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Brown University and the Hurricane of 1938
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On September 21, 1938, a category 3 hurricane slammed into Long Island. Continuing northward through Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, the Great Hurricane of 1938 caused 682 deaths and $306 million of damages ($4.7 billion in today’s dollars). Rhode Island was one of the hardest hit and Brown University was no exception. The Hurricane felled trees throughout campus. Major flooding in downtown Providence obliterated the writing on the University’s original charter, which was being stored in the bank vault of the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company. And the statue of Caesar Augustus lost its right arm.
Felled trees line the path on the front campus. Hope College and Manning Hall are in the background.
Students help clean campus after the Hurricane. Carrie Tower and Robinson Hall are in the background.
The Hurricane toppled a tree right near Van Wickle Gates. The John Hay Library is in the background.
Students help clear trees near Carrie Tower.
Vice-President James P. Adams sends a memorandum to faculty and staff warning them about using fire as a substitute for light and telling them to go home before dark until further notice.
Memo sent to President Henry Merritt Wriston in 1944 describing the loss of the University’s original charter during the hurricane and efforts to restore the “obliterated” text.
List of damages incurred at Brown by the Hurricane of 1938. -
Robinson Collection photographs featured in the new history on Brown crew
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Selected photographs of men’s and women’s crew from the Edward North Robinson Collection of Brown Athletics in the University Archives have been published in Ever True: The History of Brown Crew or How Oarsmen and Oarswomen Brought Glory to Old Brown.
Numbering over several hundred, the crew photos in the Robinson collection depict the boathouses, teams, practices, and races from 1870 to the present. If you want to see more photographs and other materials relating to men’s and women’s crew at Brown University please contact the Archives staff at archives@brown.edu or visit the University Archives in the John Hay Library. -
Exhibit of Early Italian Books
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Exhibit of Early Italian Books from the Brown University Library
An Exhibition in Honor of Romano Prodi
Curated by William S. Monroe and Patricia Figueroa
March 31 – May 15, 2009
Bopp Seminar Room, 3rd floor, John Hay Library
Although the codex, the book as we know it, was invented in the eastern Mediterranean, it quickly found a home in the Italian peninsula, which became the main center of book production in the early Middle Ages, with the great monasteries of Vivarium and Monte Cassino providing the initiative. While the production of manuscript books spread from the monasteries to the universities and beyond, it was still the Benedictine monastery at Subiaco that brought the first printing press to Italy in the 1460’s. Manuscripts and printed books lived side by side through the rest of the fifteenth and well into the sixteenth century, each form influencing the other.
The Brown University Library holds very strong collections of Italian history, literature, and art, reaching back to its founding in the late eighteenth century. Especially notable are the library’s special collections, housed in the John Hay Library, which include some named collections (the Chambers Dante Collection, the Machievelli Collection) as well as important components of other collections (Annmary Brown collection of incunabula, and the Koopman Collection).
Most of the books in the present exhibit come from the Annmary Brown Collection, with some additions from Koopman, History of Science, and other Special Collections. The John Carter Brown Library, also, has generously lent us one of the exhibited books. We have included some manuscripts along with early printed books, and one can easily see how the new technology of printing did not greatly change the appearance of books in this period. We also hope to illustrate not only the burgeoning vernacular culture, but also the great range of humanistic scholarship between about 1350 and 1600.