In 1989 the Yale Corporation, President Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. and the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs began the formal planning phase of the Yale Campaign. Conceived as a five-year, university-wide effort, the Campaign was to be the cornerstone of a broad strategy to strengthen the University’s financial base and to perpetuate its tradition of excellence as Yale entered its fourth century. The most immediate impetus for launching the capital campaign was the need to undertake extensive renovation and expansion of Yale’s aging physical plant, a project that has continued and indeed accelerated under the presidency of Richard C. Levin.

On June 30, 1997, Yale concluded the largest and most successful fundraising effort in the history of higher education. On that date the five-year Yale Campaign "...and for Yale" recorded a total of $1.702 billion, exceeding its original $1.5 billion objective by 13 percent. Altogether the Campaign generated $642 million for current support of University programs, $636 million for the University’s endowment, and $424 million for Yale’s facilities.

Yale Campaign contributions will help support some of the renovation projects scheduled or already under way as part of a massive rebuilding and upgrading effort touching all areas of the Yale campus. At least half a century has passed since most of Yale’s distinctive facilities were built. Over that time, even these well-constructed edifices have experienced deterioration. In prior years, renovations were performed to plumbing, heating, mechanical or electrical systems in buildings presenting the most critical maintenance problems. Although this approach met basic functional requirements, it usually did not involve more extensive building solutions. Accordingly, a new approach weighed the effort necessary to renovate individual systems against a comprehensive building renovation program. This exercise revealed that comprehensive renovations are in many cases a more efficient use of the University’s capital resources.

President Levin identified several broad areas of concern, including the Residential Colleges, the Visual and Dramatic Arts, and the Sciences. In addition, two individual buildings at the heart of the University, Sterling Memorial Library and Payne Whitney Gymnasium, were known to be in urgent need of physical renovation and also faced with unprecedented demands for more space and technological upgrading for new as well as existing programs. Finally, the University's utility infrastructure, with outdated capacity, but subject to increasingly complex and stringent technical and environmental requirements, merited its own study.

Given this potentially daunting scope of issues in need of attention, the University undertook a formal planning process that considered facilities goals for the entire campus, with more detailed analysis of sections of the campus in Area Plans. A planning study was initiated to articulate principles to guide the future development of the campus, provide a framework that includes and links areas encompassed by Area Plans as well as others not included in them, and provide guidelines to assist the University in managing its future development. The Area Plans were intended to establish priorities within each area as well as among the areas. Each involved an assessment of the physical condition of the respective buildings and an analysis of current and projected space needs of the respective programs. Then, a physical plan which addressed current and future programmatic needs and a phased implementation plan with associated construction costs was generated for each.

Most of the buildings assessed were clearly of high architectural quality and worth renovating in a comprehensive way. Some were designated as contributing marginally to the academic programs they served, but worth considering for adaptive reuse or renovation for another purpose. A few were in such poor condition that they were recommended for "decommissioning" or demolition.

The areas identified as highest priority collectively represent more than five million square feet of space, that is, over half of the building area on the Central/Science campus. These are buildings used by many people, and they support the core of a well-rounded university experience. The Residential Colleges are the heart of undergraduate life at Yale. Sterling Memorial Library, in addition to housing much of the second-largest academic and fourth-largest collection in the United States, is one of the most architecturally significant buildings on campus. With almost 500,000 square feet in a single building, it is an "area" unto itself. Similarly, the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, with 640,000 square feet, is considered to be its own "area" by virtue of its size and usage by the extended Yale community.

All of these buildings are of such programmatic and architectural significance that there was very little question of formalizing a commitment to renovate them. The issues of programs and facilities for the Arts and Sciences were a somewhat more complex matter. Each area is a cluster of dissimilar buildings. Some possess considerable architectural merit; others are of marginal significance. Some buildings are entirely functional, while others need upgrading to better support the programs they serve. In these cases, the focus was directed at the programs and the development of a plan for phased renovation and replacement of the buildings to house the programs. While buildings alone cannot make a great university, architecture can be a powerful tool to support and manifest an academic mission.