While this building houses a memorial carillon, it is primarily a conventional high-rise, contains classrooms for the University of Michigan's school of music, and houses offices for the department of musicology and ethnomusicology and for the University Musical Society.

He also commissioned “Sunday Morning in Deep Waters”, the fountain on Ingalls Mall between Burton Tower and the Michigan League.

After University of Michigan Regent Sarah Goddard Power committed suicide by jumping to her death from the eighth floor of Burton Tower in 1987, slight modifications were made to the structure, such as the addition of stops to prevent windows from opening more than a few inches.

The University of Michigan campus has two of only twenty-three grand carillons in the world, barely two miles apart.

The carillon and spire can also be lit in other colors by the LED illumination system installed for the bicentennial.