Replacement of the Bust of John Hays Hammond (after Bryant Percy Baker)

2003

 

 

The original bust is recorded as missing since 1973, three years after Hammond Hall was converted from the Metallurgical Laboratory to the Sculpture Department. It was in this year 1970, that Bryant Baker, the sculptor, died.   This location approximates its original placement from recollections of individuals who occupied the building during the early 1970's.

John Hays Hammond was a mining engineer and close friend of many in the Taft Administration. During his work in South Africa, he was one of four leaders in the reform movement in the Transvaal whose involvement with the Jameson Raid led to his arrest and death sentence which was later commuted to fifteen years imprisonment. He was released by payment of a $125,000.00 fine. He endowed Hammond Hall in 1904 while a professor of mechanical engineering at Yale.

His son, John Hays Hammond Jr. was the second most prolific American inventor to Thomas Edison with over 400 patents for inventions such as the aluminothermic incendiary projectiles used by American allies in World Wars I and II, the Hammond Organ, the electric can opener and the smoke screen.

The Hammond family after John Hays Hammond Jr. has no descendants, however in 1910, a John Hammond of no certain familial relation was born and he attended Yale University in 1928 to study music. He went on to become one of the most renown music producers for Columbia Records. Some of those he discovered and recorded include Pete Seeger, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Many of these records employ the Hammond Organ and the Hammond Dynamic Amplifier

The following are available for review at the Yale University Archives:

Original letters from John Hays Hammond to his wife while imprisoned in South Africa.

Articles by and about John Hays Hammond's career as a mining engineer.

Speeches given by John Hays Hammond to students at Yale University.

All of the patents, including diagrams and descriptions of the inventions of John Hays Hammond Jr.

Architectural plans for the construction of Hammond Hall.

Letters to John Hays Hammond Jr. from performers praising his dynamic amplifier and organ.

Congressional publications referring to the work of John Hays Hammond Jr.

 

Donated to Yale University