Ever True
A Stone for the Corner
From the Archives
February 26th, 2025
This article originally appeared in the Brown Alumni Monthly in July 1957.
The new West Quadrangle is designed “to provide a dignified and happy home for the independents,” President Keeney said on June 1 when he presided over the laying of its cornerstone. “If it serves them as well as the Wriston Quadrangle has served the fraternities, Brown will have made a second great accomplishment in University housing and strengthened our belief that student residences have not merely a physical but an intellectual function.”
LOOKING DOWN—[1957] Benevolent from Brown St. toward the City. Corner at left was site of former Alumni House. PHOTO: BROWN ARCHIVES
The building, which will be the College home of 585 undergraduates, starting this fall, has an interior division into six houses. “To remind students of the future that this is a home for the mind as well as for the body, the Corporation has voted,” Dr. Kenney said, “to name each house for a former Professor at Brown.” They are:
Walter Goodnow Everett ’85, Professor of Philosophy and Natural Theology, on the Faculty from 1890 to 1930, President pro tempore 1912-13.
Walter Cochran Bronson ’87 and hon. ’15, Faculty member from 1892 to 1927, author of The History of Brown University in 1915.
John Franklin Jameson, hon. ’14, Professor of History at Brown from 1888 to 1901, later Director of Historical Research at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
Albert Davis Mead, hon. ’39, associated with the University from 1895 to 1936 from Instructor to Professor of Biology, Vice-President for 11 years and President pro tempore for one.
Raymond Clare Archibald, hon. ’43, in the Mathematics Department from 1908 to 1943.
William Carey Poland ’68 and hon. ’04, with a career in Classics and Art at Brown from 1870 to 1915.
Memorials to Arnold and Bigelow
Of even more interest to contemporary Brunonians are the memorials to two other men, the two large lounges which will become the social centers of the Quadrangle. They will bear the names of “two of Brown’s greatest sons and most devoted servants”—Provost Samuel T. Arnold ’13 and Vice-President Bruce M. Bigelow ’24. When the building is occupied, their portraits will hang in these lounges on the Benevolent St. side of the Quadrangle. Mrs. Arnold and Mrs. Bigelow were in the audience which watched the laying of the cornerstone and later inspected the spacious memorials.
GUIDED GROUP—one of many to tour the Quad during the [1957] Commencement period.PHOTO: BROWN ARCHIVES
They were guides to show those at the ceremonies about, as they did other groups during the Commencement season. (A strike of carpenters had made it impossible to finish the building wholly, although construction had been on schedule up to that point.) They could visualize what the new Quadrangle will mean to Brown.
The six houses of the building are part of a continuous, enclosed “H,” with two inner courts of agreeable dimensions. Because of the slope of the ground from Brown St. toward Benefit, there are three floors at the east end and four at the west. The typical floor has about 50 double and 35 single rooms, located so that only six or eight rooms make a self-contained unit. In addition to the two large lounges, there are three reception rooms for smaller groups and six smaller lounges. Suites are provided for both married and single Resident Fellows, so that there will be one for each house. The apartments for the married Fellows comprise a living room, study, bedrooms, bath, and a kitchen large enough for use in entertaining student groups.
Like the Wriston Quadrangle, the West Quad has an exterior shell in American Georgian. Inner construction is of precast concrete, which proved successful in the Wriston Quadrangle, with an exterior of brick. Planting of shrubbery and other landscaping, panned for the street fronting and inner courts, are expected to be ready by the fall term.
“This is a great moment for the University,” President Keeney said in his remarks. “This splendid building is so nearly done that we can speak as if it were. The architect has designed just what we wanted, and the builder has built it with extraordinary skill, durability, and economy.”
He expressed his thanks to Thomas Mott Shaw, hon. ‘51, the architect; Thomas and William Gilbane ‘33 of Gilbane Construction Company; and, particularly, Edward W. Burman, who “directed this operation with a competence that borders on genius.” He had a tribute, too, for the University committee: Donald G. Millar ‘19, H. Stanton Smith ‘21, Vice President Thomas B. Appleget ‘17, Ward A. Davenport, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, William N. Davis, Director of Student Residences, President Emeritus Wriston, and Dr. Kenney, the latter of two ex officio. They received “invaluable assistance” from Vice President F. Morris Cochran and Robert E. Hill, Davis’ assistant, and many others.
“MY FIRST CORNERSTONE,” Dr. Keeney said, apologizing for his amateur masonship, while Master Mason Colisi looked away, amused. Others, right to left, are Thomas F. Gilbane ‘33, contractor; Thomas Matt Shaw, architect; W. Easton Louttit ‘25 of the Corporation committee.PHOTO: BROWN ARCHIVES
“We Have Done Well”
“I think that the architect and the builder will agree with me that the members of this committee behaved just as a building committee should; not one of them had a hobby, and each of them had good ideas. By pooling all of our ideas with the professional skills of others, I believe we have done well. Many persons have walked past this corner and watched progress almost every morning since the building was started. I think we have all been impressed by the way the workmen have gone about their work. I have never seen anybody loafing or shouting—I have scarcely heard anyone telling anyone else to do. This has been a team operation of a sort that can only excited the admiration of everyone who knows what it means to work with his hands; perhaps it increased the understanding of those who do not.”
The ceremony was at the northeast corner of the Quadrangle at Brown and Benevolent Sts. As he spoke, President Keeney was flanked by Chancellor Harold B. Tannor ’09; W. Easton Louittit ’25, Chairman of the Corporation’s Committee on Comprehensive Planning and Development of University Property (he had just been elected a Fellow); Architect Shaw; Thomas Gilbane; and Albert Colisi, master mason of the Quadrangle. When he used the golden trowel, provided by Burnman, Dr. Kenney apologized for being so inexperienced. “It’s my first cornerstone,” he explained. He called on Colisi to “give me a hand.” Together they slid the granite block into place while the spectators applauded.
Earlier in the morning, at the Corporation meeting, President Kenney adverted to the housing situation on College Hill in these words: “The Wristen Quadrangle has come very close to solving the problem of fraternities and has brought members into active and happy association with the education processes of the University, though academically they are excelled by the independents. It is evident that the fraternities overemphasize social activity. Their very success has intensified the discontent of the non-fraternity men.
“The new Quadrangle is designed and intended to provide facilities for a happy and dignified social life for non-fraternity men and, in that way, to improve their opportunities for education of the mind and of the person.” (This year groups of independents applied for adjoining rooms in the West Quadrangle for next fall.) “If the West Quadrangle is as successful as we hope it will be,” Dr. Kenney concluded, “it will be second great contribution to American university housing. It will reinforce our belief that housing is an intellectual rather than a physical problem.”
