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Smith designed Nassau Hall to provide space for all the functions of the College: it included a dormitory, chapel, dining hall, library, and recitation rooms. According to a rough sketch of the foundations made in 1754 by Ezra Stiles , then president of Yale, the central pavilion housed the classrooms and library. On the southern portion of the pavilion, the prayer hall protruded slightly. The two side blocks held dormitory rooms. The basement was devoted to the refectory and more bedchambers.
With three students to a bedchamber, and with some of the less fortunate students consigned to the damp and poorly lit half-basement, the building could house about 150 people -- far more than were enrolled at the time.
Nassau Hall had twelve chimneys -- a necessity of life in the days before central heating. In 1762, a simple frame kitchen, managed by a steward, was attached to the rear of Nassau Hall, probably through a wooden passageway. There were also the inevitable back buildings: privies. Nassau Hall did not receive indoor plumbing for another century.
This, then, was the building into which the College of New Jersey moved in the fall of 1756. Students and tutors alike took up residence in the new dormitory rooms.
Smith designed Nassau Hall to provide space for all the functions of the College: it included a dormitory, chapel, dining hall, library, and recitation rooms. According to a rough sketch of the foundations made in 1754 by Ezra Stiles , then president of Yale, the central pavilion housed the classrooms and library. On the southern portion of the pavilion, the prayer hall protruded slightly. The two side blocks held dormitory rooms. The basement was devoted to the refectory and more bedchambers.
With three students to a bedchamber, and with some of the less fortunate students consigned to the damp and poorly lit half-basement, the building could house about 150 people -- far more than were enrolled at the time.
Nassau Hall had twelve chimneys -- a necessity of life in the days before central heating. In 1762, a simple frame kitchen, managed by a steward, was attached to the rear of Nassau Hall, probably through a wooden passageway. There were also the inevitable back buildings: privies. Nassau Hall did not receive indoor plumbing for another century.
This, then, was the building into which the College of New Jersey moved in the fall of 1756. Students and tutors alike took up residence in the new dormitory rooms.