Try The Door

Yale is an old place, founded in 1701 and added to, with whimsy and flourish and intention, ever after. Buildings contain courtyards and balconies and passageways and fireplaces and gardens. The buildings and their uses have changed again and again: interior courtyards and gardens have been abandoned or filled, classrooms have become dorms, new buildings spring up and old ones crumble for a while, then are put to new uses.  The old buildings and the new ones are connected by a series of subterranean steam tunnels: hot, dark, dusty places, some wide and high and clear enough to ride a motorcycle through, and others just crawlspaces on earthen floors with crumbling brick walls.

When I was a sophomore I stumbled on a mysterious adventure that took me into the steam tunnels. Someone, an unknown group, had left a cryptic poster clue promising a hidden treasure.

The flyer I saw disappeared but it had made enough of an impression that I pulled up a manhole cover and climbed down into the tunnels one night at the spot I thought the clues were talking about.  I saw another clue right away -- a symbol drawn in magic marker on the covering of a steam pipe. The puzzle took me around an underworld that was amazing and forbidden (students caught in the steam tunnels were immediately expelled, according to rumor). I stumbled into forgotten bomb shelters full of dehydrated food. We found a bicycle graveyard – an underground room full of sprockets and kickstands and wheels and chains, with hundreds of bike skeletons leaning and entangled in one another. In a heating and ventilation substation there was an elaborate mural of a sun on the floor; the puzzle clues required us to position a pack of Camel cigarettes under the painting of the sun so that the shadows on the package looked correct, and follow the camel’s nose when the pack was properly positioned to choose the right passageway. We twisted and turned for hours, climbing ladders into narrow passages, ducking and crawling, hiding when we heard noises. Our flashlight batteries died and we made a makeshift torch from a kickstand we got from one of the bikes. In the end we found the hidden treasure, which contained another mystery, and is a whole different tale.

It’s not just the steam tunnels at Yale. There are secret rooms here – some forbidden, and some simply overlooked. Every so often, a door leads to a passageway that hasn’t been used, and you can find a sculpture garden you’ve never noticed before. The stacks at Sterling library contain so many carrels tucked away in the musty silence-- places you could go missing for days before another person came by.  A wood paneled wall will have doors that lead to camouflaged telephone booths (now hiding fire extinguishers or computer wiring), elaborately carved and exquisite. A doorknob turns and you are in a passageway, a narrower than a regular hall. A stairway brings you to a balcony, from which you can climb across the roof. There are pathways showing you the way, as though you’re meant to be here on the rooftop looking across the muggy New Haven skyline. From the rooftop you can make your way into a tower, where you can climb up into a wrought-iron nook and be in a timeless private kingdom, the stubs of candles and a few cigarette butts the only clue that others have been here in this century. Open the wardrobe doors, and you can be in Narnia.

My adventure sophomore year turned me into an explorer. One spring night I remember catching a door closing behind someone and feeling my way around Kline Biology Tower, moving through utility doors and HVAC access rooms up to the roof. The building, at the top of the hill, is 14 stories high, but the roof is surrounded by a shell of a wall that rises another three stores, hiding the massive HVAC vents and pipes and leaving a clean skyline. We climbed a rickety ladder up the heating system and stood on this cooling tank. I looked down three stories at the roof below me. To my sides were a wall, enclosing the roof like an enormous fenced-in yard.  Through the slits in the wall I could see the campus and the city stretched out 17 stories below us. Above me, the clouds moved across the stars with that mottled pink-white shapelessness of a warm spring night, and I felt then that there were hidden glories everywhere, behind every door, at the top of every staircase. That year I climbed huge trees, I discovered rooms and tunnels, I walked on rooftops and claimed balconies and towers as my own. I lurked outside around the haunted mansion next to Farnum Gardens, assessing the holes in the fence and the broken windows as entry points but not daring to go in. I acquired a skeleton key and tried it in every lock. Sometimes I was surprised at what would open.

Being back on campus this weekend I noticed that habit. I’d stroll down a hallway and reach out to test every doorknob. If it gave, I opened the door. Mostly I found supply closets (themselves more interesting than you might think). Some of the old passageways are blocked off now: the manhole cover is chained down; there’s a new locked door at the top of the narrow stairway leading to those secret rooftop chambers. That sunken garden is untended now, the bleeding hearts hidden behind a shrub that hasn’t been cut back. But the place is still full of mystery and possibility, and there are still doorknobs that turn, and secrets that yield to curiosity. 

Comments

[wab]

I found this a fascinating post. In my years at Yale I never knew of the existence of the tunnels that you spoke of. I can imagine that the tunnels and paths to the roof tops led to the chance to take some wonderful photographs. When I was back visiting a year ago there was no opportunity to find out anything about this hidden world so my photos had to be restricted to what could be seen from ordinary vantage points. I would certainly would be fun to go back to see and photograph this hidden world.

[Mary Beth]

When I was in school at Texas A&M we used to go down into the steam tunnels...same threat of expulsion! but we never found anything very good except a lot of hot water.

I also used to climb up on top of the PoliSci building next to my dorm at night, and smoke...um...something. It was awesome, like being on a ship sailing across campus. Maybe that has to do with what I was...doing.

[anon]

As a current student at Yale, let me reassure you that there are still those who take great delight in the exploration of campus secrets. The shear number of amazing and special places is mind-blowing. Do not fear, forbidden knowledge is handed down, and secrets are rarely forgotten.

[fussball]

Gute Arbeit hier! Gute Inhalte.

[Rich Gilliland]

Can you tell me how you got the skeleton key? -fellow Yale student explorer

['93 Alum]

In the early 90s I remember having great fun testing out the "master key". We spent a lot of time on various rooftops - especially the tower on top of Bingham.

We used to enter the tunnels through the grates in the moat between JE and Branford, and never once paid to get into the Saybrook courtyard party - we always came up from below...