Deacon Edward Taylor House // 1786

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The oldest building on the iconic Thomas Street in Providence, Rhode Island, is the Deacon Edward Taylor House, a stunning early Federal residence built into the sloping site. The property was developed in 1786 for Edward Taylor, a chaise maker who had a shop on Main Street, also serving as a Deacon of the nearby church. Edward had bought out his brother’s half of the property and had this home built for his family. With its three-story symmetrical, five-bay facade, the house features a stately pedimented entry and flared lintels all atop a brownstone foundation. The property passed through many hands in the 19th and early 20th centuries until 1961, when it was purchased by the Providence Art Club as part of their multi-building campus.

Seril Dodge House // 1791

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Years after Seril Dodge (1759-1802), a silversmith and clockmaker, built a house in 1786 on present-day Thomas Street in Providence’s East Side, he sold the property to the Brown Family and built this stately Federal period home next-door. Built in 1791, this three-story, side-hall brick house features belt courses above the first and second stories, a hipped roof, and flared lintels over the windows and doorway. After less than a decade, Seril Dodge moved back to his hometown of Pomfret, Connecticut, and sold this property to Moses Brown, who gifted the property to his son, Obadiah. Obadiah Brown (1771-1822) was a member of the Quaker faith and was a member of the Society of the Abolition of Slavery providing local jobs for free Blacks and sponsoring them in any legal disputes. Additionally, he helped secure the freedom of enslaved Africans who escaped to the north. This property was leased to the Providence Art Club in 1886 and acquired by the organization in 1906. Under the ownership of the Art Club, the side arcaded carriage entrance was added, likely designed by Stone, Carpenter and Willson, in conjunction with their 1906 renovation to the adjoining Dodge-Brown House. Today the building is known as the “Club House” and is home to the organization’s cafe, with an its intimate bar, and two exhibition spaces that are open to the public.

Dodge-Brown House // 1786

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The Dodge-Brown House on Thomas Street in Providence, Rhode Island, was built in 1786 by Seril Dodge (1759-1802), a silversmith and clockmaker. Seril Dodge was a middle-class resident who did well in Providence circles, as an artisan and shop keeper. The house was originally a two-story residence with central entrance that was raised up in the early 20th century to facilitate a new storefront. Seril Dodge and his family only lived here briefly before moving to a brick house next door. Dodge sold the property to Nicholas Brown II (1769-1841) who rented the home to his stepmother, Avis Binney Brown, who became the widow of one of Providence’s richest men, Nicholas Sr. It continued to stay in Brown family hands through the nineteenth century, but only as an investment. The house was raised one story above street level in 1906, when the handsome Colonial revival storefront was installed from plans by the firm of Stone, Carpenter and Willson. The original front door with elaborate pedimented and pilastered enframement is now a door to a small second floor balcony. Since 1919, the Providence Art Club has owned the building, who for years had the ground retail space occupied as an art store, but now contains a club gallery.

Dr. George W. Carr Mansion // 1885

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Perched on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island, the Dr. George W. Carr Mansion at the corner of Benefit and Waterman streets, stands as one of the most attractive and interesting interpretations of the Queen Anne style in New England. The stately home was built in 1885 for George Wheaton Carr (1834-1907) a medical doctor who served as a surgeon during the Civil War and later as head surgeon for multiple Providence-area hospitals. For his Providence home, Dr. Carr hired architect, Edward I. Nickerson, to furnish plans, which resulted in this mansion with irregular plan, four-story corner corner capped with a conical roof, varied materials in stone, wood shingles, half-timbering, and copper bays. The Carr Mansion was purchased by the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1916, and has served a variety of roles for the school including as student housing and a cafe/lounge.

Pendleton House – RISD Museum // 1904

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Although the Pendleton House on Benefit Street in Providence, gives the appearance of a domestic residence, it was actually built for the purpose of displaying the once private collections of Charles L. Pendleton (1846-1904), which were given to the RISD Museum in 1904. Pendleton’s bequest, which included American and European furniture, silver, glass, ceramics, textiles, and paintings, came with the stipulation that the collection remain intact and on display in a suitable building for the benefit of the public. The stipulation occurred just before Mr. Pendleton’s death in 1904 and the Rhode Island School of Design immediately hired the local architect, Edmund Willson of the local firm of Stone, Carpenter and Willson, to furnish plans for a wing to the museum. Willson was an expert in the Colonial Revival style and sought to make the private collection of the Pendleton House befitting of a grand Providence mansion. It was Willson’s last major commission before his death. The building is crafted in a refined Colonial Revival style with symmetrical facade, traditional fenestration and Palladian motif, but is beefed up internally for is museum use with brick walls over a fireproof, reinforced concrete frame. The RISD museum has continually grown over the subsequent decades with wings connecting the Pendleton House with more contemporary buildings, all-the-while retaining the residential scale of Benefit Street in this iconic structure.

College Building, RISD // 1823 & 1936

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Spanning an entire city block on College Street between North Main and Benefit streets in Providence’s East Side, the College Building at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), is a valuable lesson in urban context and design. The building was constructed in 1936 from plans by the local architectural office of Jackson, Robertson & Adams, who had years prior, designed the Providence County Courthouse standing across the street. Designed in a plainer version of the Colonial/Georgian Revival style than the courthouse, the new College Building at RISD is broken up into multi-bay wings terracing up the slope of College Street, which breaks up the solid massing of the building in a pleasing way. Additionally, the designers incorporated the Federal period western wall of the 1823 Franklin House, an early 19th century hotel on the site. The result is possibly one of the first examples of a facadectomy in New England, if not the United States!

Waterman Building, RISD // 1892

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The Waterman Building located on Waterman Street on Providence’s East Side is architecturally significant as an example of the Romanesque Revival style, as well as historically significant as the first purpose-built building for the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The school originally opened in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the accessibility of design education to women, in rented space within the Hoppin Homestead Building in Downtown Providence. As the school grew coinciding with the appreciation of the arts in the late 19th century, the school’s board and president sought to provide a permanent site for the young institution. A site was purchased across from the First Baptist Church and the local firm of Hoppin, Read and Hoppin was hired to furnish designs. The short-lived partnership of Providence-born brothers Howard and Francis L. V. Hoppin and Spencer P. Read, laid out the building with studios on the upper two stories lit by arched windows on the second floor and skylights on the top floor, with a museum and classrooms occupied on the first floor. With an intricate brick facade adorned by terracotta medallions, unique cornice, and lattice brickwork in the spandrels, the building is befitting for an arts institution.

RISD Museum – Chace Center // 2008

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The Chace Center, also known as the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, is a contemporary infill project that serves as both an expansion of one of the region’s premier art museums as well as a front-door to a prestigious world-class college. The college hired the firms of Rafael Moneo Arquitectos of Spain as design architect and Perry Dean Rogers as the architects on record, for the project, which includes an auditorium, student exhibit spaces, museum shop, cafe, and information center as well as being an important connector between various buildings within the block, including Memorial Hall, a significant former church built in the 1850s, and the People’s Savings Bank, a 1913 Neo-Classical building. The $34 million center was built on a former parking lot in one of the few remaining open spaces near RISD, and it was named in honor of the late Beatrice and Malcolm Chace. It is not easy to fit a contemporary museum on a tight site surrounded by historic brick buildings, but the RISD Museum does just that, with the use of contemporary brick to set the building within its context with the contrasting pearl-glass volume at the facade providing a face to the steel and glass towers in Downtown Providence.

Former Central Congregational Church – Memorial Hall, RISD // 1853

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An early example of the Romanesque Revival style, the former Central Congregational Church on Benefit Street in Providence’s East Side is architecturally significant as one of the remaining designs by architect, Thomas Tefft and built from 1853-1856. Thomas A. Tefft (1826-1859) was one of the nation’s first professionally trained architects and was a master of Rundbogenstil, a German-branch of the Romanesque style until his untimely death in Italy when he was just 33. When this church was completed in 1856, Tefft was just thirty years old. The brownstone facade is adorned by triple-arched entrances and corbelling. The congregation grew and decades later, acquired a site in the neighborhood for a larger, Carrere and Hastings-designed church, vacating this building in 1893. The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) purchased this former church in 1902 following a donation by Eliza Radeke and her brothers who named the building Memorial Hall. The firm of Hoppin and Ely was hired to update the former church for use by the college, which primarily took place on the interior. The original pair of tall bell towers were damaged during the 1938 hurricane and later were removed in 1950, truncating the verticality of this great Tefft-designed building, but she still shines! Memorial Hall has been incorporated into the RISD campus and houses studio spaces.

Bend O’ the Lane House // 1740

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Located at a bend in the road on Cedar Avenue (formerly Cedar Lane) in Swansea, Massachusetts, the appropriately named ‘Bend O’ the Lane’ house is a charming Georgian-era farmhouse. The house was built in 1740 by Harlow Luther, who farmed the land here with his family. By the 19th century, owners included Victor Gardner, of the Gardner Family that largely settled on Gardner’s Neck in Swansea, and later by Philander Wilbur, a prominent local farmer that raised cattle and sold milk to area residents. The vernacular, Georgian farmhouse is of a unique and unpretentious form that shows the evolution of construction over time as families grew.