The seven-foot bronze Brown Bear statue stands at a prominent location above the entrance into the College Green from Faunce House. It was gifted to the university in 1923, paid for by $10,000 of donations from Brown alumni. It was sculpted and cast by New York City animal sculptor Eli Harvey. The statue was originally located at Marvel Gymnasium, but was moved to the main College Green when the gym was shut down in 1989.
The front side of the pedestal reads:
Given By Alumni And Undergraduates
To Brown University
To Symbolize Those Qualities Of
Strength Courage Endurance
Which Go Far To Make Men Invincible
MCMXXVIII
The bear stands on a pedestal containing a piece of slate rock stepped upon by Roger Williams in 1636 when claiming the land that would become the city of Providence. On the back of the statue, below the slate, the pedestal is inscribed with:
This is a piece of the slate rock
on which Roger Williams Landed
when he came here in 1636
to hold forth his lively experiment
of independence with strength & courage.
May his spirit live in Brown men.
Read more about this topic: List Of Brown University Statues
Famous quotes containing the words brown and/or bear:
“What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?... All their speeches put together and boiled down ... do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house,—that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All of women’s aspirations—whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination—ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas—and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.”
—Susan Faludi (20th century)