Photo of the Day: Carrie Tower, Brown University

In late October 10 years ago, I visited Brown University while vacationing in Providence, R.I. I was impressed with the architecture of the Ivy League campus, but, with so much happening in my world and my life the last decade, I had little reason to think back on it.

Until late yesterday, that is, when I saw the first awful news of yesterday’s campus shooting that left two students dead and nine others injured.

Among the photos I took 10 years ago was this one of the 95-foot-tall campanile clocktower on the Quiet Green adjacent to the Van Wickle Gates, Hope College and University Hall.

Carrie Tower was named for Carrie Mathilde Brown, granddaughter of Brown University namesake Nicholas Brown Jr., whose death in 1892 after 16 years of marriage devastated her husband, Count Paul Bajnotti of Turin, Italy. The widower left this tangible reminder of his wife in the city where they first met.

Preeminently, then, Carrie Tower stands for the enduring power of love—a force so strong, according to the monument's inscription, that "Love is Strong as Death." The truth of that statement will be tested in the days ahead, not just at Brown but in gun-maddened America. 

Photo of the Day: Dill Center for the Performing Arts, Brown University, Providence RI

This time of year, high school seniors will be deciding where they will be going to college. In fact, for Ivy League schools, that big decision was already last month—or, for those who might have chosen the early decision option, closer to the start of the year. 

In any case, Brown University is probably going to be on a number of students’ wish lists. That’s been the case since the 1980s especially, when it began getting high ratings in the Fiske Guide to Colleges. 

Back in the day, I graduated from one of its rivals in the Ivy League—Columbia—and I’ve had no reason to regret it. But I have been curious about what Brown looks like, and in October 2015, while visiting Providence, RI, I had the opportunity to visit the school. It was as lovely as I heard about.

One of the campus buildings that caught my eye was the one I photograph and included here, the Catherine Bryan Dill Center for the Performing Arts—partly because I’m interested in the theater, partly because it’s a striking piece of architecture. As Lyman Hall, it was the university’s first gymnasium. But in the 1970s, then again in 2008, it was renovated, as part of the school’s ongoing improvement of its performing arts facilities.