Harkness Tower
Encyclopedia
Harkness Tower is a prominent Collegiate Gothic structure at Yale University
in New Haven, Connecticut
, United States
.
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, Charles William Harkness, Yale class of 1883, and the second son of Stephen V. Harkness, an early investor in the company that became Standard Oil. It was designed by James Gamble Rogers
, who designed many of Yale's "Collegiate Gothic" structures. Rogers said his design for the tower was inspired by "Boston Stump," the 272 feet (82.9 m) tower of the parish church of St Botolph in Boston, England. The 15th-century Boston Stump is the 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.
James S. Hedden was the contractor's supervisor for the project. His photographs of the early construction are in Yale University Library's Manuscripts and Archives Collection, listed under "James S. Hedden Photographs of Memorial Quadrangle, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
."
From the street level to the roof there are 284 steps. It was, when built, the only couronne ("crown") tower in English Perpendicular Gothic style
that had been constructed in the modern era.
The tower contains the Yale Memorial Carillon
, a 54-bell carillon
. It is a transposing instrument (the C bell sounds a concert B). Ten bells were installed in 1922; 44 were added in 1966. The instrument is played by members of a student-run group set up for the purpose, the Yale Guild of Carillonneurs, 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 5:00 p.m.; in summer it is played only in the evening, with a Summer Series of regularly scheduled concerts on Fridays. (Some residents of Branford College
and Saybrook College
, of which the tower forms a part of the periphery, have been known to call the daily performances "death by bells.")
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 there are stone pinnacles. It was built of separate stone blocks in the authentic manner. Yale tour guides like to perpetuate the myth that the Tower was once the tallest free-standing stone structure in the world, but needed to be reinforced because its eccentric architect poured acid down the walls to make the tower look older. In reality, the Washington Monument
has been the tallest free-standing stone structure in the United States since it was completed, long before Harkness Tower was built. The Tower was reinforced with steel in 1966 to bear the additional bells that brought the total bell weight to 43 tons.
Midway to the top, four openwork copper clockfaces tell the hours. The bells of the carillon are located 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.
Its decorative elements were sculpted by Lee Lawrie
(1877–1963). The lowest level of sculpture
depicts Yale's Eight Worthies: Elihu Yale
, Jonathan Edwards, Nathan Hale
, Noah Webster
, James Fenimore Cooper
, John C. Calhoun
, Samuel F. B. Morse
, and Eli Whitney
. The second level of sculpture depicts Phidias
, Homer
, Aristotle
, and Euclid
. The next level of sculpture
consists of allegorical figures depicting Medicine
, Business
, Law
, the Church
, Courage and Effort, War and Peace, Generosity and Order, Justice and Truth, Life and Progress, and Death and Freedom. The gargoyle
s 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
.
The witticism, attributed to various modernist architects, that had he to choose any place in New Haven to live he would select the Harkness Tower, for then he "would not have to look at it," is apparently apocryphal, derivative of a similar story told of Alexandre Dumas
and the Eiffel Tower
.
The tower's image was adopted by the Yale Herald, a weekly student newspaper, for its masthead.
Between September 2009 and May 2010, the Tower was being renovated. It was shrouded with blue construction netting and carillon playing had been temporarily suspended.
At 7.00pm on May 11, 2010, carillon playing resumed. Harkness' sound can be heard throughout Yale once more at designated times.
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The tower was constructed between 1917 and 1921 as part of the Memorial Quadrangle
Memorial Quadrangle
The Memorial Quadrangle at Yale University, USA, was donated by Anna M. Harkness with Harkness Tower named in memory of her son, Charles Harkness, Yale Class of 1883. Commissioned from James Gamble Rogers to supply much-needed student housing, the Quadrangle now consists of Saybrook College and...
donated to Yale by Anna M. Harkness
Anna M. Harkness
Anna M. Richardson was an American philanthropist.She married Stephen Vanderburgh Harkness, a harnessmaker of Cleveland, in 1851. They were parents of Charles William Harkness and Edward Stephen Harkness. Harkness senior invested with John D. Rockefeller and became the second-largest shareholder...
in honor of her recently deceased son, Charles William Harkness, Yale class of 1883, and the second son of Stephen V. Harkness, an early investor in the company that became Standard Oil. It was designed by James Gamble Rogers
James Gamble Rogers
James Gamble Rogers was an American architect best known for his academic commissions at Yale University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and elsewhere....
, who designed many of Yale's "Collegiate Gothic" structures. Rogers said his design for the tower was inspired by "Boston Stump," the 272 feet (82.9 m) tower of the parish church of St Botolph in Boston, England. The 15th-century Boston Stump is the tallest parish church tower in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Rogers also based some details on the 16th-century tower of St Giles church
St Giles' Church, Wrexham
St Giles' Church is the parish church of Wrexham, Wales. Its tower is traditionally one of the Seven Wonders of Wales, which are commemorated in an anonymously written rhyme:...
in Wrexham
Wrexham
Wrexham is a town in Wales. It is the administrative centre of the wider Wrexham County Borough, and the largest town in North Wales, located in the east of the region. It is situated between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley close to the border with Cheshire, England...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, where Elihu Yale
Elihu Yale
Elihu Yale was a Welsh merchant and philanthropist, governor of the East India Company, and a benefactor of the Collegiate School of Connecticut, which in 1718 was named Yale College in his honour.- Life :...
is buried.
James S. Hedden was the contractor's supervisor for the project. His photographs of the early construction are in Yale University Library's Manuscripts and Archives Collection, listed under "James S. Hedden Photographs of Memorial Quadrangle, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
Yale University Library
Yale University Library is the library system of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. It is the second-largest academic library in the North America, with approximately 12.5 million volumes housed in 20 buildings on campus...
."
From the street level to the roof there are 284 steps. It was, when built, the only couronne ("crown") tower in English Perpendicular Gothic style
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
that had been constructed in the modern era.
Yale Memorial Carillon
The Yale Memorial Carillon is a carillon of 54 bells in Harkness Tower at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut....
, a 54-bell carillon
Carillon
A carillon is a musical instrument that is typically housed in a free-standing bell tower, or the belfry of a church or other municipal building. The instrument consists of at least 23 cast bronze, cup-shaped bells, which are played serially to play a melody, or sounded together to play a chord...
. It is a transposing instrument (the C bell sounds a concert B). Ten bells were installed in 1922; 44 were added in 1966. The instrument is played by members of a student-run group set up for the purpose, the Yale Guild of Carillonneurs, 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 5:00 p.m.; in summer it is played only in the evening, with a Summer Series of regularly scheduled concerts on Fridays. (Some residents of Branford College
Branford College
Branford College is the oldest of the 12 residential colleges at Yale University.-The Founding of Branford:Branford College was founded in 1933 by partitioning the Memorial Quadrangle into two parts: Saybrook and Branford...
and Saybrook College
Saybrook College
Saybrook College is one of the 12 residential colleges at Yale University. It was founded in 1933 by partitioning the Memorial Quadrangle into two parts: Saybrook and Branford....
, of which the tower forms a part of the periphery, have been known to call the daily performances "death by bells.")
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 there are stone pinnacles. It was built of separate stone blocks in the authentic manner. Yale tour guides like to perpetuate the myth that the Tower was once the tallest free-standing stone structure in the world, but needed to be reinforced because its eccentric architect poured acid down the walls to make the tower look older. In reality, the Washington Monument
Washington Monument
The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington...
has been the tallest free-standing stone structure in the United States since it was completed, long before Harkness Tower was built. The Tower was reinforced with steel in 1966 to bear the additional bells that brought the total bell weight to 43 tons.
Midway to the top, four openwork copper clockfaces tell the hours. The bells of the carillon are located 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.
Its decorative elements were sculpted by Lee Lawrie
Lee Lawrie
Lee Oscar Lawrie was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II...
(1877–1963). The lowest level of sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
depicts Yale's Eight Worthies: Elihu Yale
Elihu Yale
Elihu Yale was a Welsh merchant and philanthropist, governor of the East India Company, and a benefactor of the Collegiate School of Connecticut, which in 1718 was named Yale College in his honour.- Life :...
, Jonathan Edwards, Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale was a soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission in New York City but was captured by the British...
, Noah Webster
Noah Webster
Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...
, James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
, John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun was a leading politician and political theorist from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century. Calhoun eloquently spoke out on every issue of his day, but often changed positions. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent...
, Samuel F. B. Morse
Samuel F. B. Morse
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was an American contributor to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs, co-inventor of the Morse code, and an accomplished painter.-Birth and education:...
, and Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South...
. The second level of sculpture depicts Phidias
Phidias
Phidias or the great Pheidias , was a Greek sculptor, painter and architect, who lived in the 5th century BC, and is commonly regarded as one of the greatest of all sculptors of Classical Greece: Phidias' Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World...
, Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, and Euclid
Euclid
Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...
. The next level of sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
consists of allegorical figures depicting Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, Business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
, Law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, the Church
Christian Church
The Christian Church is the assembly or association of followers of Jesus Christ. The Greek term ἐκκλησία that in its appearances in the New Testament is usually translated as "church" basically means "assembly"...
, Courage and Effort, War and Peace, Generosity and Order, Justice and Truth, Life and Progress, and Death and Freedom. The gargoyle
Gargoyle
In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between...
s 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
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
, and Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
.
The witticism, attributed to various modernist architects, that had he to choose any place in New Haven to live he would select the Harkness Tower, for then he "would not have to look at it," is apparently apocryphal, derivative of a similar story told of Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas, fils was a French author and dramatist. He was the son of Alexandre Dumas, père, also a writer and playwright.-Biography:...
and the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
.
The tower's image was adopted by the Yale Herald, a weekly student newspaper, for its masthead.
Between September 2009 and May 2010, the Tower was being renovated. It was shrouded with blue construction netting and carillon playing had been temporarily suspended.
At 7.00pm on May 11, 2010, carillon playing resumed. Harkness' sound can be heard throughout Yale once more at designated times.
See also
- Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
- Yale Memorial CarillonYale Memorial CarillonThe Yale Memorial Carillon is a carillon of 54 bells in Harkness Tower at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut....
- Branford CollegeBranford CollegeBranford College is the oldest of the 12 residential colleges at Yale University.-The Founding of Branford:Branford College was founded in 1933 by partitioning the Memorial Quadrangle into two parts: Saybrook and Branford...
- Collegiate Gothic
- Gothic revival architectureGothic Revival architectureThe Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...