In Farnam Hall at Yale College in New Haven (Plate 96A), begun in 1869, the German-trained Russell Sturgis (1836-1909),[243] who had been for a time Wight’s partner, somehow arrived at an almost Webb-like—or at least Brooks-like—simplicity and sophistication of late High Victorian Gothic design, in marked contrast to the stridency of Hunt’s precisely contemporary Divinity School there. This, however, is almost unique. The most characteristic work of the day was produced by such home-trained architects as Ware & Van Brunt, Wight, Edward T. Potter, and his younger brother William A. Potter (1842-1909).[244] Wight’s National Academy in New York has been mentioned. His Mercantile Library in Brooklyn, N.Y., completed in 1869, of red brick with ranges of pointed-arched windows regularly but asymmetrically disposed, is similar—and not inferior—to much of G. G. Scott’s secular work. Edward T. Potter’s Union College Library has also been mentioned. His Harvard Church in Brookline, Mass., of 1873-5 is more conventional for its period. Largely renewed internally after being gutted by a fire in 1931, this shows how effectively such American materials as the popular brownstone from Portland, Conn., and the light-coloured Berea sandstone from Ohio, enlivened by accents of livid green serpentine from Pennsylvania, could produce a polychromy richer and more enduring than the endemic Butterfieldian or Teulonian red brick, with banding of bricks dipped in black tar, that had been in general use for a decade. Along this line Richardson himself followed for a while (see Chapter 13). At the same time William A. Potter, who became very briefly Supervising Architect in Washington in succession to Mullet in 1875, produced a few post offices, such as the one in Pittsfield, Mass., that are characteristic but not very distinguished examples of secular High Victorian Gothic executed in stone. (Both Potters, however, gave up the High Victorian Gothic to accept Richardson’s leadership within the next few years.)