Where College Street meets Prospect Street at the crest of College Hill, your Van Wickle Gates form Brown University's ornamental entrance. Dedicated on June 18, 1901, these gates were built from the bequest of Augustus Stout Van Wickle, Class of 1876, who died in 1898 and who also provided for the FitzRandolph Gate at Princeton. Designed by the architects Hoppin & Ely and Hoppin & Koen, the gates rise in wrought iron between sturdy brick and stone piers: a larger main gate flanked by two smaller side gates.
The top is crowned with the Brown University coat of arms, while the piers are decorated with the seals of Rhode Island and Providence. Along the sides you can spot inscriptions drawn from Cicero, and you can remember the day the gates and an adjacent building financed by Van Wickle were dedicated, when Chancellor William Goddard said, “We have passed through the imposing gates... For more than a century these gates have marked the campus and its 259-year history — notice the wrought-iron crown and the seals on the piers beside you.