Harkness Tower is a masonry tower at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Part of the

Collegiate Gothic Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europ ...

Memorial Quadrangle complex completed in 1922, it is named for

Charles William Harkness Charles William Harkness (December 17, 1860 – May 1, 1916) was a son of Stephen V. Harkness (an original investor in the company that became Standard Oil) and his second wife, the former Anna M. Richardson. Early life Charles was born in ...

, brother of Yale's largest benefactor, Edward Harkness.

History

Harkness Tower in Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn

The tower was constructed between 1917 and 1921 as part of the Memorial Quadrangle donated to Yale by Anna M. Harkness in honor of her recently deceased son,

, an 1883 Yale graduate. When the residential college system was inaugurated in 1933, the tower became part of Branford College. It was designed by

James Gamble Rogers James Gamble Rogers (March 3, 1867 – October 1, 1947) was an American architect. A proponent of what came to be known as Collegiate Gothic architecture, he is best known for his academic commissions at Yale University, Columbia Univer ...

, a Yale College classmate of Anna Harkness's other son,

Edward S. Harkness Edward Stephen Harkness (January 22, 1874 – January 29, 1940) was an American philanthropist. Given privately and through his family's Commonwealth Fund, Harkness' gifts to private hospitals, art museums, and educational institutions in the Nort ...

. James S. Hedden was the contractor's supervisor for the project and took many photographs of the construction's progress. The tower underwent renovations from September 2009 to May 2010 to repair its masonry and ornament.

Influence

Harkness Tower was the first ''couronne'' ("crown") tower in English Perpendicular Gothic style built in the modern era.

, who designed the tower and many of Yale's

structures, said it was inspired by the 15th-century Boston Stump, the tower of the parish church of

St Botolph Botolph of Thorney (also called Botolph, Botulph or Botulf; later known as Saint Botolph; died around 680) was an English abbot and saint. He is regarded as the patron saint of boundaries, and by extension, of trade and travel, as well as vario ...

in Boston, Lincolnshire and tallest parish church tower in England. Rogers also based some details on the 16th-century tower of St Giles' church in Wrexham, Wales, where Elihu Yale is buried. In turn, Harkness Tower has been identified as the direct influence for the tower of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Hamilton, Ontario. The tower's image was adopted by the '' Yale Herald'', a weekly student newspaper, for its masthead.

Design

Harkness Tower is 216 feet (66 m) tall, one foot for each year since Yale's founding at the time it was built. From a square base, it rises in stages to a double stone crown on an octagonal base, and at the top are stone

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...

s. From the street level to the roof, there are 284 steps. Midway to the top, four openwork copper clockfaces tell the hours. The bells of the carillon are behind the clockfaces, fixed to a frame made of steel I-beams. The playing console of the carillon is at the level of the balconies immediately below the clock faces. Lower levels of the tower house a water tank (no longer used), two practice carillons, the old chimes playing console, office space for the Yale University Guild of Carillonneurs, and a memorial chapel.

Materials

The tower was built of separate stone blocks, and reinforced with steel in 1966 to handle the new bells in the carillon. Yale tour guides frequently mention the legend that the tower was the world's tallest free-standing stone structure until it required reinforcement after an eccentric architect or philanthropist ordered acid to be poured down the walls to make it look older. In reality, the Washington Monument was the country's tallest such structure long before Harkness Tower was built.

Ornamentation

The tower's decorative elements were sculpted by

Lee Lawrie Lee Oscar Lawrie (October 16, 1877 – January 23, 1963) was an American architectural sculptor and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II. Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie's style evolved through ...

. The lowest level of sculpture depicts Yale's ''Eight Worthies'': Elihu Yale,

Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards may refer to: Musicians *Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, pseudonym of bandleader Paul Weston and his wife, singer Jo Stafford *Jonathan Edwards (musician) (born 1946), American musician ** ''Jonathan Edwards'' (album), debut album ...

Nathan Hale Nathan Hale (June 6, 1755 – September 22, 1776) was an American Patriot, soldier and spy for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission in New York City but was captured b ...

, Noah Webster,

James Fenimore Cooper James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonist and Indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought h ...

John C. Calhoun John Caldwell Calhoun (; March 18, 1782March 31, 1850) was an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina who held many important positions including being the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. He ...

, Samuel F. B. Morse, and

Eli Whitney Eli Whitney Jr. (December 8, 1765January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the cotton gin, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Although Whitney hi ...

. The second level of sculpture depicts Phidias, Homer, Aristotle, and Euclid. The next level of sculpture consists of allegorical figures depicting Medicine,

Business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...

, Law, the Church, Courage and Effort, War and Peace, Generosity and Order, Justice and Truth, Life and Progress, and Death and Freedom. The gargoyles on the top level depict Yale's students at war and in study (a pen-wielding writer, a proficient athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a diligent scholar), along with masks of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare.

Reception

The witticism, attributed to various modernist architects, that had they to choose any place in New Haven to live s/he would select the Harkness Tower, for then they "would not have to look at it," is apparently apocryphal, derivative of a similar story told of Guy de Maupassant and the Eiffel Tower.

Carillon

The tower contains the

Yale Memorial Carillon The Yale Memorial Carillon (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the ''Harkness Carillon'') is a carillon of 54 bells in Harkness Tower at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. This carillon is a transposing instrument pitched in B. It ...

, a 54-bell

carillon A carillon ( , ) is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a keyboard and consists of at least 23 cast-bronze bells. The bells are hung in fixed suspension and tuned in chromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoniou ...

. It is a transposing instrument; the C bell sounds a concert B. Ten bells were installed in 1922 and 44 added in 1966. The instrument is played by members of a student-run group set up for the purpose, the

Yale Guild of Carillonneurs Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...

, and selected guest carillonneurs. During the school year, the instrument is played twice per day: a half-hour session at 12:30 p.m. and a one-hour session at 5:30 p.m. (Some residents of Branford College and Saybrook College, of which the tower forms a part of the periphery, have been known to refer to the daily performances as "Heavy Metal.") In summer it is played only in the evening, plus a summer series of Friday concerts. Carillon play was suspended in 2009 and 2010 during the tower's renovation.

References

External links

Comparison with St Botolph'sYale University Guild of CarillonneursYale University official web site
{{coord, 41.3093, -72.9294, display=title Towers in Connecticut Towers completed in 1921 Yale University buildings Harkness family Buildings and structures in New Haven, Connecticut Tourist attractions in New Haven, Connecticut Clock towers in Connecticut Bell towers in the United States