Curatorial Voice

East Pyne was designed in 1896 as an extension to Chancellor Green Library next door. In the niches of the tower, on the west side, are four sculptures of notable Princetonians, all carved by John Massey Rhind, who also carved the sculptures on the facade of Alexander Hall.  At the bottom are two former presidents, John Witherspoon and James McCosh, and higher up, two alumni, James Madison, Class of 1771, and Oliver Ellsworth, Class of 1766.

Born in Scotland in 1860 to a family of sculptors, Rhind immigrated to the United States in 1889. Princeton’s administration and donors at this time commissioned works by many of the most popular Beaux-Arts decorative artists, such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, John La Farge, and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Although not as well known today as Tiffany or Saint-Gaudens, Rhind was one of the most prolific sculptors of architectural decorations and public monuments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.