Lise Rahdert '10 stood comfortably on the steps of Manning Hall in front of a large group of prospective freshmen and their parents, ready to give them their introduction to the University.
She is as well-informed as any of her fellow tour guides, having memorized the popular histories retold in the information packets provided by the Bruin Club, and she has added her own personal touch and distinction to share with her attentive group. But though she follows the proscribed stories faithfully, Rahdert may unwittingly mislead her tour groups.
Many Brunonian legends have evolved over the years into over-embellished tall tales, to the point where taking a campus tour is like hearing the tail end of a game of telephone. You get the message, but the details are a bit off.
Rahdert began her tour by walking through the quiet green and stopping in front of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library. She quickly launched into a story most Brunonians have heard before.
The library was built in the 1960s, said Rahdert, but shortly after its dedication students rechristened the new building. "Brown students like to shorten the names of things, so they started calling it the Rock," she said. "When the Rockefeller Foundation found out about this, they sent an official letter to the University prohibiting calling it the Rock. Well, we all know how Brown students hate being told what to do, so everyone began calling it the John!"
Spurred by the group's laughter, Rahdert continued, ad-libbing the rest of the way. "You can picture what people would say," she said. "Like, 'Oh man, I just spent three hours in the John, it was the most painful experience of my life.' "
Ben Mishkin '08, tour coordinator for the Bruin Club, said he enjoys telling this story as well. "It always gets the biggest laugh," he said, adding that all of the tour guides put their own spin on the stock stories. "There's just so much you can do with it."
But entertaining as the legend is, it may not be true. Ray Butti, senior library specialist for scholarly resources, found no trace of the purported "official letter" from the Rockefeller Foundation in University records. Senior Library Specialist Gayle Lynch, like Butti, is familiar with the story but is unsure about the truth at the heart of it.
Lynch, who joined the University three years after the library's 1964 construction, recalled, "There was some discussion that the building committee was not too happy with it being called the Rock, so students started calling it the John, and then the committee decided that maybe 'the Rock' wasn't so bad."
Unfortunately, as Butti wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, "The problem with these legends is that there is not a lot of documentation on them."
The University archives in the John Hay Library, however, do contain one document that mentions the legend. In November 1964, Providence Journal reporter Garrett Byrnes wrote to then-President Barnaby Keeney, regarding a never-published editorial about the "raffish and possibly false" origins of the nickname.
"The story goes - and there may be no substance to it - some of the leaders on College Hill thought 'the Rock' was a trifle deprecating for such a fine structure and made an effort, happily in vain, to thwart the name," reads a draft of the editorial attached to the note. "The student attitude seems to have been, 'okay, if we can't call it the Rock, we'll call it the John.' ... Wisdom prevailed, as it should on the campus of a great university."
The story of the Rock is just one highlight of Rahdert's tour. She turned her group's attention across College Street to the Hay, which Rahdert said housed a massive toy soldier collection, an original book by ornithologist and painter John James Audubon and a manuscript of George Orwell's "1984." She then pulled out her trump card: The Hay Library owns books bound in human skin.
Hay librarians said they try to downplay the mythical aura that surrounds the books, as it leads some students to believe the books are only University myths. But Ann Dodge, coordinator of reader services, told The Herald in an e-mail that the books - and their corporeal bindings - are real. Two of the books are copies of Hans Holbein's "The Dance of Death" and the third is an Andreas Vesalius anatomy text. The Holbein books are kept on reserve at the front desk of the Hay and the anatomy text is currently under glass in the Lownes Room as part of a recent exhibition for first-years.
Dodge said Hay librarians have asked tour guides not to mention the books because they are fragile and deteriorate more every time they are held and inspected. In an e-mail to The Herald, she warned: "Most people find the bindings to be 'anti-climatic' as they look like many other books. Tanned skin is tanned skin after all. It's not as if there is a tattoo or a belly button."
The books do look like normal leather-bound books, though the back of one of the copies of "Dance of Death" feels more like suede than a typical leather cover.
The human-skin books may generate the most excitement among a tour group - Rahdert's responded with a collective "ew" - but the toy soldier collection is an impressive holding in its own right. The collection is one of the largest in the world, according to Peter Harrington MA'84, curator of the Anne S. K. Brown military collection. The 5,000-plus tin soldiers are housed in glass cases on the second floor of the Hay and are also displayed in the Annmary Brown Memorial, both of which are open to the community. Although this collection is significant, Harrington describes it as only the "tip of the iceberg, the icing on the cake" of the entire Brown military collection.
But Harrington joked that tour-goers shouldn't get the wrong idea about the collection and his position. "I think some people think my day-to-day job is arranging the toy soldiers," said Harrington, when in reality, "I just put the lights on and turn them off." Harrington's primary responsibility is maintaining the other elements of the military collection, including more than 14,000 prints, paintings and watercolors.
Rahdert's tour continued around campus through Wriston Quadrangle, past the fraternity houses and the Sharpe Refectory and out onto Thayer Street. As the tour group continued up Thayer past the Sciences Library, Rahdert discussed the 14-story building. "Can anyone tell me what is important about the number 14 in the science field?" she said. When a passing Brown student shouted out "It's the pH scale!" Rahdert nodded, adding, "The books get more basic as you go higher."
Mishkin said when he first visited Brown, the tale of the epic Tetris game was the "highlight of the tour." But now that almost eight years have elapsed, few tour guides retell the story because the game was played before their time as undergraduates.
Rahdert's tour then proceeded up Lincoln Field and paused in front of the statue of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius behind Sayles Hall. Rahdert told her tour that the figure of Aurelius upon his horse is a copy of a statue that once stood in Rome. As she tells it, the Roman statue was destroyed and a new one was cast as a copy of Brown's statue.
But this one turns out to mix fact and fiction. According to an article in the January/February 1998 issue of Brown Alumni Magazine, the statue that stands on Lincoln Field is an exact replica of an original Roman statue, which was cast in A.D. 173 and was the centerpiece of Michelangelo's redesign of Rome's Capitoline Hill in the 1540s. The replica was donated to Brown in 1908 in honor of Moses Brown Ives Goddard, class of 1854.
According to the article, the Roman statue of Aurelius was moved inside the Capitoline Museum in 1981 to prevent weather damage, but was never destroyed. A copy was then indeed made from the dimensions of the University's statue to forge an outdoor replacement in the summer of 1997.
The legend of the twin Marcus Aurelius statues reflects the spirit of tours at Brown: Though not every story is groun
ded in solid fact, ultimately a tour is about giving prospective students a taste of the Brown experience.
Mishkin said he has even fabricated some legends of his own, popularizing one story about origins of the "Ratty" moniker for the Sharpe Refectory. "I say, back when the food used to be bad, people called it the 'Rat Factory,' so now we call it the 'Ratty.' "
"At the end of the day, hopefully students aren't making their college decision based on whether there are lifeguards posted at the pool during open-swim hours," Mishkin said, citing an oddly specific question he was once asked while giving a tour. "It's the interesting and unique stories that make or break a student's decision to come to Brown."
