Tower created a number of stamp collections, each focused on one aspect of philately.
His collections included English postal history mostly from the stampless period prior to the invention of postage stamps, as well as specialized collection of war covers and philatelic material related to Abraham Lincoln.
Tower was able to convince Princeton University to create an academic-level "stamp room" containing philatelic material such as postage stamps, cancelled covers, and other items of postal history, and he was named curator by the university.
Tower was named to the American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame in 1951.
Upon his death, Tower bequeathed his valuable collections of postage stamps and postal history item to the Princeton University Library.