Seventy-Nine Hall was presented to Princeton by Woodrow Wilson's classmates in 1904. They said it was a small gift that came from great love or, in the more elegant Latin inscribed above the fireplace in the oak-paneled tower room, EX AMORE MAGNO DONUM PARVUM. This was a modest appraisal of a handsome 25th reunion gift made long before the age of affluence by a class of only 170 members. All their names are recorded in bronze in the vaulted passageway beneath the tower.

Seventy-Nine's architect, Benjamin Wistar Morris, Jr., followed the Tudor Gothic style previously employed in Blair and Little but instead of stone used red brick with limestone trim, materials later chosen for neighboring buildings. Gutzon Borglum carved the monkey and tiger grotesques that peer out from the mouldings on the tower arches. The vaulted passageway beneath the tower provides a favorite spot for impromptu concerts by undergraduate singing groups. The tower room, which is large and high, with fine mullioned windows at either end, was used as an office by Woodrow Wilson when he was president of the University.

Seventy-Nine was originally a dormitory much coveted by upperclassmen because of its proximity to the eating clubs. In 1960 when new dormitories were being erected elsewhere on the campus, and increased academic office space was needed in this area, Seventy-Nine was converted for use by the philosophy and sociology departments. When sociology moved to Green Hall in 1964, the religion department took its place.

For sixty years two lions guarded the Washington Road steps to the passageway beneath the tower. Designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty, they were given to the University by the Class of 1879 at their graduation and flanked the front door of Nassau Hall until 1911, when the Class presented the bronze tigers that took their place and moved the lions to Seventy-Nine Hall. Made of soft and malleable "white metal," the lions deteriorated with the passage of time and eventually had to be removed to a University storeroom for preservation.

Source: Leitch p. 440 ff

More information on Class of 1879 Hall

Class of 1879 Hall in Evolution of the Campus