Edward Stephen Harkness Gravesite (New York City, New York)

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Edward Stephen Harkness (b.1854 Cleveland, Ohio - d. NY 1940) was an American philanthropist. He was one of three children born to Anna Richardson and her husband Stephen V. Harkness. Steven, his father, a harness maker, invested $75,000 with John D. Rockefeller and became the second-largest shareholder in Standard Oil. Edward attended Yale University, Class of 1897. His father, Stephen V. Harkness, died in 1888, and his elder brother, Charles W. Harkness, died in 1916. In 1917, he married Mary Stillmann, whose family had also been associated with the Rockefellers.

His mother gave $3 million to Yale University to build Harkness Quadrangle in her husband's memory. In 1918, Anna Harkness established the Commonwealth Fund by a gift of $10 million and with the mandate that it should 'do something for the welfare of mankind.'

Every year the Commonwealth Fund lays a wreath at Christmas time at the gates of the Harkness mausoleum.


MARY STILLMAN HARKNESS (1874-1950)
Mary Stillman was born into the Rockefeller family and in 1904 married Edward Harkness, the son of an original Standard Oil partner. In 1907 they purchased 'Eolia' a two hundred acre estate in Waterford, CT From 1920 to 1943, Mrs. Harkness sponsored a camp for polio stricken children on the property. The estate is now the site of the Harkness Music Festival and the Eugene O'Neill theater school. During Edward's lifetime the couple donated over $100,000,000 to various charities. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University were recipients of many literary and artistic treasures from Mrs. Harkness. Some of her larger donations include the Harkness dormitory and Chapel at Connecticut College, a convalescent home in Port Chester, and the Edward Harkness Memorial Hall at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

The chapel mausoleum was designed by James Gamble Rogers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gamble_Rogers Rogers designed the Harkness Tower (for Edward Stephen Harkness) and Memorial Quadrangle at Yale University.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkness_Tower