Jonathan Edwards College was part of the original Memorial Quadrangle complex built when Yale adopted the Residential College system. It was modeled after the Gothic structures of Oxford University in England and was named after the town where Yale’s predecessor “Collegiate School” was founded.
Jonathan Edwards, a 1720 alumnus, theologian and child prodigy, was admitted to Yale at age 13, and went on to become one of the most celebrated theologians of his era. Edwards’s presence is omnipresent throughout the college, including his tomb and a Senior Common Room that houses portraits and mementos of Edwards and his wife.
The eponymous residential hall at “JE” boasts an Elizabethan banquet hall with a high, timbered truss ceiling, an alcove entrance topped with Victorian fretwork and oak-paneled walls, and two large fireplaces that are the only working ones among the colleges.
