Harkness Tower, the masonry tower rising above you, anchors the Collegiate Gothic Memorial Quadrangle that Yale completed in 1922. It was built between 1917 and 1921 as part of a gift from Anna M. Harkness in honor of her recently deceased son, Charles William Harkness, an 1883 Yale graduate; the tower itself bears his name, and he was the brother of Yale’s largest benefactor, Edward Harkness. Designed by James Gamble Rogers, a classmate of Anna Harkness’s other son, Edward S. Harkness, the tower later became part of Branford College when the residential college system was inaugurated in 1933.
James S. Hedden served as the contractor’s supervisor and recorded the building’s progress in photographs. In its form you are looking at the first couronne, or “crown,” tower in the English Perpendicular Gothic style built in the modern era — a deliberate echo of much older models. The tower’s masonry and ornament were repaired during renovations from September 2009 to May 2010, so what you see has been carefully conserved.
Notice the crown atop this tower — the first couronne of its kind built in the modern era, carefully repaired between 2009 and 2010.