Speranza
The words “Memorial Quadrangle” decorate the ceremonial Memorial Gate of
Branford College, below the towering heights of the Harkness Tower.
The building
that is today divided between Branford College and Saybrook College was
constructed between 1917 and 1922, as the Memorial Quadrangle.
Mrs. Stephen V.
Harkness donated the building to Yale University in memory of her son, Charles
Harkness (Class of 1883), who died in 1916.
Let’s say you were here in 1926, and
walking down Elm Street, outside Durfee, you meet Clarence Mendell, Third Dean
of Yale College and future master of Branford College.
Having just made your
acquaintance, he asks you where you live on campus.
Looking across the street at
the complex of buildings called
"The Berkeley Oval", and seeing out of the corner
of your eye the Gym, Pool, Cage, Armory, Squash Courts, and Bowling Alleys, all
standing where Trumbull College and The Sterling Memorial Library now sit, you
respond “Branford.”
Dean Mendell gently corrects you, asking you if you mean to
say that you live on the Branford Court in the Harkness Memorial Quadrangle, and
informing you that Branford is a town up the road a bit where you almost
certainly don’t live.
Architect James Gamble Rogers (Class of 1889), who
later designed several other colleges and Sterling Memorial Library, was a good
friend of the Harkness family and was chosen to plan and supervise the
construction.
He modeled his plans on the Gothic structures of Oxford
in England.
The plans for the construction of the Memorial Quadrangle were
quite detailed.
Within Branford College itself there is an old mill stone from
the town of Branford, Connecticut.
It was delivered and installed among the
flag stones of Branford Court shortly after the construction of the Quadrangle.
A
team of oxen made the delivery.
The cornerstone was laid on October 8, 1917,
the two-hundredth anniversary of the raising of the first college building in
New Haven.
The Memorial Quadrangle was occupied in part in 1920, and
completed in June of 1921.
The bricks used in the construction of the quadrangle
are old ones from torn down buildings, giving a low-toned soft pink impossible
in new bricks.
Their origins are diverse.
Seam-faced granite, Indiana likestone,
Briar Hill sandstone, and other stone from Idaho, Virginia, and Connecticut were
all used in the construction.
They number 7 million in total.
The flooring is of
oak, as are the wainscot, doors, and trim, while the handrails in the starways
are of India teak. The buildings contain 70 miles of electrical wire, and have
60,000 panes of glass. Both Harkness Tower and Wrexham Tower house large water
tanks which formerly supplied the buildings.
The courtyards are named for
places and societies in the early history of Yale.
Saybrook College has Saybrook
and Killingworth Courts.
Branford has Branford Court, and three smaller
courtyards named for literary societies which donated their libraries to the
University:
-- Linonia,
-- Calliope, and
-- Brothers in Unity.
“The three small quads,”
editorialized the Architectural Review, “are alike only in being
perfect.”
These literary societies were founded in the latter part of the
18th century and lasted through most of the 19th.
They debated the moral,
philosophical, and political problems of the day and even put on plays and other
productions.
The largest of the four courtyards at 131 feet by 271 feet,
Branford Court, or “The Great Court”, is called the most beautiful college
courtyard in America, a statement attributed to the late poet Robert Frost.
The
Branford Courtyard used to hold Class Day, before the growing number of
undergraduates forced the ceremony to move across High Street to the Old
Campus.
Interestingly, it was once a Branford tradition for students to
adhere strictly to referring to their courtyards by their proper names, as noted
in “An Introduction to Branford College” published in 1957.
Today, it is more
common to hear Linonia Court called “the first courtyard”, Calliope “the
second”, and Brothers in Unity “the third”.
Many Branford students aren’t even
aware of the names which their courtyards bear.
The entryways of the college
are named in honor of distinguished Yale graduates.
To bring Branford into line
with the other colleges, each entryway has been provided with a letter, and that
is the order in which they are listed below.
Names are followed by their year of
graduation.
EntrywayNamed for…
ASamuel Seabury 1748
BBenjamin Silliman
1796
CDavid Bushnell 1775 and Horace Bushnell 1827
DJohn Caldwell Calhoun
1804
EJames Fenimore Cooper 1806
FManasseh Cutler 1765
GJonathan
Dickinson 1706
HTimothy Dwight 1769 and Timothy Dwight 1849
IJames Dwight
Dana 1833
JJonathan Edwards 1720
KWilliam M. Evarts 1837
LJosiah
Willard Gibbs 1858
MDaniel Coyt Gilman 1852
NThomas Hopkins Gallaudet
1805
ONathan Hale 1773
PDavid Humphreys 1771
Two further entry ways
used to exist where the Common Room now stands, but they were destroyed during
the establishment of the Residential College System.
The first of these was
named for Samuel Johnson (1696-1772), Class of 1714, who was the first President
of King’s College and for his son, William Samuel Johnson (1727-1819), Class of
1744, President of Columbia College.
The concrete arch being their names was
moved to its current location, above the door to the Master’s House on High
Street, during these renovations.
The other entryway was named for James Kent
(1763-1847), Class of 1781.
“The Memorial Quadrangle gives me actual
happiness every day of my life; for a thousand years to come, it will educate,
inspire, and civilize those who live within its enclosure and those who come to
see it; century after century, people will come from all over America to gaze at
its mysterious and inspiring towers and walls, and no intelligent European will
return from an American sojourn without having visited Yale.
It is a joy and a
delight to me, a devout worshiper of Beauty, to know, that long after my bones
are dust, long after I have left the planet, these gracious and lovely buildings
will cast their charm over the coming children of men.”
–William Lyon Phelps
(1865-1943) B.A. 1887 Ph.D. 1891 LL.D. 1934
The idea of a Residential
College System, patterned after Oxford University , had
been discussed for several years before the Memorial Quadrangle was built.
In
1920, Yale University had 3000 students, up 50% from just 20 years before.
Housing was at a premium.
Even after the Memorial Quadrangle was built, Yale was
forced to limit admissions in 1923 due to a lack of space.
The Quadrangle had no
library, nor did it include dining facilities.
Yale President James Rowland
Angell decided to implement a Residential College system to alleviate the
housing problem and to make an ever-growing college seem smaller and more
intimate.
Edward S. Harkness (Class of 1897), younger brother of Charles
Harkness, donated the necessary funds, nearly $16,000,000, to construct EIGHT
Residential Colleges.
In the end, Silliman and Trumbull were constructed with
additional money from other sources.
It was decided that the Memorial
Quadrangle would be divided in two parts, the larger part becoming Branford
College, named after the Connecticut town where the Collegiate School (later
Yale University) was founded (see below, the description of the College Arms),
and the smaller part named after Saybrook, Connecticut, where the University
stayed for 15 years.
Renovation would be extensive; a Common Room, a Dining
Hall, and a Library would all be carved out of existing student dormitories. A
Master’s House and several Fellows’ suites would be needed, too. All of this
would have to be done twice, as both Branford and Saybrook required their own
facilities.
One decade after the acid-laced cement had dried on Mrs.
Harkness’ gift, workers tore into four floors of rooms on the west wall of
Branford Court to give us a Common Room and Dining Hall.
There were worries at
the time that the entire section of the quadrangle would collapse due to the
renovations.
One can still see windows set in the roof atop the Branford Dining
Hall. These were once the windows of the fifth-floor rooms in the Johnson and
Kent entryways; they are now inaccessible.
Many more rooms were demolished to
make way for a Master’s House, a library, and tremendous fellow’s suites such as
the modern Master’s Office, “God Quad”, and Room 857. Gates were thrown up and
locked tight to separate Branford from Saybrook, both physically and
psychologically, in the hopes of giving each college a separate psychological
identity. One of those gates was just opened for good in the Spring of 1996, the
program of psychological separation now complete.
The Coat of Arms of Branford College, features ten books to represent
the ten ministers who pooled their books and resources to found the Collegiate
School.
The ministers came from all over Connecticut for the purpose of
founding the school.
Although the building in which they met no longer stands,
there is a commemorative monument at the corner of Montowese Street and South
Main Street in the town of Branford, which is just a short drive from New
Haven.
The town of Branford itself was originally named “Totokett” (or “Tidal
River”) when it was founded in 1644.
Several years later, it was renamed
“Branford” after the town of Brentford, Middlesex, England.
There is still an
area in Branford, CT, known as Totoket.
In heraldic terms the arms are
described thusly:
Azure, ten open books of silver, edges gold; in a
chief, three elm leaves vert.
According to Thomas G. Bergin, author
of Yale’s Residential Colleges: The First Fifty Years:
“The design of
arms recalls the meeting of 1701 at the house of the Reverend Samuel Russel in
Branford, where, tradition says, ten Connecticut Congregational ministers by a
gift of books founded the Collegiate School which became Yale College. The elm
leaves in a chief of gold are symbolic of the permanent establishment of Yale in
New Haven….”
New Haven, of course, is referred to as “The Elm City”
in memory of the many elm trees that used to line the streets of the
town.
The arms were designed by Master Clarence Mendell; Mr. Theodore Babbit,
a fellow of Branford; and his wife.
The pre-renovation College China features
the signatures of the ten ministers who founded Yale, along with the towns from
which they came. Their names are separated by an emblem which was drawn from the
oldest extant diploma issued by Yale University, in 1712. It is an ornamented
capital “O” with a bird in the middle. It started the phrase, “Omnibus et
Singulis Has literas lecturis Salutem in Domine Vobis Notum Sit …
.”
In the start of the academic year
in 1933, Branford College opened its doors. Clarence Whittlesey Mendell, Dean of
Yale College, had been named Master in 1931 and he held the post until 1943.
What impressed quite a few visitors to Branford was the calm and subdued
character of the College. Chauncey Tinker commented that Saybrook was like an
anthill, but Branford was like an oyster bed. In records of the time, the main
thing that stands out about Branford is the lack of activity among its students,
and the lack of encouragement of activity on the part of Master Mendell, who
commented that oyster beds produce pearls.
The war effort took many students and faculty away from Yale. In
1942, Master Mendell left Branford and the Yale Community to direct the Navy
Intelligence School in Quonset. He was succeeded by Norman Sydney Buck, who was
Dean of Freshman Year. Buck was Acting Master in 1942 and part of 1943, before
assuming the post on a permanent basis until 1959. Branford made its
contribution to the war effort, as Buck’s wife, Polly Stone Buck, writes:
“Branford, which had been planned originally as a College to house 195
undergraduates, was for four years under the Navy regime the home of around 400
apprentice seamen.”
Nineteen forty-two, the year which saw the departure of
Master Mendell, also saw the establishment of the Branford College
Council.
The twenty-five years following World War II saw many changes which
affected the University as a whole.
In 1950, chambermaid service was
abolished, and 1953 saw the end of full-time guards placed at college gates. In
1963, the position of College Dean was created. In 1969, coeducation came to
Yale and to Branford.
There are two “Common
Rooms” in addition to the main College Common Room (located underneath the
Dining Hall). Between Linonia and Branford Courts is located the Fellow’s Common
Room, where the Fellows of the College meet. This room was originally designated
the Trumbull Common Room, in memory of the first Art Gallery at Yale, which was
built to house the paintings of John Trumbull. With the advent of the
Residential College System (see above), Trumbull College was built, and its
common room was named the Common Room of Trumbull College, or, the Trumbull
Common Room for short. The resulting confusion led to the permanent renaming of
this room.
The other “Common Room” is the Mendell Room, named for Branford’s
first master, Larence Whittlesey Mendell. Confusingly, this room also had
several other names. It was originally dubbed the “Cabinet Commons” when it was
constructed. It quickly came to be known as the “Ship Room” after the carving
over the mantle, which depicts the phantom “Great Ship” lost at sea off of New
Haven. During the early days of the College, it was used as a “Music Room”, and
a record player was installed for the use of College students. It was only after
the decease of Master Mendell that the room was renamed in his honor. The room,
which is located between the Branford and Brothers in Unity Courts (joined by
the Jared Eliot gateway) is used for seminars and meetings of small student
organizations.
The Branford College Library is located in the middle small
courtyard of Branford College.
The
showpiece of Branford is the Harkness Tower, which until it was reinforced with
steel in 1981, was rumoured to be the largest free-standing structure ever built.
It was modeled after St. Botolph’s Tower in Boston, England.
Harkness can be
seen from I-95 as your car nears New Haven. You can also see it from the tower
in Sleeping Giant State Park.
Architecture buffs could tell you that it is the
first couronne tower in this country, and the first to be built in modern times.
A couronne tower differs from the usual four-pointed “college tower” in that it
starts from a square base and ends in a perfect octangle.
The Tower in 216 feet
tall, and has a foundation extending ninety feet down to bedrock. It is said
that the Tower is so superior to anything of its kind built in modern times as
to create a standard by which future similar effects must be judged. (Saybrook,
in comparison, is barely superior to the ants which pillage our picnics.)
The
seldom-used Branford College Chapel at the base of tower was dedicated in 1952
to the 35 members of Branford who gave their lives in the service of the country
between 1941 and 1951. The ceiling of the Chapel is one of the few fan-vaulted
ceilings constructed since medieval times. The walls include carved oak panels
detailing scenes from Yale student life between the founding of Yale and 1917,
when construction work on the Memorial Quadrangle began.
A spiral staircase
leads up from the Chapel to an organ loft and the Branford Council Room. The
Council Room, a small space located over the Memorial Gate leading into Branford
Court, was originally intended for use as the meeting place of the Yale College
Student Council. This organization was designed to oversee Yale’s Honor System,
and was abolished due to its failure to do so. Its modern successor
organization, the Yale College Council, probably couldn’t even fit within the
walls of the Council Room, a fact which indicates how much Yale has grown
between then and now. The Council Room was used for college seminars following
the abolition of the Student Council, and it is now used for small meetings,
especially smaller meetings of the college fellows.
The tower itself is
ornately decorated by various stone carvings. It is square at the bottom,
passing into an octagonal prism at the top. There are many staues of historical
figures on the tower, including Elihu Yale and various Yale graduates: Jonathan
Edwards, Samuel F. B. Morse, Eli Whitney, James Fenimore Cooper, John C.
Calhoun, Noah Webster, and Nathan Hale. Nearer the summit of the tower stand
four soldiers: a Revolutionary Minuteman, a sailor from the War of 1812, a Civil
War veteran, and a doughboy of the First World War. The “four great western
poets”, Homer, Vergil, Dante, and Shakespeare, are also featured, along with
symbolical representations of the life of a Yale undergraduate: an athlete, a
scholar, a socialite, and a literary figure.
Branfordians were once called
“Towermen” (before coeducation, of course). The forerunner of the weekly
Branford Carillon newsletter was the Tower Bulletin.
During the early days of
the tower, the bells rang on a set schedule, ringing “Christi Sanctorum” at 8
a.m., the largo from Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” at noon, Wagner’s bell motif
from “Parsifal” at 6 p.m., and an old Gregorian Chant at 10 p.m. These days, a
more varied fare rings from the tower, although not so early in the morning, nor
late at night.
In 1966, forty-four bells were added to the original ten to
make it a carillon.
In 1981, the Harkness Tower lost its claim to being the
world’s largest free-standing stone structure. It was judged structurally
unsound, and it was reinforced with steel.
Every college at Yale is affiliated with residential colleges at
Oxford.
In 1965, Branford College was
affiliated with Pembroke College.
Dr. Kelvin Bowkett, Senior
Tutor of Christ’s College, Cambridge, has kindly provided the following
explanation of these affiliations:
In around the 1930’s a system developed in
England whereby most of the Colleges at the University of Cambridge and the
University of Oxford paired up with a sister College at the other University.
So, for instance, Christ’s College has a “sister” College in Wadham College,
Oxford. This had its origins at a time when cross-country road and rail
communication was not good and Senior Members visiting the other University for
teaching or research found it convenient to have somewhere to stay and to eat.
So each College offered hospitality to the Senior Members of the sister College
at the other University. Gradually the relationship also came to mean that if an
undergraduate student were going on to do a further degree at the other
University they would normally apply (and, other things being equal, be
accepted) at the sister College.
Similar pairings have since become
established between Christ’s College and Branford College at Yale and Adam’s
House (and more recently also North House) at Harvard.
The Branford College
affiliation dates from 1965 and, without checking the detailed records, my
belief is that the then Master of Branford College … spent some time in 1964 in
Cambridge at Christ’s College, either on leave or perhaps giving some visiting
lectures. Seeing (and perhaps taking advantage of the Oxford link) he proposed
establishment of a link between Christ’s and Branford: this was approved by
resolution of the Governing Body of Christ’s College on 26th January 1965 and a
subsequent College Order signed on 18th May 1965. At the time the following
message was sent to Branford College:
We the Master or Keeper,
Fellows and Scholars of Christ’s College in the University of Cambridge by Henry
the sixth, King of England, first begun & after his decease by Margaret,
Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of King Henry the seventh augmented
finished and established. Having received the resolution of the President and
Fellows of Yale University dated the tenth day of April One thousand nine
hundred and sixty five did by College Order signed this day confirm our minute
dated the twenty sixth day of January of the same year by which was constituted
an affiliation with Branford College. We reciprocate the warm regards expressed
in that resolution and we have directed the Bursar to place the document
received by us from Yale University in the College archives and to transmit this
record of our own proceedings, duly sealed, to the Master and Fellows of
Branford College in Yale University.
Friday, September 20, 2013
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