Copyright 2015 Yale University. All rights reserved. As of July 1, 2015, the Yale Alumni Magazine operates as a department of Yale University. Earlier print and digital content of the Yale Alumni Magazine was published and copyrighted by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., and is used under license.
2 comments
<> Branford College. Base of Harkness Tower. Door leads to the small Gothic chapel on the first floor. <> The gothic inscription is taken from a 1716 Letter from the trustees of the Collegiate School in New Haven to Elihu Yale living in London after his retirement from the East India Company. "The affair of our School hath been in a Condition of Pregnancy...But We just now hear, that after the Violent Pangs threatening the Very life of the Babe, Divine Providence as a kind Obstetrix hath mercifully brought the Babe into the World, & behold A Man-child is born, whereat We all Rejoice." [The American College and University: A History By Frederick Rudolph, 1962 Knopf] <> I have no idea who the seated figure represents...I would guess it is the architect James Gamble Rogers, dressed in a sculptor's smock...or perhaps the prophet Isaiah.
I tip my hat! That inscription is obscure to anyone not well versed in Yale history; I had to look it up. Robert Dudley French's book on the Memorial Quadrangle identifies the seated figure as Socrates. But he doesn't mention the inscription.