Brown University Library

64 Waterman St, Providence, RI 02912, USA

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Built In

1878

History

This lot at Waterman and Prospect Streets was bequeathed to Brown University by alumnus John Carter Brown upon his death in 1874. Designed in the Venetian Gothic style by William Walker and Thomas Gould, the building is pressed brick, trimmed in local granite, and decorated with carvings by James C. Brierly. The John Hay Library was erected in 1912, and the Library Committee's renovation plans for the original building were deemed too expensive. Instead the Department of Economics and its library moved in. Known by different names in the following decades, the old library received its current name, Robinson Hall, in 1946. Ezekiel Gilman Robinson had been university president when the building was dedicated. The Robinson Green Beretta Corporation conducted renovations in 1989 and 1990. The Department of Economics still makes its home in the old library.