Linsly-Chittenden Hall was originally two separate buildings that served as annexes for the old University Library (then located in Dwight Hall). Today, Linsly is a recitation hall and faculty office building for the English Department and Chittenden is a classroom building.
Chittenden Hall, erected in 1889 by J. Cleaveland Cady, is Neo-Romanesque in style; the grand staircase pictured here is the Chittenden Hall staircase.
Linsly Hall, designed by Charles Haight and completed in 1907, is a prime example of the Collegiate Gothic style. Both buildings have three stories and open onto both High Street and Old Campus.
One of the lecture halls, previously the main reading room of the old University library, features an original Tiffany stained glass window, titled "Education." This stained glass window is known as the Chittenden Memorial Window. Following the death of his daughter Mary Hartwell Lusk in 1871, long-time New Haven resident and Yale patron Simeon Baldwin Chittenden funded the building of (the then) new university library in her memory. Its octagonal reading room, now a lecture hall, holds the structure’s crown jewel, the stained glass window Education, commissioned from Art Nouveau artist and decorator Louis Comfort Tiffany. In this thirty-foot-wide window, Tiffany composed a visual sermon in keeping with the donor’s values, presenting a panorama of graceful allegorical figures that represent aspects of Art, Music (shown here), Science, and Religion.