Charles W. Moore (1925–93) was one of the most important architectural educators in the second half of the twentieth century in America, earning the Topaz Medallion in 1989 for excellence in teaching and scholarship during a career spanning four decades. The theme of “untimely teachers,” applied cautiously, can help clarify Moore’s achievements as a pedagogue. Like other postmodern architects, Moore saw no contradiction between practicing as a creative agent and learning from history. His career thus challenged the radical, iconoclastic rhetoric of modernism that sought rupture with historical precedent and that argued for a uniquely modern Zeitgeist as a determinant of architectural form. Despite this historical turn, Moore was neither a revivalist nor a historian. His enthusiasm for history was mediated by a sense of contemporaneity. Based on archival research and interviews with former students, this essay focuses on the years Moore taught at the Yale School of Architecture, where he decisively reworked the design curriculum to reflect his interests. What emerges is a time in architectural education when precedent could shape the future.