Bryant College

Bryant College was for many years a neighbor of Brown University, its site being the present “East Campus,” which Brown purchased in 1969 when Bryant acquired a new campus in Smithfield on land given by Earl S. Tupper. The idea of Brown’s acquiring Bryant had come up before, but in a completely different context. In 1949 when Bryant was reincorporated as a tax-exempt, non-profit institution, its charter included a provision that the college with all its assets was to be offered to Brown University on January 2, 1960 or on the death of its president, Henry Loeb Jacobs, should that occur earlier. Bryant had been operated as a private institution for 87 years, many of those years under Jacobs, its owner and president, who feared for the future of the college as a privately-managed business, once it should pass from the control of himself and his son. Desiring to perpetuate the college, which had then grown into an institution of 3000 students and thirteen buildings, he reincorporated it as an educational institution under the management of trustees with the expectation that after his death the opportunity would be tendered to Brown “to carry on and operate Bryant College of Business Administration as an integral part of Brown University with such courses of instruction and studies as Brown University may from time to time determine and under the same or similar name and in any event with the word ‘Bryant’ as part of such name.” In 1956 Brown declined the proposal when the Bryant trustees asked for its cancellation, now that Bryant’s conditions had improved as a non-profit institution and its faculty members were becoming worried about the rapidly approaching radical change in 1960. President Keeney agreed with Jacobs that Bryant would do better to continue on its own, pointing out the Brown’s emphasis on liberal arts and sciences in a four-year course was incompatible with Bryant’s focus on business administration in a two-year course.

Brown purchased Bryant’s East Side campus in 1969 for five million dollars, thereby adding over ten acres of land and 26 buildings adjacent to the Brown campus. This move to acquire property which was already tax-exempt saved Brown from having to acquire property on the tax rolls. The two-block area in the vicinity of Brook, Benevolent, Cooke and Power Streets was named the East Campus. Most of the buildings were renamed, and some were removed. Bryant’s administration building at 154 Hope Street, which had been named Taft for its first owner Robert W. Taft, was renamed King House in 1974 in honor of Lida Shaw King, former dean of Pembroke College. The Jacobs Library at 128 Hope became the home of the Department of Anthropology and was named Giddings House. South Hall on Young Orchard Avenue is now the Orwig Music Center, and the long building at its rear along Benevolent Street was converted into the Grant Recital Hall, the Fulton Rehearsal Hall, and the Morrison-Gerard Studio.

Kilcup Hall on Hope Street was built in 1961 as a classroom building. In 1974 it became the Brown-Fox Point Day care center, a bilingual facility for children of Brown students and staff and other community families. Memorial Hall at 75 Charles Field Street was for a time used by the Meeting Street School. By 1972 the back section of the building had been removed and converted into a parking area. The building now houses the offices of the Brown Police and Security Services. Eldridge Hall at 79 Charles Field Street became a cooperative dormitory called Carberry House, and Harriet Hall at 71 Charles Field became another called Milhous. Appleby Hall at 100 Charles Field kept its name until 1988 when it was renamed Barbour Hall for President Clarence Barbour. Gardner Hall, a dormitory built on Power Street in 1960, was renamed Perkins Hall in 1974 in honor of Judge Fred B. Perkins ’19. Rita Hoey Hall at 80 Charles Field Street became the Slavic House, and Governor Dyer Hall at 150 Power Street the German House.

The student activities building became the Steinert Practice Center. Jacobs Hall on Young Orchard Avenue, built in 1956, was renamed Theodore Francis Green Hall in honor of Senator Green 1887 in 1974. The Bryant dormitories on Young Orchard Avenue, Carroll Hall, Allen Hall, Salisbury Hall, and Stowell Hall were removed to make way for the new apartment-type dormitories in 1973. Alumni Hall at 88 Benevolent Street is the home of WBRU. The name, East Campus, was made official in June 1971.