Renovation, Building Photos

The installation of a new set of vertical beams on the varsity house allayed fears from some people I spoke with who hadn't seen the plans and feared the new building was going to be a small, square block centered behind the visiting stands. In fact, the building will just about span the length of the old stands.

Two observations. It appears football coach Buddy Teevens got his wishes and the final throwing area for track has been moved to the south end of the complex. I don't know for sure, but there was no sign of the work that had been started on the circle a couple of weeks ago. Teevens very much hoped that all the track areas (except the steeplechase) would be relocated to the section of the field at the Lebanon Street end and was working himself into a lather recently to make sure that happened as he thought he'd been promised would.

Something else I noticed. Maybe it was the new "wall" closing off the bottom of the reduced visiting stands. Perhaps it was the work on the varsity house that gives a better feel for its size. It might have been the FieldTurf, which, while not finished, gives a sense of a real field.

Or it might have been all of the above, but for the first time, I could feel a "stadium" coming together. No, it won't be Princeton and it won't be Penn or Harvard, but neither will it be the old Memorial Field or Brown. I'd still like to see the bottom front of the home stands and the bottom front of the visiting stands each covered with brickface give the field some symmetry and tie it into the surrounding buildings, but somehow, some way, it's coming together.

All pictures taken Friday, Aug. 4. (Click on picture to enlarge)