An early filmed performance of the Brown Glee Club, standing in front of a painting of the Van Wickle Gates. The Glee Club was under the direction of David Laurent from 1949 through 1959.

In a move toward accommodating student life on campus, President Wriston led the construction of a major new development. After razing fifty-one existing buildings, the University built nine residential halls and the Sharpe Refectory. The dining facility included a main dining room, which could accommodate 1,640 students, surrounded by a series of private dining rooms for the use of fraternity members.

Elizabeth Leduc, shown in this undated photograph, received her Ph.D. from Brown in 1948 and, after working at Harvard Medical School, returned to Brown where she spent the rest of her career. In 1953, she became the first female full professor to hold an academic position at Brown. In 1973, she was named Dean of the Division of Biological and Medical Sciences.

A decorated soldier in World War II, Barnaby Keeney came to Brown as an Assistant Professor of Medieval History in 1946. Advancing rapidly, he was chosen as president just nine years later. His tenure was marked by rapid growth in graduate student enrollment and by great physical expansion, with nine buildings completed and several more major projects well into the planning stages at the time of his departure.

In 1955, the Brown chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. The activities of the co-ed group included voting drives, leafleting, fundraising and, in 1962, the picketing of a local Howard Johnson’s to put pressure on the national chain to desegregate in the South. Later in 1962, the Brown branch of the NAACP re-formed as a branch of the Northern Student Movement.

Inspired by the American Indian artifacts he found on his Bristol property, Rudolf F. Haffenreffer II began to acquire items from further afield. After his death in 1954, his family donated his museum and 500-acre estate to Brown. In 2008, when the Museum’s collection had grown to over one million ethnographic and archaeological items from around the world, the University decided to move the collection closer to campus and to present public exhibits in a gallery in Manning Hall. 

Initially part of the Applied Mathematics division, the study of Computer Science began at Brown in 1956. That same year, an (then cutting-edge) IBM card-programmed calculator (CPC), which could be fed 150 punch cards a minute, was installed on campus.

The student staff members of the Pembroke Record work on one of 24 issues published in 1956, surrounded by the tools of their trade.

After the eight-college-member Ivy League was established as an athletic conference in 1954, round-robin play began in all sports. Brown played in the first football game, prevailing over Columbia 20–0.

In 1957, Brown purchased 39 acres of the former Dexter Asylum land, surrounded by a 6,220-foot stone wall along Hope Street, Stimson Avenue, Angell Street, Arlington Avenue and Lloyd Avenue. The land would be used for playing fields and athletic facilities.

In 1959, the Providence City Plan Commission and Providence Preservation Society published a report, College Hill: A Demonstration Study of Historic Area Renewal, which served as a local and national model for preservation approaches. It also led to the creation of the College Hill Historic District, which included 500 buildings, many of which were or are now part of the Brown campus. In 1970, College Hill was recognized as a National Historic Landmark District.