One of the most beautiful buildings on Baylor University’s campus is the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum. Sources such as Campus Grotto and Flavorwire have named the library to their lists of the fifty most beautiful libraries in the United States and in the world, respectively. The three-story Italian renaissance style building houses the world’s largest collection of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning material. Collected by Dr. Andrew Joseph Armstrong throughout his life, the artifacts have resided in the Armstrong Browning Library since its opening in 1951.

Born in 1873 in Louisville, Kentucky, A.J. Armstrong grew up wanting to be a college professor. He lost his father when he was fourteen, so when his mother fell ill a few years later, he delayed his college education to care for her. She died when he was twenty-six, and he began his studies at Wabash College. After he graduated in 1902, he accepted a position teaching English at East Texas Baptist Institute, where he met his future wife, fellow English teacher Mary Maxwell. Armstrong went on to earn his doctorate from University of Pennsylvania in 1908. That same year he accepted an interim teaching position at Baylor University. After three years teaching at Georgetown College, he returned to Baylor as the chair of the English department.

Dr. Armstrong possessed an interest in Robert Browning from an early age. Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were two of the greatest of the English Victorian poets. A master of dramatic monologue and psychological portraiture, Browning was a prolific poet, writing hundreds of poems and eight plays in verse.

Around 1905, Armstrong began to collect Browning's writings. His interest grew greatly upon his meeting the Brownings’ only son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, called Pen, on a visit to Italy in 1909, and he resolved to collect every artifact he could. When Pen died in 1912 without a will, Sotheby’s auction house in London sold off the Browning estate. Armstrong was able to acquire a copy of the sale catalogue, including sale prices and purchasers, from a Sotheby staff member named E.H. Courville. From this starting point, Armstrong began to track down the Browning effects to bolster his fast-growing collection of Browning writings and relics.

Armstrong donated his collection of Browning materials to Baylor in 1918. Throughout his life, he continued to track down Browning artifacts, funding his passion with donations, gifts, and profits from events he hosted on campus. Many of these events were live readings, concerts, or dramatizations, featuring poets, musicians, actors, politicians, and scholars such as Robert Frost, Basil Rathbone, W.B. Yeats, Vachel Lindsay, William Taft, and Katharine Cornell. The university kept the Browning materials in Carroll Library, and designated a Browning Room to house the collection after the 1924 building renovation.

The collection grew quickly, and in 1943 Baylor President Pat Neff provided $100,000 to begin work on a new library to house the artifacts. Dr. Armstrong took upon himself the task of raising the remaining money. With the aid of his wife, Mary, he began an enormous fundraising campaign, writing to alumni, colleagues, politicians, and celebrities for whatever donation they could spare. Each letter he wrote was personal, and each gift was recognized with a thank you note. According to Dr. Armstrong, one person out of every four asked provided a donation. Several local and campus groups with which Dr. Armstrong was involved sponsored specific features of the building. For example, Dr. Armstrong’s Literature Survey class funded the front stairs, and the Tuesday Club of Brady, Texas and Mr. & Mrs. John Leddy-Jones of Dallas donated the Pippa statue on the front lawn.

Five years later, having obtained the $1.75 million dollars necessary for the construction of the building, the university held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Armstrong Browning Library. In 1950, about halfway through the building’s construction, a second ceremony was held for supporters to place keepsakes such as pictures, books, and papers in the library’s cornerstone along with a list of the 5,117 individuals that contributed to the Browning fund. Finally, in December of 1951, the library officially opened to the public. By now, Dr. Armstrong’s collection was the biggest collection of Browningiana in the world.

The library stands three floors high. Its majestic Italian Renaissance architecture serves as a stunning backdrop for the thousands of artifacts housed within its walls. The Armstrong Browning stained glass collection is the largest collection of secular stained glass in the world, featuring sixty-two stained glass windows depicting the lives and poetry of the Brownings. The ground floor of the library underwent renovation in 1995. Until then, the first floor held offices and classrooms for the English department, while the second and third displayed the various Browning materials. The ground floor now houses the Cox Reception Hall, the ABL Gift Gallery, the Mary Armstrong Seminar Room, the Lewis-Birkhead Lecture Hall, and climate-controlled book stacks. The second floor holds the Martin Entrance Foyer, the Hankamer Treasure Room, the John Leddy-Jones Research Hall, the McLean Foyer of Meditation, and the Cloister of the Clasped Hands, which holds a bronze cast of the hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barett Browning done by artist Harriet Hosmer. The stairwell joining the three floors holds a collection of paintings by Pen Browning. The third floor boasts the Austin Moore-Elizabeth Barrett Browning Salon and the Belew Scholars’ Room (originally Dr. Armstrong’s personal classroom) as well as a balcony overlooking the Foyer of Meditation. Spaces found outside the building include the Garden of Contentment, added in 2012, and an amphitheater.

The Armstrong Browning Library & Museum is a testament to how the tireless effort of one person can accomplish a lofty goal. The library continues to inspire students, scholars, poets, and tourists with its beauty and resources.

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Tragedy marked the experiences of many during the Vietnam War. On the home front, Americans increasingly questioned the country’s role in the conflict and lamented the loss they watched unfold throughout the first widely televised war. Americans especially worried over the conditions of US prisoners of war (POWs) held captive in North Vietnam—POWs that had been kept in physically and psychologically harmful conditions for extended periods of time. The North Vietnamese captured and imprisoned these Americans, often pilots in the US Navy or Air Force, for nearly ten years. Prisons in Vietnam received nicknames such as “Alcatraz,” for their severe environments, and “Hanoi Hilton,” an ironic name given to a primary torture site. Some POWs never returned home from their internment and remain unaccounted for.

In the late 1960s, the US Department of State sought to improve the treatment of American POWs and stepped up efforts to bring them home. Local communities pursued ways to assist in these efforts. Texas businessman Ross Perot became especially interested in sending humanitarian supplies to POWs, and he believed that ordinary citizens could make more of a difference than the federal government. Citizens of Waco, along with other towns and cities across the country, heeded Perot’s call.

Beginning in 1970, under the auspices of the Prisoner of War project, thousands of citizens in Waco advocated for American POWs through a letter-writing initiative titled the “Write Hanoi Campaign.” After Perot visited and spoke at Baylor University on March 10, 1971, Wacoans further invested in the project. The city, inspired by Perot’s message, proclaimed the day as “H. Ross Perot Day in Waco” and embraced his invitation by forming a local delegation that would negotiate directly with officials from North Vietnam later that year. Twelve men and women formed an advocacy group on behalf of American POWs, and local attorney C. Cullen Smith served as chairman. By mid-March 1971, they had collected 40,825 letters and petition signatures that demanded humane treatment of POWs in Vietnam, and the delegation prepared to present them at the Paris Peace Talks in April.

Supported by the US State Department, the Waco delegation visited Paris for negotiations with officials in North Vietnam in April 1971. Avoiding approval or disapproval of the war, the effort remained focused on the POWs. Once in Paris, a portion of the group met with officials to persuade them to better the prison camp conditions and improve the treatment of American POWs. Though an immediate change did not occur, in 1973, Operation Homecoming resulted in the return of 591 American POWs held captive in North Vietnam. Upon their return, some shared reports of prison conditions, and Waco’s Mayor Karl May contended that the Waco delegation had “some reason to believe our efforts were not in vain, since prisoners who have returned tell of a change for the better after that time.”

When the group left Paris on April 16, 1971, they wanted to commemorate the inspiration for their efforts. The delegation, mournful of the imprisonment of American POWs and grateful for the freedoms they experienced in the US, discussed how to memorialize the moment. Inspired by the architecture of Paris, they decided to construct a fountain. They planned to inscribe the word “freedom” in seventy different languages at the base of the structure. As they began the process of raising money and planning for the duly named “Freedom Fountain,” they refused large donations and instead requested smaller donations from those across the community. This way, as in the Write Hanoi Campaign, all could contribute. Groups like the Waco Jaycees pledged to raise $10,000, and sixth graders from North Waco Elementary School donated $14 in coins.

More than 750 people attended the dedication of the fountain in May 1973. There, two freed POWs, Colonel George Hall, who had recently settled with his wife and family in her hometown of Waco, and Captain Ronald Bliss, who later attended Baylor Law School before moving to Houston, joined the ceremonies. Wacoans also buried a time capsule underneath the fountain, which contained names and addresses of those who donated their funds along with additional information about the fountain and its origins. At the time of the dedication, the community had raised over $50,000 in support. Still in its original location, the Freedom Fountain sits at the south end of the Waco Convention Center with the word “freedom” inscribed in fifty-four different languages. There, Waco residents can remember the community’s efforts to support American POWs during the Vietnam War and reflect on the meanings of national and global freedom.

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