Yale’s Harkness Tower is, by my estimate, the finest tower in the United States and its designer, James Gamble Rogers, one of the best American architects of his day. JGR is in the Pantheon of his craft, though not quite as highly appreciated as Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue or Ralph Adams Cram.

Harkness Tower is a monument to verticality: from the ground up at each and every stage you expect it could end right there in completeness and beauty — but then it goes another stage higher. Rogers was inspired by the “Boston Stump” of St Botolph’s Church in Lincolnshire but he took that form and creatively expanded and elaborated upon it.

The tower rises 216 feet — one foot for every year Yale existed by the time of its construction.

Yalies – “Elis” – are inveterate founders of drinking clubs which, in order to cultivate a deliberate air of inscrutable mystery, they call “secret societies”, even though many of them are (thankfully) nothing which might rightly be called such.

It was years ago on one of my occasional stays in New Haven for some convivial merriment organised by just such a cabal that my old friend A.B. and I were passing Harkness Tower and I was expounding upon its beauty.

“You know, of course,” A.B. alleged, “it has a secret chapel in it.” I had no such knowledge, and pressed for more information. “Well it’s not quite a chapel, but it feels like one. The university almost never lets anyone use it.”

Universities never do. Once a university has anything, they do their best to stop people using it. (Anyone at Edinburgh University: just try throwing an event in the Raeburn Room in Old College and find out.) (more…)

The Bloomsbury Scheme of Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens

The University of London is a curious institution that these days no one really knows quite what to do with. At its zenith it was an imperial giant, validating the degrees of institutions from Gower Street to the very ends of the earth.

University College was founded — as “London University” — by the rationalist faction in 1826, prompting the supporters of the Anglican church to establish King’s College with royal approval in 1829.

Neither institution had the right to grant degrees, which led to the overarching University of London being created in 1836 with the power to grant degrees to the students of both colleges — and the further colleges and schools that would be founded later or come within its remit.

The University was run from the Imperial Institute in South Kensington but soon outgrew its quarters within that complex. The 1911 Royal Commission on University Education concluded that the University of London “should have for its headquarters permanent buildings appropriate in design to its dignity and importance, adequate in extent and specially constructed for its purpose”. But where?

Lord Haldane, the commission’s chairman, preferred Bloomsbury. University College was already there, as was the British Museum, and the Dukes of Bedford as the local landowners were happy to provide sufficient space to build a proper centre for the institution.

Charles Fitzroy Doll, the Duke’s own surveyor, designed a rather heavy classical scheme for academic buildings on the site north of the Museum but no progress was made before the Great War erupted.

(more…)

Not many people can claim with any accuracy to have crafted a Portal to Paradise, but Simon Verity was one. The master carver was born and raised in Buckinghamshire but made a significant contribution to the stones of New York.

At the Protestant Cathedral of St John the Divine in Morningside Heights — “St John the Unfinished” to many — tools had been downed following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. When the Very Rev’d James Parks Morton became Dean in the 1980s he decided it was time to re-start work on the gothic hulk — one of the largest cathedrals in the world.

Morton commissioned the Englishman to come and become Master Mason at the New York cathedral based on his experience on the other side of the Atlantic. Verity tackled the main task of finishing the carvings on the great west portal of St John the Divine — the “Portal of Paradise” — training up a team of local youths in stonecarving to help with the job.

“Mr. Verity took the long-dead worthies of the Hebrew and Christian traditions and made them things of wonder for people in our own day,” the current Dean said following Verity’s death earlier this year.

Most memorable was his ostensible depiction of the destruction of the First Temple, which actually showed the Twin Towers and other familiar New York skyscrapers collapsing into ruin and fire.

Late in 2018 — after the collapse of the actual World Trade Center — an unknown vandal took it upon himself to smash the stone towers off the facade, but the Cathedral has since had them restored by Joseph Kincannon who carved the original depiction under Simon Verity.

Eventually the money ran out and the stonecarvers at St John’s had to down tools yet again so Verity returned to England, but he maintained close connections with New York. He was responsible for the carving and lettering in the British & Commonwealth 9/11 Memorial Garden in Hanover Square, for example.

When the trustees of the New York Public Library proposed clearing out the stacks from their glorious Bryant Park main building and moving the books to New Jersey — a truly criminal plan since, thankfully, abandoned — Verity drew a series of doodles in opposition, many depicting the iconic lions Patience and Fortitude who guard the Library’s entrance.

A few of the mentions of his death this summer are gathered here:

I nipped over to Civitas in Tufton Street yesterday for the launch of Esmé Partridge’s report Restoring the Value of Parishes: The foundations of welfare, community, and spiritual belonging in England.

She has produced a succinct and well-researched overview of the crisis facing Church of England parishes not just in rural areas but in our towns and cities too.

The discussion following had strong contributions from Danny Kruger MP, Imogen Sinclair, the Rev’d Marcus Walker of Great St Bart’s, Rebecca Chapman who sits on the Anglican Church’s General Synod, Eddie Tulasiewicz of the National Churches Trust, Bijan Omrani, and more.

As a devotee of England’s cult of the saints, what interested me particularly was the contribution from Rupert Sheldrake of the Choral Evensong Trust.

He explained that the CET was doing its bit for parish churches by creating a Patronal Festival Grants scheme to encourage more churches to celebrate the feast of their patron saint or dedication.

Grants of up to £500 are available to provide for choral evensong sung by a visiting choir and – deeply important – a party afterwards at which food and drink are free to those gathering.

“For example,” the Trust informs us, “at St Michael and All Angels in Dinder, near Wells, over ninety people attended a choral evensong on Michaelmas, sung by the Wells Cathedral Chamber Choir. The church was filled to capacity, with many attendees participating in church activities for the first time.”

This is a genius scheme for encouraging greater devotion to the saints as well as more frequent use of now sadly often shut C-of-E parish churches.

As it says in Deuteronomy, “thou shalt make merry in thy festival time, thou, thy son, and thy daughter, thy manservant, and thy maidservant, the Levite also and the stranger, and the fatherless and the widow that are within thy gates.”

More information on the CET’s 2025 Patronal Festival Grants can be found here and the deadline for next year’s applications is Candlemas (2 February 2025).

That evening I was a guest at high table in an Oxford college which is exhibiting signs of health and societal repair.

A few years ago, the head of house disregarded the strident protests of the students and banished the college grace as well as all dress codes for dining. (To the gratitude of many, she did not last long.)

After this unwelcome interruption, the college grace before meals has now been restored (in Latin), in addition to the return of formal meals with gowns (and, on Sundays, black tie).

In some place, where you let it and protect it, nature is healing.

Meanwhile, below, some beautiful music for Advent from my own parish church, St George’s Cathedral in Southwark.

This beautiful performance of Veni, Veni, Emmanuel by Malakai from St George’s Cathedral Choirs, performed at St George's Cathedral is a reminder that Jesus is God with us who witnessed to the love of the Father by dwelling among us.@StGeorgesCath @StGeorgesChoirs pic.twitter.com/L8VY31FmNA

— Archdiocese of Southwark (@RC_Southwark) December 5, 2024

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Most Recent Posts

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