Richard Gouse Field at Brown Stadium is a football stadium located in
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
. It is the home of
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
's
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
and outdoor track teams. The athletic teams at Brown University, known as the Bears, compete in the
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...
. Brown was the last Ivy stadium with a grass playing field until the installation of a
FieldTurf surface in 2021. The field is named for
Richard I. Gouse
Richard I. Gouse (born October 29, 1946) is the president of the New England Institute of Technology. Gouse has held that position since 1971. He is one of the longest serving college presidents in American history.
Education
In 1963, Gouse ...
'68, the primary donor of the turf field.
Location and description
Richard Gouse Field at Brown Stadium is located on Elmgrove Avenue in the city's East Side, approximately 3/4 of a mile from the rest of the athletic facilities and over a mile from the main campus. The architectural design features a
trapezoid
A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium ().
A trapezoid is necessarily a Convex polygon, convex quadri ...
-shaped southwest stands and a smaller section of concrete bleachers on the northeast side. Stands sit on both sides of the field along with a running track. The press box traverses the entire top of the southwest stands, and the rear of the southwest side includes several ornate "B" logos and the university's seal, as well as two stone bear's heads on either end of the stands.
The stadium's current capacity is 20,000.
The largest crowd ever recorded at the stadium was for the Brown vs.
Colgate game on Thanksgiving morning 1932; portable bleachers were brought in to accommodate 33,000 fans.
History
In the early years of Brown sports, the football teams played at Adelaide Park in
Elmwood or on the university campus.
In 1897, Brown was given land just west of
Hope Street about a mile and a half north of campus, on which it built Andrews Field. This combined football/baseball field and running track was used from 1899 to 1925.
Brown Stadium, originally known as Brown University Field, constructed on the other side of Hope Street and slightly to the south, was financed entirely by subscription.
The new field was dedicated on October 24, 1925, before a crowd of 27,000 spectators.
The north stands are considerably smaller than the south ones, designed to allow for future expansion to mirror the large south ones and bring the stadium's fixed seating capacity to 32,000, but this expansion was never constructed.
Adjacent to the field was Aldrich Baseball Field, and across Elmgrove Avenue was
Marvel Gymnasium
Marvel Gymnasium was a 3,000-seat multipurpose gymnasium in Providence, Rhode Island. It was home to the Brown University Bears basketball team as well as other teams. The gymnasium included a basketball court and seating, a second-floor running ...
, completed in 1927.
Improvements
In 1978 the stadium was completely renovated as part of the football team's 100th anniversary. The original wooden benches were replaced with aluminum.
The concrete was restored and waterproofed, and the restrooms, press box, and graphics were painted. an underground sprinkler was installed.
In 1991 a new home team locker room and reception room were constructed.
The stadium's first night game was played on September 25, 2010, as Brown defeated Harvard, 29–14, before a crowd of 17,000 fans.
Richard Gouse Field
Brown was the last of the Ivies to play on a grass playing surface.
The grass field, used for nearly a century, was oddly "domed" in the middle, an anomaly among football fields and a potential injury risk.
In summer 2021 a "perfect"
FieldTurf surface
was installed in time for that year's fall football season.
The new field, named after primary donor
Richard I. Gouse
Richard I. Gouse (born October 29, 1946) is the president of the New England Institute of Technology. Gouse has held that position since 1971. He is one of the longest serving college presidents in American history.
Education
In 1963, Gouse ...
'68, is said to be faster and safer than the previous grass surface.
The first game played on the new field was the 2021
Governor's Cup against the
Rhode Island Rams
The Rhode Island Rams are the athletic programs of the University of Rhode Island, based in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. The Rams compete in the NCAA's Division I as a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference. The football team, howev ...
, which was also Brown's first game after a yearlong hiatus due to COVID-19.
Notable events
Brown has had many successful teams since the stadium opened, including the Iron Man team of 1926, when eleven players played the entirety of two games and most of a third; the 1976, 1999, 2005, and 2008 Ivy League championship teams; as well as players such as
Joe Paterno
Joseph Vincent Paterno (; December 21, 1926 – January 22, 2012), sometimes referred to as JoePa, was an American college football player, athletic director, and coach. He was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions football, Penn ...
, former head football coach at
Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...
, and several former
NFL stars such as
Don Colo
Donald Richard Colo (January 5, 1925 – June 23, 2019) was an American football defensive tackle who played nine seasons in the National Football League. He was born in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He served in the US Navy during World War ...
of the
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference ( ...
and
Steve Jordan of the
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansion ...
.
The stadium hosted the Division I
NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship in
1976
Events January
* January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
* January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
* January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...
and
1985
The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations.
Events January
* January 1
** The Internet's Domain Name System is created.
** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...
and two quarterfinal matches of the
2016 NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship.
Gallery
File:BrownStadium1.jpg, View from the grandstand, 2008
File:BrownStadium2.jpg, As seen in 2008
File:Game at Brown Stadium, Providence Rhode Island.jpg, Brown vs. Cornell, Oct 20, 2018
File:Scoreboard at Brown Stadium, Providence RI.jpg, Scoreboard
See also
*
List of NCAA Division I FCS football stadiums
The following is a list of current National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) football stadiums in the United States.
Conference affiliations reflect those for the comin ...
References
External links
Summary at Brownbears.comStadium entry in ''
Encyclopedia Brunoniana
''Encyclopedia Brunoniana'' is an American reference work by Martha Mitchell covering Brown University. Published in 1993 by the Brown University Library, the encyclopedia has 629 pages. A digital version can be read free of charge on the Internet ...
''
{{Rhode Island college football venues
College football venues
Brown Bears football
Sports venues in Rhode Island
NCAA Men's Division I Lacrosse Championship venues
College lacrosse venues in the United States
Lacrosse venues in the United States
Buildings and structures in Providence, Rhode Island
Sports venues in Providence County, Rhode Island
1925 establishments in Rhode Island
Sports venues completed in 1925
American football venues in Rhode Island