Forest Hall is listed on the Historic National Register.  The original architectural drawings and blueprints are in the collection of the American Institute of Architects Foundation in Washington D.C.  In conjunction with Grey Towers, Forest Hall is considered the birthplace of the Conservation movement in America.

 

          Hunt & Hunt, successor firm of Richard Morris Hunt, architect of many important buildings, including Biltmore and the base on which the Statue of Liberty stands, designed Forest Hall in 1903.  In 1904, James Pinchot contracted E. S. Wolfe to construct Forest Hall to adjoin the 1880's Gothic Revival building at the corner of Hartford and Broad Street, designed by Calvert Vaux, architect of the original façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

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          Built in the French Normandy style, Forest Hall was intended for use by commercial shops on the first floor, and for classrooms for Yale University’s Forest School as well as a meeting place for fraternal organizations on the upper floors.

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          According to the original contract: “All walls of front and end of building from water-table to second story to be of bluestone.  The framing plans are calculated for longleaf yellow pine, or native yellow pine equal in strength.  The entire floor area to be covered with a first floor of native yellow pine, surfaced.   Finished floor to be laid level and true on 

surfaced first floor, and to be tongued and grooved 2 ½ inch boards, 7/8 inch thick of comb-grained North Carolina pine of first quality.  There is to be a picture moulding in all rooms, and a wooden cornice five inches in depth in all stores and rooms except in the forestors’ hall, where the cornice is to be twelve inches in depth.  The main stairs are to be made of Oak two inches thick.  The roof to be of No.2 slate, properly flashed at all valleys and where necessary; the slate to be from Newton, New Jersey, 8 by 14 inches, or 8 by 16 inches.” The sum paid to the contractor was $19,000.

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          The building was dedicated on July 19, 1906.  The front of the building contains three medallions of historic figures admired by the Pinchots: Bernard Palissy, artist, sculptor and philosopher, Andre Michaux, who studied and wrote about the trees of North America in the 19th century, and LaFayette, soldier and statesman.  Forest Hall was the home of the first post office and bank in the county.