“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…
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 University in England. The plans for the construction of the Memorial Quadrangle were quite detailed. Within Branford College itself there is an old millstone from the town of Branford, Connecticut. It was delivered and installed among the flagstones 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 limestone, Briar Hill sandstone, and other stone from Idaho, Virginia, and Connecticut were all used in the construction. They number 7 million in total…
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.'”
-Excerpt courtesy of Yale University, “History: About Branford,” by Eric Adelizzi and Matthew Koppel, edited by Branford College Staff
