on September 7, 2022). In 2023, Juilliard's José García-León was announced as the new dean. He will replace Robert Blocker on September 1, 2023.

Durfee Hall is a freshman residential dormitory on the Old Campus of Yale University. Built in 1871, it is the second oldest residential building at Yale, only after Farnam Hall. Currently, the building is used to house first-year students of Morse College, who stay there for the duration of their freshman year before moving into Morse College proper.

Grace Hopper College is a residential college of Yale University, opened in 1933 as one of the original eight undergraduate residential colleges endowed by Edward Harkness. It was originally named Calhoun College after US Vice President John C. Calhoun, but renamed in 2017 in honor of computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper. The building was designed by John Russell Pope. From the 1960s onward, Calhoun's white supremacist beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted calls to rename the college and remove its tributes to Calhoun. In 2016, the Yale Corporation chose to retain the Calhoun name, but in 2017 it reversed its decision and renamed the college after Hopper.

Claire's Corner Copia is a kosher vegetarian restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut. It is located at 1000 Chapel Street near the campus of Yale University and the New Haven Green. It is owned by chef Claire Criscuolo, and was formerly co-owned with her late husband Frank Criscuolo. The couple used Claire Criscuolo's engagement ring as collateral for the loan they needed to open the restaurant.When the restaurant was founded in 1975, it was not vegetarian. Chef Criscuolo told the Yale Daily News that she removed meat from the menu in a "radical move" that "forces people to eat more fruits and vegetables." A former nurse, Criscuolo prides herself on offering healthy food. The restaurant has an extensive vegan menu.Lonely Planet calls Claire's "fresh, organic" food "the best" in town. Popular menu offerings include smoothies, fresh juices, and desserts that are vegan, gluten-free, or both. Claire's also has a dairy-kosher certification issued by both Rabbi David Avigdor and Rabbi Hyman from the Vaad Hakashrus of Fairfield County in Connecticut.

The Chapel Square Mall was a shopping mall in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. It was one of the first fully enclosed air-conditioned downtown malls in the United States; it has now been converted into apartments.

The Taft Hotel was a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut. The building is still extant, primarily used for apartments. It is a contributing part of the Chapel Street Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel building, completed in 1912, has twelve stories, and operated with 450 rooms. It sits on the corner of Chapel and College streets.The building contains a bar, Bar Ordinary. The space is the oldest bar space in New Haven. The site hosted an ordinary or tavern as early as 1659, and hosted Benedict Arnold and George Washington. Abraham Lincoln and William Howard Taft may also have visited. In the 18th century it was called the Beers Tavern, then as the New Haven Hotel in the mid-19th century. In 1910, the Taft Hotel was built. By the 1980s, the hotel bar room became Richter's, owned by Yale graduate and crew instructor Richter Elser. The bar closed in 2011, replaced by Bar Ordinary in April 2013.The Taft Hotel shutdown in 1973, in part due to competition from the modern Sheraton-Park Plaza (known as the Omni New Haven, as of 2022) that had opened a block away in 1970 as part of major urban renewal project in Downtown New Haven. The adjacent Adams Hotel, which had been built as an annex to the Taft, had closed some time earlier, although had been leased by the Culinary Institute of America for student housing until 1970. Zoning issues related to parking hampered early efforts to redevelop the Taft and Adams hotels into apartments. While the Taft was redeveloped, the Adams was acquired by the City of New Haven, and was demolished in 1980 to build a modern lobby addition to the historic Shubert New Haven theater building.Taft Realty Associates began owning and managing the building in 1994, having purchased the building for $3.2 million. In 2022, the building was sold by Taft Realty Associates to an affiliate of Paredim Partners, an owner and manager of apartments, for $52.5 million.