Professor John Howard Appleton graduated from Brown with a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1863 and was immediately appointed instructor in chemistry. He remained until his mandatory retirement at the age of 70. He was head of the Department of Chemistry for half a century and was fondly remembered by many students as “Johnny Ap.”

Prior to the turn of the century, the Bicycle Club was among the most popular organizations on campus.

In 1880, Lincoln Field became Brown’s first formal athletic field. Baseball was king on College Hill in the late 1800s, with Brown winning three national championships. This view (taken in 1893 from the porch of Lyman Gymnasium) shows a packed house, with home plate near Waterman and Thayer Streets.

Charles Evans Hughes, Class of 1881, stands on the left in this photo, along with his fellow Brunonian editors. After graduating from Brown, he went on to serve as Governor of New York, Secretary of State and as a Supreme Court Justice. He left the court temporarily when he was nominated as the (ultimately unsuccessful) Republican candidate for President (1916).

After receiving his undergraduate degree from Brown in 1876 and a medical degree from New York University, Charles Chapin returned to his hometown of Providence where he taught physiology at Brown and served as Superintendant of Health in Providence, a position he held for 48 years. During his administration, the death rate in Providence dropped 30 percent and infant mortality was reduced by 50 percent. He made important contributions in the areas of child health, immunization, water purification, prevention of contagious diseases, and treatment of tuberculosis, earning his nickname, “The Great Sanitarian.”

Although graduate courses were offered beginning in the 1870s, there were no advanced degrees. In an 1881 report, President Robinson noted that “Individual graduates…are every year proposing to remain and continue their studies in one direction or another…” In the last two years of his tenure, the first Master of Arts degree was awarded in 1888 and the first Doctor of Philosophy in 1889.

The decade that Elisha Benjamin Andrews, Class of 1870, served as president was a time of great growth and accomplishment for the University. In addition to championing academic freedom (including in his own dealings with the Corporation), he oversaw major developments: the more than doubling of the student body (to over 600), growth of the graduate program and the establishment of the Women’s College.  At the 1947 dedication of Andrews Hall, President Henry Wriston remarked, “Under Andrews, Brown ceased to be a small New England college and embraced the idea of a university. With him the ideal of scholarship, which must dominate a modern university, came to fruition.”