On September 8, 1836, the Corporation of Brown University appointed a committee to “devise means for erecting a building for lecture rooms and rooms for the reception of geological and physiological specimens” (Mitchell 1993: 466). The new building, Rhode Island Hall, was dedicated four years later on September 4, 1840 and became Brown University’s fourth campus building and its first dedicated solely to the sciences. The countless people whose lives intersected with the history of Rhode Island Hall would likely be surprised that more than one and a half centuries later the building would have inspired a number of archaeological studies by people affiliated with an entire department dedicated to the study of ancient people. Even to the average onlooker today, however, Rhode Island Hall may not seem to be ancient enough to be the focus of an archaeological investigation. However, we must remember that seven of the eight Ivy League schools (including Brown University) are in fact older than the United States of America itself. Rhode Island Hall is much younger than that, of course, but archaeological studies of the more recent past are always worthwhile, especially when the material remains that enlighten this past are in danger of being lost forever. Such was the case when in the last few years Rhode Island Hall had fallen into dilapidation and the aged edifice’s building, fire, and environmental codes had become outdated. In the fall of 2008, building rehabilitation began under Anmahian Winton architects and Shawmut Design and Construction contractors to renovate the hall’s interior and exterior to become the future home of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Rhode Island Hall has certainly had an interesting past, and now it promises to have quite a future. This thesis will serve to document this transformation, as well as the histories of Rhode Island Hall and those of the people and the material remains they left behind. Another less tangible change that has taken place in the history of Rhode Island Hall that will be addressed is the gradual transition of the building before its final incarnation from housing a specific function to becoming recently a multiple purpose structure. Finally, the building’s future as Brown University’s archaeology center will be described not only through the architects’ plans, but through personal communication and ethnographies of the people involved in the restoration project. Some of the major themes that will play a role in the analysis of the project include the archaeology of contemporaneity, architectural memory and accumulation, abandonment studies, and, of course historic preservation. The major question which arises is how historic preservation can succeed in protecting the architectural histories and meanings of a building. During this process, what objects are to be kept and which ones are to be discarded? The success of the restoration of Rhode Island Hall in this light will be considered in comparison to the reuse of other buildings on campus, namely University Hall. How Rhode Island Hall fits into the current Building Brown agenda is also relevant to this study. The hope is that the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World can inspire other departments to document to the best of their abilities any transformations that may take place as part of Building Brown or in the future at the university. After all, archaeology fittingly is concerned with the documentation for posterity of cultural remains that would otherwise be lost forever.
Figure 1.01: The main (east) entrance of Rhode Island Hall in 2007 – note the number of signs to the right of the front door, reflecting the number of services held within [link]
Figure 1.02: Photograph of Rhode Island Hall by Wallace Nutting, ca. 1904 (Nuding 2008) [link]
The environmental benefits of restoring Rhode Island Hall will also be studied, especially in relation to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED provides standards for environmentally sustainable construction (Vittori et al. 2008). This thesis will help to document the sustainability of the building and to educate the public about how such environmentally-friendly construction is possible as part of the certification process.
The following chapter of this presentation will be largely theoretical in nature, outlining more fully the themes that will be addressed. This chapter will necessarily be multidisciplinary, collecting research from fields other than archaeology and anthropology, including architectural studies, historic preservation, environmental studies, and urban studies. The next two chapters will deal with the history of Rhode Island Hall. The third chapter will discuss the period from the establishment of Brown University in 1764 to the state of Rhode Island Hall first witnessed by the author before 2005. The fourth chapter will then analyze the nature of the building as early as 2005, along with the history of the creation of the Joukowsky Institute, immediately anticipating the commencement of interior demolition in the fall of 2008. This transformation from the fall of 2008 through the spring of 2009 will form the basis for the fifth chapter, which will include documentation in the form of photos, materials, and interviews. The final chapter will reflect on the restoration work and point to the future importance of the building.
During the spring term of 2008, Elise Nuding, an undergraduate student at Brown University, carried out an independent study project in Rhode Island Hall, supervised by Professor Christopher Witmore of the Joukowsky Institute. The purpose of this project was threefold: to collect all materials relevant to Rhode Island Hall’s history, to document the state of, as well as the relations with, the building in its last semester before the radical transformation of 2008, and to turn archaeological practices onto the research institution itself (Nuding 2008). The project was successful in achieving all of its goals, and Nuding was especially helpful in spending hours in the John Hay Library collecting historical documents relating to Rhode Island Hall and making them easily accessible to the public on a wiki. In addition, Nuding proved beneficial in the current project as custodian of the material remains recovered from the building.
The transformations of Rhode Island Hall from Brown University’s fourth building on campus, to museum, to laboratory, to Philosophy and Geology Department, to crowded classroom and office space, and, finally, to the Joukowsky Institute, is a fascinating story that has thankfully been recorded. This archaeology of Rhode Island Hall will harken back to Brown University’s first builders, students, and professors who worked selflessly to establish an educational institution at a time when the American university (and America itself) was a new idea. Without their efforts – and our efforts to preserve their memory – we cannot pursue a proper study, especially one of archaeology. After all, how can one prepare for the future without understanding the past?
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Continue to Chapter 2: Themes