Thursday, June 28, 2012 - Beinecke Area Walking Tour

I got ready early for a full day of exploring the Beinecke Area and the Grove Street Cemetery.   The Beinecke Area Walking Tour started at Memorial Hall (1901-1902) which was wrapped in plastic and continued on to Woolsey Hall (Yale University's primary auditorium), the Scroll and Key Secret Society (founded in 1842 as an offshoot of the Skull and Bones secret society), Sprague Hall (built in 1917), Woodbridge Hall (donated to Yale in 1901), "Gallows and Lollipops"  (Alexander Calder sculpture, c. 1960), The Commons (Yale freshman dining hall - shades of "Harry Potter"), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Constructed with more than one hundred panels of translucent marble, the Beinecke is home to one of the world's preeminent collections of rare materials, including the Gutenberg Bible and Audubon's Birds of America), Sculpture Garden created by Isamu Noguchi (the pyramid represents the earth, the circle represents the sun, and the cube represents chance), Sterling Building (Yale Law School - built in 1931, and modeled after old English Inns of Court), Mory's (private Yale club), Toad's Place (premier nightclub and concert venue), Yale Dramat Message Board, Sterling Memorial Library (built in 1931 to emulate a gothic cathedral; largest library at Yale University),  Maya Lin's sculpture, "Woman's Table", which commemorates women at Yale, the Book and Snake Secret Society (the "tomb" was built in 1901 in a classic Greek style iron-cast snakes adorn the surrounding fence), and the Grove Street Cemetery. 

I had a turkey swiss sandwich for lunch at Au Bon Pain at 1 Broadway at 12:45pm.   The place was packed so I placed my "Reserved" sign on a table and then paid for my sandwich and bottled water.  I read "Litigators" by John Grisham as I ate my lunch.

I took the docent led tour of the Grove Street Cemetery at 2:00pm.  The Grove Street Cemetery (1796) is the first chartered burial ground in the United States and the first to be arranged in family plots.  The first burial took place in 1797.  Among the notable persons interred here are inventor Eli Whitney, dictionary pioneer Noah Webster, Roger Sherman, the only person to sign all four documents that established the United States of America; the first mayor of New Haven, and Yale professor Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr. (30 April 1790 – 24 March 1861) who went to the New York Harbor seeking anyone who spoke the Mende language to assist him by interpreting for the African captives of the Amistad and found sailor James Covey (ne Covie or Kaweliis born in Africa c. 1819 - ?).  Covey was able to speak both English and Mende and possibly other African languages and became the interpreter used in the Amistad slave ship case in 1839 - 1840; two years after the trials, in November 1841, Covey, along with the surviving Africans of the Amistad, boarded the ship Gentleman and sailed back to Africa.  Gibbs was portrayed by Austin Pendleton in the 1997 film "Amistad".   

The heat was really getting to me!  I tried to find a bench in the shade in the cemetery so I could read Grisham's novel but the benches were in the sweltering sun.  I walked to the Sterling Memorial Library courtyard where I sat and read for awhile.  I bought a Fruit and Nut Box, Protein Bistro Box, Izze Clementina drink, and Shortbread cookies at Starbucks which I took back to the OMNI Hotel to eat in the air conditioned room while watching television. 

Christopher and I went across the street to temple grill about 10:15pm.  Christopher had a half order of dinner.  I had a glass of Riesling wine.   A perfect ending to a very long day.