These memories of the building are contributed by students who were at Brown during Spring 2008, the last semester of use before renovation.

Caroline '11: I took an Italian class and an Education class in RI Hall in Fall 2007, and so was there three times a week. I liked the building because it felt old-fashioned. It was antique and quaint, and the stairs were curious. It was very different from other classroom settings. It was the only building on the left side of the main green that I went into regularly, and I think it was one of my favourite buildings. It was the first classroom at Brown I went into because I shopped a class in 201 during ADOCH. I miss it. It was kind of obvious it was built for other purposes which was why I liked it.

Eric '11: I went there once a week for a seminar. I remember it being like halfway between an older building and a modern building, but it's hard to describe what I mean exactly. I don't remember much else, and I didn't know its history at all. It did seem to fit perfectly into the main green though.

Caroline '10: I took 'Language Learning Disorders (COGS 1470) in Spring 2008 in the basement. Loved the staircase, but I remember the hallways being narrow and often running into people. I enjoyed the class but it wasn't a very good setup for a seminar because the pillars in the classroom got in the way of seeing who was talking. It was a quiet building, not as distracting as somewhere like Wilson where there's always noise from other classes.

Anonymous '08: I first went to RI Hall during the spring of my freshman year for my interview for Writing Fellows. The interview itself was pretty intimidating, but made even more so by the fact that I was going to an unfamiliar, almost "secret" basement space.
During the fall of my sophomore year, I went to the Writing Fellows space in the basement of RI Hall three times a week for EL195: Seminar in the Teaching of Writing. My memories of the WFs lounge are very much linked to the class that met in that space...I picture particular people from my class sitting on the couch at the far end of the room, and eating cookies from the rooster-shaped cookie jar (kept on the coffee table in the middle of the room) before class. During the spring of my sophomore year and throughout my junior year, I went to RI Hall much less often, probably only 2-3 times a semester to deal with bureaucratic stuff for writing fellows.
During the summer before my senior year, Rhoda Flaxman resigned as director of WFs, and Doug Brown was appointed as the new director. Rhoda had served as director of the Writing Fellows program for many years, and had run the program largely the same way throughout her tenure. Fellows had mixed feelings about her departure. Some were excited about the possibility of change, while others were concerned about the loss of institutional memory.
These different opinions extended to the Writing Fellows' space in Rhode Island Hall. Rhoda insisted that our basement, windowless lounge with its old couches and chairs (i think she called it a "living room") was the only place where it would work to teach EL195, and that the class wouldn't work around a traditional seminar table. When Doug Brown took over the Writing Fellows Program, he insisted that he couldn't work in a basement office without windows, and that the WFs program needed to be in a more welcoming, accessible place, so he moved the offices up to the main floor of RI Hall. He felt strongly that EL195 needed to be in a "proper" seminar room, so he reserved a room elsewhere on campus (in Smitty B, I think). You could say that this move symbolized a lot of the changes that were going on in the Writing Fellows program at the time--a willingness to shake things up and promote openness, but perhaps the loss of tradition as a result. At the same time as Doug moved the Writing Fellows out of the basement of Rhode Island hall, he modified and updated the syllabus for EL195 and instituted other changes, such as electronic rather than hand-written commenting on students' papers. The veteran Writing Fellows had mixed feelings about the program moving out of the RI Hall basement, as they did about Rhoda's departure and Doug's arrival more generally.
I guess I never thought very much about the history of RI hall or how RI hall fits with the main green, mainly because RI Hall was so strongly linked to Writing Fellows in my mind.

Caroline '09: I went there for the Office of International Programs, maybe about 6 or 7 times in all. It's one of my favourite buildings from the outside, but the inside was disappointing, and kind of run-down. I shopped a class in the basement at one point, and it was kind of strange. Dark, with not much light. I always thought the door to the Writing Fellows Centre looked kind of cool. I did wonder about the history. We touched on it a bit in a class I took with Dietrich Neumann, 'Nineteenth Century Architecture".

Meg '11: I took ANTH 0100 in room 201, Spring 2008. It was a kind of weird classroom; it had really high ceilings. It was nice looking from the outside, but seemed like make-shift space on the inside.

Amy '11: I went to the basement of RI Hall for a Writing Fellow interview, in their common room, in Spring 2008. I entered from the basement door on the south side, and so didn't get to see the rest of the interior. The part I was in was kind of decrepid and dark, I guess because it was in the basement. It seemed like a place that needed renovating because although they were holding interviews there the space had obviously been used for something previously that had moved out.

Nic '11: I had two classes in Rhode Island Hall in the fall of 2007. My history class was in a large-ish room on the 2nd floor, and my Italian class was in one of the basement rooms. I also went to the Office of International Programs once. I guess I always found the building a little bit awkward , in that more things were in it than it could fit. Classrooms, offices, and psychological services all struggled for space -- one got the distinct feeling that there were always lots of people together in the small space. In that sense, I can see it in relation to other buildings on the Main Green -- a certain lack of spaciousness. However, with other buildings, it was harder to see the remnants of what the building used to be like. I feel like it was a little bit easier with Rhode Island Hall to picture what it used to be like, especially because of that double staircase. The narrow hallway surrounded by offices leading to it felt like new additions, but that staircase seemed like a remnant from the past . That mixture of old and new definitely made me wonder about what function the building used to fulfill, and I still do not know anything about it.

What do people remember?

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