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The Georgetown Metropolitan 
Legend has it that back in the day, recalcitrant students were locked up at the top of that tower for some enforced solitude/contemplation. The savvy ones would bring a rope, which they would use to lower a hat, shoe, or other article down to ground level, in the hopes that their fellow students would deposit some ‘provisions’ in it. The penitential experience is greatly improved by the addition of smuggled whiskey.
The short towers on the north front of Old North were constructed (probably in the 1820s or 1830s) to shore up the building.
Henry Foxall’s (the authentic spelling of his name before it was changed to the more “toney” Foxhall) cannon foundry was about a half mile to the west, near the mouth of Foundry Branch. Foundry Methodist Church in the city was endowed by Foxall in thanksgiving for the foundry being spared destruction by the British in 1814.
According to durable Georgetown tradition, the occasional test firings of newly cast artillery caused both cracks in Old North’s foundations and anxiety among the Jesuit fathers. Hence, the short towers. When I was a student at Georgetown in the 60s, one, or perhaps both, of the towers housed students in much-coveted single-room suites: one level was a tiny bedroom and the other a cozy study.