When Moses Brown opened its new 36,000 square food Woodman Family Community and Performance Center, it was a full circle kind of occasion. Dean Woodman, who graduated from Moses Brown in 1946, gave $8 million to the school for the new building, the largest donation in its 233 year history. He is also the great grandson of Augustine Jones, headmaster of Moses Brown in the late 1800s and the one who brought music and the arts into the school’s curriculum. Now students have a thoroughly modern multimedia center to continue that arts tradition.
The Center will replace Alumni Hall as the heart of the school’s music and arts programs, complete with a state of the art auditorium and gallery spaces. The auditorium features customizable seating for up to 500 and acoustic paneling with interchangeable hard and soft surfaces that can be manipulated to effectively tune the room.
“The acoustics are out of this world,” says Adam Olenn, the school’s Director of Communications. He goes on to explain that the auditorium will be used for everything from performances and lectures to the school’s regular Quaker meetings, allowing for optimal sound and line of sight, and seating for any needs. Additionally, the Woodman Center has a cafe and meeting spaces available to both students and faculty. The hallways will serve as gallery space, giving the school a permanent exhibit space for its students for the first time. It also served as a catalyst for a number of improvement projects on campus, including updates to several of the school’s athletic facilities to accommodate the Center’s footprint. A brand new heating system for the campus, located in the Woodman Center basement was also part of the project, which in total cost $25.4 million.
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