In the large N c limit, the mass spectrum of the L = 1 orbitally excited baryons N * has a very simple structure, with states degenerate in pairs of spins J = (2 ), corresponding to irreducible representations (towers) of the contracted SU (4) c symmetry group. The mixing angles are completely determined in this limit. Using a mass operator approach, we study 1/N c corrections to this picture, pointing out a four-fold ambiguity in the correspondence of the observed baryons with the large N c states. For each of the four possible assignments, we fit the coefficients of the quark operators contributing to the mass spectrum to O(N −1 c ). We comment on the implications of our results for the constituent quark model description of these states. *