“[For students walking south] there was, however, an unofficial third route: a more or less straight path through a patchwork of parking lots, a gas station, and trash bins. This was Dumpster Way. Nearly one hundred years earlier, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. anticipated this third way. In his correspondence with President Faunce about the still largely unbuilt Lincoln Field, Olmsted drew a straight north-south line across the east-west axis of the Lincoln Field green…a classic Beaux-Arts strategy, which emphasized symmetrical avenues that led to a destination of some distinction.”

–Raymond P. Rhinehart, The Campus Guide: Brown University

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Brown undertook a major reexamination of its use of land and buildings. The Strategic Framework for Physical Planning of 2003 recommended pursuing Olmsted’s 100-year-old recommendation. Today, “The Walk” embodies that north-south connection and creates a spine off which new sites branch, including the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Sidney Frank Hall and the Brown for Environmental Research & Teaching (BERT), among others.