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Presented to the University by the Class of 1879 on the occasion of their tenth reunion, this pair of bronzed zinc lions flanked the entrance to Nassau Hall for twenty-two years. It was during this period that Princeton unofficially adopted the tiger as its mascot, and in 1911 the lions were replaced with Alexander Phimister Proctor’s tigers that still guard Nassau Hall today. Meanwhile, the lions found their new home on the steps of 1879 Hall, where they served as sentinels for more than sixty years, until their deteriorating condition forced the University to put them in storage. They were restored and reinstalled at this location in 1998.

For decades, the lions were misattributed to the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty. During their restoration in the 1990s, conservator John Scott correctly identified the works as being produced by the now-defunct J. L. Mott Ironworks, a company that sold through catalogs zinc statuary based on models provided by European sculptors. This particular pair, by the German artist A. Schiffelman, appeared in Mott’s 1890 catalogue and was listed for $200.