Here’s a pleasing 1906 sidewalk view of the clock tower at the corner of the Brown campus, much as Lovecraft could have seen it through the trees on various summer night-walks. It was on a corner, and thus accessible for the nocturnal pedestrian to view.

One can imagine what his imagination might have briefly made of it, seen in the dead of a summer’s night, all tree-shadowed in faint moonlight and with a glitter of stars behind it.

The first part of Lovecraft’s tribute “To Klarkash-Ton, Lord of Averoigne” fits such a night-viewing. Lovecraft’s poem was first published in Weird Tales in April 1938…

Lovecraft later lived nearby — ‘just around corner’, in effect — and this tower could also be seen from the upper windows at his last home of 66 College Street…

The main Brown campus with its great clock tower can be seen from our easterly windows