Courtesy of PAW Online. Being an institution for more than 250 years naturally leads to many myths and legends about the more mysterious aspects of life at Princeton. Enjoy part four of Princeton myths! Want to know the truth about the Yale bulldog on the chapel - or at least as much as we know? Then read on!

Myth Number 4: The architect of the Chapel was a graduate of Yale, and as his "signature" he left a carving of the Yale bulldog on the building.

Fact:Midway down a copper drainpipe on the east façade of the Chapel is the unmistakable face of a bull-dog. But who put it there -- or whether it's even representative of Yale -- is unclear. The Chapel's architect was Ralph Adams Cram, the university's supervising architect between 1907 and 1929, and Cram didn't go to college. Furthermore, his primary assistant, Alexander Hoyle, was a Harvard graduate. It seems likely, therefore, that the bulldog was planted by one of the other assistant architects. In 1991, a 96-year-old man named Clifford MacKinnon revealed that he had sculpted his own head and placed it on the Chapel's portal along with a small sculpture of Cram -- proving that it was possible for an assistant architect to insert his own touches on the Chapel while it was under construction.
Another, albeit unlikely, possibility is that the bulldog is a British bulldog. The sculpture is around the corner from the Bright Pulpit, which is dedicated to John Bright, "the great British commoner." While the Orange Key guides on the campus tour do point out the "Yale" bulldog, they also like to note that Yale belongs in the gutter anyway.