Power Walk

A photo essay.

The courtyard off College just south of South Frontage is a surreal bit of trickery. 

Once you’re in, the space feels thoroughly private, despite all the activity on those busy streets. Its footpath, rising and falling in a strip of asphalt, achieves good flow as you meander inward. The details of the buildings that bound it—fresh-looking brick or painted wrought iron, or contemporary white windows or vintage latticed ones—lend both lightness and gravity. Its grassy stretches, well-placed trees and numerous benches and tables give it the feeling of a nice park.

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The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

As you experience those things, you might also notice a ribbed box poking out of the ground, or a large grate covering a 20-foot drop to concrete. You might notice that the lawn feels a little strange, as if it’s got less give than regular ground does. There’s also an oddity your eyes noticed right from the start: a pair of huge silvery pipes, rising up through a small island near the end of the lower yard.

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College & Crown

And if you know what you’re near, the dots begin to connect. You realize you’re finding some peace—strolling, or reposing, or taking your lunch break—atop a piece of Yale’s restless Sterling Power Plant, and, if you’re like me, you think that’s a pretty neat trick.

Yale Medical Campus Courtyard
Located in New Haven, west of College St and south of S. Frontage St, between Sterling Power Plant, Sterling Hall of Medicine and the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health.

Written and photographed by Dan Mims.

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Dan has worked for a couple of major media companies, but he likes Daily Nutmeg best. As DN’s editor, he writes, photographs, edits and otherwise shepherds ideas into fully realized feature stories.

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