Daniel Bowen, 1786

YALE UNIVERSITY – A Front View of Yale-College, and the College Chapel, New Haven. New Haven: Daniel Bowen, 1786.

A rare and early view of Yale, accompanied by seven short columns of text headed "A Compendious History of Yale-College, and a General Account of the Course of Studies Pursued by the Students." The woodcut shows Connecticut Hall, the original New Haven building of Yale College which still stands in the middle of Yale's Old Campus and is the only remaining example of colonial-era architecture built at Yale. To the left is the original Yale chapel, which was torn down in the 19th century. Rare at auction: this copy, from the 1973 sale of the collection of the Hon. J. William Middendorf II, is the only copy to appear in RBH and no copy has been recorded since. Prior to that it sold in 1963 at Parke-Bernet; while there are no property titles in that catalogue, the sale included property from Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr. (1874-1958), who authored the bibliography Historical Prints of New Haven, with special reference to Yale College and the Green—ostensibly this is his copy. Institutional holdings include Yale, the Newberry Library, Connecticut Historical Society, and Massachusetts Historical Society. The earliest view, "Johnston's View of Yale College," dates to the late 1740s and is virtually unattainable; RBH records one copy in a 1927 Goodspeed catalogue. Sabin 105931; Shadwell 78; A.P. Stokes 10.

Broadside, 536 x 469mm. Hand-colored woodcut on laid paper (lined, restored at folds and edges with a few tiny losses along center vertical fold, unevenly trimmed). Framed. Provenance: Parke-Bernet, 19 March 1963, lot 219 – The Hon. J. William Middendorf II (Sotheby Parke Bernet, his sale, 18 May 1973, lot 109).