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The tower was constructed as part of the Memorial Quadrangle donated to Yale by Anna M. Harkness in honor of her recently deceased son. It was designed by James Gamble Rogers and inspired by " Boston Stump," the 15th-century high tower of the parish church (of St Botolph) in Boston, England, the parish church with the highest tower in all of England, with some details from a tower at Elihu Yale's burial site, Saint Giles in Wrexham, Wales. It was, when built, the only couronne ("crown") tower in English Perpendicular Gothic style that had been constructed in the modern era.

It is 216 feet tall, with a square base rising in stages to a double stone crown on an octagonal base, dissolving at the top in a spray of stone pinnacles. Four copper clockfaces tell the hours midway to the top of the tower. The tower contains the Harkness Carillon, a 54-bell carillon, installed in 1961, replacing a 10-bell version, which is played by members of a university club set up for the purpose. (Residents of Branford College and Saybrook College, of which Harkness forms a part of the periphery, are known to call the daily performances "death by bells.")

Its decorative elements were sculpted by Lee Lawrie (1877-1963). The lowest level of sculpture depicts Yale's Eight Worthies: Elihu Yale, Jonathan EdwardsJonathan Edwards ( October 5, 1703- March 22, 1758) was a colonial American Congregational preacher and theologian. He is known as one of the greatest and most profound American evangelical theologians. His work is very broad in scope, but he is often ass, Nathan HaleTribune Tower in Chicago Nathan Hale ( June 6, 1755— September 22, 1776) was an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Hale was most famous for his service as a spy; he volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission and, Noah WebsterNoah Webster ( October 16, 1758 April 15, 1843) was an American lexicographer, textbook author, Bible translator, and spelling reformer, writer, and editor. Webster's Dictionary Webster published his first dictionary of the English language in 1806, and i, James Fenimore CooperJames Fenimore Cooper ( September 15, 1789 September 14, 1851), American novelist, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, on the 15th of September 1789. Reared in the wild country round Otsego Lake, New York, on the yet unsettled estates of his father Willia, John C. CalhounJohn Caldwell Calhoun ( March 18, 1782 March 31, 1850), was a prominent United States politician in the first half of the 19th century. His staunch determination earned him the nickname the "cast-iron man". Calhoun served South Carolina in the United Stat, Samuel F. B. MorseSamuel Finley Breese Morse ( April 27, 1791 April 2, 1872) was an American inventor, history and portrait painter, and is most famous for inventing the telegraph and Morse code. Biography Early years He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He attended, and Eli WhitneyEli Whitney ( December 8, 1765 January 8, 1825) was an American inventor and manufacturer who is credited with creating the first cotton gin in 1793. The cotton gin was a mechanical device which removed the seeds from cotton, which until that time was ext. The second level of sculpture are Phidias, Homer, Aristotle, and Euclid. The next level of sculpture consists of allegorical figures depicting Medicine, Business, Law, the Church, Courage and Effort, War and Peace, Generosity and Order, Justice and Truth, Life and Progress, and Death and Freedom. The top level depicts Yale's students at war and in study along with masks of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare.

The witticism, usually attributed to a famous modernist architect, that had he "to choose any place in New Haven to live" he would select the Harkness Tower, for then he "would not have to look at it," is apparently apocryphal (and is in any case derivative of a similar story told of Alexandre Dumas and the Eiffel Tower). The tower's image was adopted by the Yale Herald , the undergraduate weekly newspaper, for its masthead.