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 ...

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

'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

References

External links

Summary at Brownbears.com

Stadium
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