The Memorial Quadrangle is a residential quadrangle at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut . Commissioned in 1917 to supply much-needed student housing for Yale College , it was Yale's first Collegiate Gothic building and its first project by James Gamble Rogers , who later designed ten other major buildings for the university. The Quadrangle has been occupied by Saybrook College and Branford College , two of the original ten residential colleges at Yale . The collegiate system of Yale University was largely inspired by the Oxbridge model of residential and teaching colleges at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in the UK.
36-482: The building was donated by Anna M. Harkness to memorialize her son, Yale College graduate Charles W. Harkness , who died in 1916. Charles' brother, Edward Harkness , became the primary benefactor of Yale's residential college system fifteen years later, a scheme which required a partial reconfiguration of the Memorial Quadrangle to create its two residential colleges. Harkness Tower , a large masonry tower on
72-510: A Collegiate Gothic campus for the fledgling University of Chicago , then spent the next 15 years completing it. Some of their works, such as the Mitchell Tower (1901–1908), were near-literal copies of historic buildings. George Browne Post designed the City College of New York 's new campus (1903–1907) at Hamilton Heights, Manhattan , in the style. The style was experienced up-close by
108-601: A handwritten description of his own "English Collegiate Gothic Mansion" of 1853 for the Harrals of Bridgeport, Connecticut. By the 1890s, the movement was known as "Collegiate Gothic". In his praise for Cope & Stewardson's Quadrangle Dormitories at the University of Pennsylvania , architect Ralph Adams Cram revealed some of the racial and cultural implications underlying the Collegiate Gothic: It was, of course, in
144-605: A home in Willoughby, Ohio . She died on March 27, 1926, at her home, 820 Fifth Avenue in New York City. After a private funeral, she was buried alongside her late husband in Lake View Cemetery. At her death, she had already given away $ 40 million, yet her wealth had increased to nearly $ 85 million (equivalent to $ 1.17 billion in 2023). Their first child, Jennie, died aged seven in 1864. After her death,
180-524: A measure. American heroism harks back to English heroism; the blood shed before Manila and on San Juan Hill was the same blood that flowed at Bosworth Field , Flodden , and the Boyne . Therefore the British base of the design is indispensable, for such were the racial foundations. Collegiate Gothic complexes were most often horizontal compositions, save for a single tower or towers serving as an exclamation. At
216-517: A residential undergraduate campus at the University of Chicago made heavy reference to the Memorial Quadrangle. 41°18′36″N 72°55′47″W / 41.3100°N 72.9297°W / 41.3100; -72.9297 Anna M. Harkness Anna Maria Richardson Harkness (October 25, 1837 – March 27, 1926) was an American philanthropist . She was born on October 25, 1837, in Dalton, Ohio , and
252-527: A wide audience at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis , Missouri. The World's Fair and 1904 Olympic Games were held on the newly completed campus of Washington University , which delayed occupying its buildings until 1905. The movement gained further momentum when Charles Donagh Maginnis designed Gasson Hall at Boston College in 1908. Maginnis & Walsh went on to design Collegiate Gothic buildings at some twenty-five other campuses, including
288-595: Is both the world's second tallest university building and Gothic-styled edifice. The tower contain a half-acre Gothic hall supported only by its 52-foot (16 m) tall arches. It is accompanied by the campus's other Gothic Revival structures by Klauder, including the Stephen Foster Memorial (1935–1937) and the French Gothic Heinz Memorial Chapel (1933–1938). A number of colleges and universities have commissioned major new buildings in
324-607: Is today City College of New York , continued in the style. Inspired by London's Hampton Court Palace , Swedish-born Charles Ulricson designed Old Main (1856–57) at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois . Following the Civil War , many idiosyncratic High Victorian Gothic buildings were added to the campuses of American colleges. Examples include Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Boynton Hall, 1868, by Stephen C. Earle ); Yale College ( Farnam Hall , 1869–70, by Russell Sturgis );
360-575: Is widely considered to be the resulting beautiful and sophisticated Yale campus. Rogers was criticized by the growing Modernist movement. His cathedral-like Sterling Memorial Library (1927–1930), with its ecclesiastical imagery and lavish use of ornament, came under vocal attack from one of Yale's own undergraduates: A modern building constructed for purely modern needs has no excuse for going off in an orgy of meretricious medievalism and stale iconography. Other architects, notably John Russell Pope and Bertram Goodhue (who just before his death sketched
396-592: The Calliopean Society . Walls around these southward courtyards are several stories shorter than those on the north, allowing light to fill all of the quadrangle's open spaces more evenly. The building's masonry exterior is richly ornamented, and much of the decoration commemorates distinguished university graduates. The gate beneath Harkness Tower, crafted by Samuel Yellin , is the most ornate of his many works at Yale. G. Owen Bonawit designed unique stained glass windowpanes for each student room. From 1921 to 1929
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#1733085639854432-555: The Commonwealth Fund , a foundation dedicated to the improvement of healthcare with an initial gift of $ 10 million (equivalent to $ 135 million in 2023). Along with her son, Edward , the foundation made charitable gifts totaling more than $ 129 million, the equivalent of $ 2 billion in 2005 dollars, including funds for the establishment of the Harkness Fellowships , the construction of St. Salvator's Hall at
468-614: The Hall of Graduate Studies . Many of the artisans who worked on the Memorial Quadrangle with Rogers, including G. Owen Bonawit and blacksmith Samuel Yellin , were commissioned again for these later buildings. The quadrangle was an antecedent of the Collegiate Gothic style used throughout the United States, and of large residential campuses of the 20th century, including Harvard College and Rice University. In particular, plans for creating
504-653: The New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art , where it established the Museum's collection of ancient Egyptian art . The Harkness Pavilion at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital / Columbia University Medical Center is also named for the family. 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
540-501: The United States and Canada , and to a certain extent Europe. A form of historicist architecture, it took its inspiration from English Tudor and Gothic buildings. It has returned in the 21st century in the form of prominent new buildings at schools and universities including Cornell , Princeton , Vanderbilt , Washington University , and Yale . Ralph Adams Cram , arguably the leading Gothic Revival architect and theoretician in
576-548: The University of Pennsylvania ( College Hall , 1870–72, Thomas W. Richards); Harvard College ( Memorial Hall , 1870–77, William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt ); and Cornell University ( Sage Hall (1871–75, Charles Babcock ). In 1871, English architect William Burges designed a row of vigorous French Gothic-inspired buildings for Trinity College – Seabury Hall, Northam Tower, Jarvis Hall (all completed 1878) – in Hartford, Connecticut . Tastes became more conservative in
612-482: The University of Pittsburgh , Charles Klauder was commissioned by University of Pittsburgh chancellor John Gabbert Bowman to design a tall building in the form of a Gothic tower. What he produced, the Cathedral of Learning (1926–37), has been described as the literal culmination of late Gothic Revival architecture. A combination of Gothic spire and modern skyscraper, the steel-frame, limestone-clad, 42-story structure
648-717: The University of St Andrews , the Butler Library at Columbia University , and many of the undergraduate dormitories at Harvard and Yale Universities (known as "houses" and "residential colleges," respectively). The fund was also a major benefactor of the Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes , the Museum of Natural History in New York , the New York Zoological Society and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons ,
684-508: The 1880s, and "collegiate architecture soon after came to prefer a more scholarly and less restless Gothic." Beginning in the late-1880s, Philadelphia architects Walter Cope and John Stewardson expanded the campus of Bryn Mawr College in an understated English Gothic style that was highly sensitive to site and materials. Inspired by the architecture of Oxford and Cambridge universities, and historicists but not literal copyists, Cope & Stewardson were highly influential in establishing
720-508: The Collegiate Gothic style. Commissions followed for collections of buildings at the University of Pennsylvania (1895–1911), Princeton University (1896–1902), and Washington University in St. Louis (1899–1909), marking the nascent beginnings of a movement that transformed many college campuses across the country. In 1901, the firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge created a master plan for
756-762: The Harknesses erected and furnished a memorial pavilion at Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland as a memorial to her. On July 29, 1895, within a year of Florence's marriage to Louis Severance , the former Treasurer of Standard Oil , their second daughter also died. Similarly, Anna and her son-in-law Louis donated the funds for the construction of the Florence Harkness Memorial Chapel at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. After her eldest son Charles died in 1916, Anna gave $ 3 million (equivalent to $ 47 million in 2023) to Yale University for
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#1733085639854792-463: The building housed Yale College seniors. In 1928, a donation from Edward Harkness began Yale's residential college system, the buildings of which were also planned and designed by Rogers. Rogers split the Quadrangle into two residential colleges—Saybrook and Branford, so named for the courtyards they contain—and added mid-sized elements such as masters' houses, fellow's quarters, and dining halls. During
828-674: The building's west side, was named in memory of Charles Harkness, a memorial to whom is found in the tower's chapel. Construction began in 1917, the bicentennial of Yale's first building in New Haven, and was completed in 1921. As initially built, the Quadrangle contained dorm rooms for 630 students, a dining hall, and seven courtyards. Dry moats with low walls, a frequent architectural motif at Yale, were first used by this building and were planted with ivy , flowers, and trees by landscape architect Beatrix Jones Farrand with an eye to both increased privacy and street beautification. Harkness Tower ,
864-511: The construction of Memorial Quadrangle in Charles's memory, including Harkness Tower , the most visible symbol of Yale on the New Haven skyline. Anna's portrait by Albert Herter is displayed in the dining hall of Saybrook College , part of the Memorial Quadrangle. In 1920, she donated an additional $ 3 million to Yale towards increases in faculty salaries. In October 1918, Anna established
900-476: The conversion, the "Gold Coast" of student rooms in the middle of the Quadrangle was hollowed out to make way for the Saybrook College dining hall. The colleges opened on September 25, 1933. The Memorial Quadrangle became the template for Yale's residential college system . First announced as a "Quadrangle Plan," the colleges were built around the same courtyard and dining hall design pioneered. In addition to
936-503: The early 20th century, wrote about the appeal of the Gothic for educational facilities in his book The Gothic Quest: "Through architecture and its allied arts we have the power to bend men and sway them as few have who depended on the spoken word. It is for us, as part of our duty as our highest privilege to act...for spreading what is true." Gothic Revival architecture was used for American college buildings as early as 1829, when "Old Kenyon"
972-522: The great group of dormitories for the University of Pennsylvania that Cope and Stewardson first came before the entire country as the great exponents of architectural poetry and of the importance of historical continuity and the connotation of scholasticism . These buildings are among the most remarkable yet built in America ... First of all, let it be said at once that primarily they are what they should be: scholastic in inspiration and effect, and scholastic of
1008-581: The largest, Branford Court—commemorate Connecticut towns significant to the school's founding, and a fourth, Wrexham Court, commemorating the city of Wrexham in Wales , the resting place of Elihu Yale . The other three, on the building's southern side and now part of Branford College, are named for early debating societies in Yale College: Brothers in Unity Court, Linonia Court, and Calliope Court after
1044-507: The main buildings at Emmanuel College (Massachusetts), and the law school at the University of Notre Dame . Ralph Adams Cram designed a series of Collegiate Gothic buildings for the Princeton University Graduate College (1911–1917). James Gamble Rogers did extensive work at Yale University , beginning in 1917. Some critics claim he took historicist fantasy to an extreme, while others choose to focus on what
1080-479: The most visible symbol of Yale on the New Haven skyscape, is placed on an axis unifying it with Yale's Old Campus . The shorter Wrexham Tower is modeled on the tower of St Giles' Church in Wrexham , Wales , where Elihu Yale is buried. The building is divided into seven courtyards, which Rogers framed with materials and decorative elements giving each distinct character. Three—Killingworth Court, Saybrook Court, and
1116-420: The original version of Yale's Sterling Library from which Rogers worked), advocated for and contributed to Yale's particular version of Collegiate Gothic. When McMaster University moved to Hamilton, Ontario , Canadian architect William Lyon Somerville designed its new campus (1928–1930) in the style. American architect Alexander Jackson Davis is "generally credited with coining the term" documented in
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1152-455: The two colleges that were created within the Memorial Quadrangle, six others—Jonathan Edwards, Davenport, Calhoun, Trumbull, and Berkeley—followed the same Collegiate Gothic style. Because of his initial work on the Memorial Quadrangle, Rogers became the de facto architect of Yale's central campus through the 1920s and 1930s: eight of the ten early residential colleges were his design, as were Sterling Memorial Library , Sterling Law Building , and
1188-604: The type that is ours by inheritance; of Oxford and Cambridge , not of Padua or Wittenberg or Paris . They are picturesque also, even dramatic; they are altogether wonderful in mass and in composition. If they are not a constant inspiration to those who dwell within their walls or pass through their "quads" or their vaulted archways, it is not their fault but that of the men themselves. The [Spanish-American War Memorial] tower has been severely criticized as an archaeological abstraction reared to commemorate contemporary American heroism. The criticism seems just to me, though only in
1224-497: Was completed on the campus of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio . Another early example was Alexander Jackson Davis 's University Hall (1833–37, demolished 1890), on New York University 's Washington Square campus. Richard Bond 's church-like library for Harvard College, Gore Hall (1837–41, demolished 1913), became the model for other library buildings. James Renwick Jr. 's Free Academy Building (1847–49, demolished 1928), for what
1260-703: Was living at the time of their marriage. Together, Anna and Stephen lived at his estate on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland (known as Millionaires' Row) and were the parents of four more children, three of whom survived to adulthood: Her husband died aboard his yacht on March 6, 1888, and was buried in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery . He left an estate valued at $ 150 million (equivalent to $ 4.5 billion in 2023) and Anna inherited one-third of his fortune: $ 50 million (equivalent to $ 1.49 billion in 2023), consisting primarily of stock in Standard Oil. In 1891, Anna moved to New York City, but continued to maintain
1296-672: Was the daughter of James Richardson and Anna ( née Ranck) Richardson. Not much is known about her early life. On February 13, 1854, then sixteen-year-old Anna was married to the 34-year-old Stephen Vanderburgh Harkness , an early investor with John D. Rockefeller who became the second-largest shareholder in Standard Oil before his death in March 1888. Stephen had previously been married to Laura Osborne, who died in August 1852, and with whom he had three children, only one of whom, Lamon V. Harkness ,
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