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Underground Yale
Haunt of the beautiful and the bizarre
January/February 2004
Underground Collections Tour
There are legends about what might lie hidden beneath the surface of Yale. A maze of steam tunnels with concealed entrances all over campus; a secret vault filled with a hoard of silver; the macabre plunder of generations of Bonesmen. Part real and part rumor, underground Yale is Edgar Allan Poe territory. Richard Barnes, known for his architectural and museum work, ventured into it recently—or, more specifically, into the basement storage spaces of three Yale institutions. The Art Gallery Furniture Study, the only one of the three open to the public (by appointment), holds one of the finest collections of U.S.-made furniture in the world. There are plastic Saarinen chairs and a brass chandelier, but most of the collection—like the chairs shown on the cover—is of ornately carved wood and dates from the 18th and 19th centuries. Barnes also visited the historical collection of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, which houses medical antiques left by dozens of Yale doctors to their alma mater. Biggest of the three is the basement of the Peabody, an academic warehouse whose rooms are stacked with—specimens—from fossils and trays of mounted insects to preserved squid and a coelacanth in 140-proof alcohol—and artifacts of American and Oceanic cultures. On these pages, Barnes documents a small portion of these subterranean holdings.  |
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