Much of the work involved restoring the layout to its original openness by removing the small offices and partitions installed to accommodate its former use as a health care facility. Fortunately, the original layout of the first floor was well-suited to the institute’s needs, said Joanna Saltonstall, Facilities Management senior program manager. For example, the prior dining room is now a seminar room, and the former grand ballroom is now an event room with more than 1,500 square feet of space equipped for filming and hybrid events.

“We already have a significant roster of events each year — probably 50-plus — but something new that’s exciting to us is that we are making our space at Andrews House available for academic departments to reserve and use for their own events,” said Anderson, a professor of humanities and English. “These lectures, conferences and workshops will help advance humanities research and community at Brown.”

Additional highlights include three dedicated classrooms, each with a 20- to 36-student capacity; office space for 15 doctoral students; and several new common areas for students, faculty and staff, including a library and a kitchen/eating space. 

Doctoral student and current Cogut Graduate Fellow Arnav Adhikari moved into a new office on the second floor at the start of the semester. He has already enjoyed using the building’s many collaborative areas and described the change as re-energizing to his studies at Brown. 

“There’s a real collegiality that comes with the space, as the layout and the design offer close proximity to other fellows and graduate students, administrators and instructors,” Adhikari said. “I think it will create a nice circuit in which people can interact. It already feels like a hub.”

The move to Andrews House has allowed the institute to provide office space for the Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, which had not been housed in Pembroke Hall, as well as to create a headquarters for the institute’s new Center for Environmental Humanities, which was established in July 2024. 

“Environmental humanities is one of the most significant growth areas in the humanities right now as we confront complex environmental challenges and bring the humanities to bear on the study of human relationships to the environment,” Anderson said. “Our new space was crucial in allowing us to house the center and give its leaders an office and a collective space to grow the center.” 

Another highlight of the renovated property is an inviting new outdoor greenspace that is configured for events. The area had previously been paved and closed off from the street with a wall and fence that were removed during the renovation.  

“The building is in such a beautiful area of campus, and the new plaza really highlights that,” Anderson said. 

Named in 1939 in honor of Brown’s eighth president, E. Benjamin Andrews, Andrews House was built in 1901 and served as a private residence for textile magnate Alfred M. Coats and a Rhode Island governor’s mansion for Robert Livingston Beeckman before the University acquired it in 1922. The University used the space first as a faculty club, and then as the home of Brown University Health Services from the 1930s through 2021. An examination of the building’s wide-ranging history was the focus of a recent student-led research project that went hand-in-hand with the renovation and relocation of the Cogut Institute.

Adhikari, who is working toward a doctorate in English, recalled visiting Andrews House in its previous incarnation as Health Services, when it was filled with examination rooms, tube lights and the scent of hand sanitizer. 

“When I walked into the renovated building for the first time, I was quite shocked,” he said. “It no longer looks anything like a medical building. It’s almost unrecognizable, and it’s very impressive.”