Opposite the Old Campus, on Chapel Street, in New Haven, Connecticut: from when the glaciers melted, stewarded by the Quinnipiac people; in 1614, charted by a Dutch explorer; in 1638, colonized by Puritans; before, during, and after the American Revolution, home of the Founding Father, Roger Sherman, his wife Rebekah, their fifteen children, and the Sherman family store; in 1860, Gaius F. Warner's Italianate villa, by Henry Austin; in 1880, Carll's Opera House; in 1884, the Republican League; in 1887, the Hyperion; in 1903, the Union League Club, by Richard Williams; in 1926, the Roger Sherman Theater; beginning in 1977, a tradition of French fine dining, which continues today. While the Roger Sherman house is no longer standing, it holds up all right.
"On Chapel street, as the carriages approached, the chimes in Trinity tower were playing 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee.' The instant the notes caught the President's ear he again rose and reverently stood uncovered until the ivy-clad church was passed. It was a graceful and evidently an impulsive act — an incident thoroughly Rooseveltian."
"Bicentennial Notes: Souvenirs are for graduates only. To avoid others taking them, there will be no souvenirs. The animals will be fed at the University Dining Hall three times daily. Come and see them. They eat raw meet. No one but graduates are allowed to climb on the decorations or statues."
"President Theodore Roosevelt, who was the chief figure of the closing day of Yale's bicentennial celebrations, given an ovation as he receives his honorary degree. He pays a tribute to the sons of old Eli. 'I have never yet worked at a task worth doing that I did not find myself shoulder to shoulder with some son of Yale.'"
"The general effect of this decoration will be of two lines of festoons from Phelps hall, which will be the main entrance to the campus during the bi-centennial, extending to Osborn Hall on the south and Battell Chapel on the north. The electrical illumination will be concentrated at Phelps Hall, about 700 electric lights outlining the horizontal and vertical lines of the building. A Union Jack, with 45 stars on a blue background, will surmount the battlements of the building. Across its front will be stretched an emblematic shield, eight by twelve feet in dimensions, its frame work decorated with flags and streamers."
"New Haven was never a boom town. It developed slowly, it grew steadily, not spasmodically. Conservatism became characteristic of it. Conservative it has remained until now. All though the nineteenth century, while steadily growing in strength and substance, it never outwardly startled the beholder. Those who really knew the city came to love it for its 'parts' rather than for ostentatious prosperity. It was a city of traditions and history, a city content to have intensive rather than extensive growth was the New Haven which woke on the mourn of its 264th year when it celebrated with Yale the completed two centuries."
"Now then, to me university degrees are unearned finds, and they bring the joy that belongs with property acquired in that way... It pleased me beyond measure when Yale made me a Master of Arts, because I didn't know anything about art; I had another convulsion of pleasure when Yale made me a Doctor of Literature, because I was not competent to doctor anybody's literature but my own, and couldn't even keep my own in a healthy condition without my wife's help."
Roger Sherman house 