Rhode Island

First Universalist Church of Providence // 1872

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The First Universalist Church of Providence is located in the bustling Downtown of this city and has stood as the surrounding area saw rapid commercialization, destruction under the guise of “urban renewal”, and rebirth. The structure stands as the third sanctuary for the congregation, which was founded in 1821 through the efforts of Reverend John Murray, who is said to be the founder of American Universalism. Designed by prominent local architect, Edwin L. Howland, the church was constructed in 1872 and is an excellent example of the High Victorian Gothic style executed in brick and trimmed with stone. Rather than leaning into the ornate decorative flourishes favored by Gothic Revival purists, Howland’s design reflects a sparer emphasis on form and materials in the spirit of critic John Ruskin’s reinterpretation of the style, a restraint fitting for a Universalist congregation. Inside, the well-preserved nave features a sanctuary lined by broad pointed arches supported by slender colonnettes, all colored by the sunlight filtering through the many stained glass windows.

Summerfield Building // 1913

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Built by the wealthy Harkness family as an investment property, this unique building on Weybosset Street in Downtown Providence, Rhode Island, takes its name from the Boston-based Summerfield Furniture Company, which occupied much of the building for many years. The six-story, reinforced concrete structure was designed by architect, Albert Harkness for his family, who gambled on the young designer who was seemingly inspired by the Chicago School of architecture, with its concrete and steel framing, large plate glass windows, ornamental terra cotta, and broad cornice. After Summerfield Furniture closed, the building was occupied in the mid-20th century by various companies until Johnson & Wales purchased the building, and have maintained the architecturally significant landmark ever-since.

Waite-Thresher Company Factory // 1911

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The Waite-Thresher Company Factory sits on Pine Street between the commercial Downtown and former industrial Jewelry District of Providence.The factory here was built in 1911 and is an excellent example of a light-industrial building of the early 20th century in Providence. The steel-frame building is sheathed with brick walls and retains its double-hung windows set within brick arches and classically designed storefronts. The Waite-Thresher Company was one of many jewelry manufacturing companies in Providence. Founded in 1885 from the merging of multiple companies, the Waite-Thresher Co. began primarily manufacturing thimbles and later became a leader in the American jewelry world as the kings of delicate, ornate filigree rings, pins, and accessories. The company eventually closed in the 1930s and after later uses, the building was acquired by Johnson & Wales University who in the 1980s, restored the building and opened it as the centerpiece of the John Hazen White College of Arts & Sciences on campus.

Warwick Building // 1891

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Downtown Providence has amazing 19th and 20th century commercial blocks of all shapes and sizes. This example at the corner of Weybosset and Richmond streets dates to 1891 and has historically been known as the Warwick Building. While just three-stories tall, the Warwick Building stands out for its two-story domed turret on the corner, rough-faced stone lintels and sills, and brick corbeled cornice. The building is a great, human-scaled addition to Downtown Providence and has served as a vital anchor to the streetscape.

Plantations Clubhouse // 1927

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Tucked away behind Abbott Park, a small green in Downtown Providence, the Plantations Club has stood for 100 years as one of the city’s finest examples of Colonial Revival architecture and was long a vital women’s club organization. This Georgian Revival brick building was designed by the firm of Andrews, Jones, Briscoe & Whitmore, of Boston for the Providence Plantation Club, a women’s social organization founded in 1916. The club was a success, starting with about 150 members and it reached more than 1,300 members, just one year after its inception. As the only female architect of the society, Frances E. Henley got involved in promoting the Club in terms of its visuals and interior design of the building, working closely with the architects. Ms. Henley was the first woman to study architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and the first woman to independently practice architecture in Rhode Island. When the club no longer needed such a building, Johnson & Wales University acquired the building in 1962, and since then, it has been known as Wales Hall, housing a variety of offices and services.

Arnold–Palmer House // 1826

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The Arnold-Palmer House (no, it’s not named after the drink) can be found on Chestnut Street in Downtown Providence, Rhode Island, as a rare surviving Federal period residence to escape the fate of many buildings of the period there from commercialization and later urban renewal. The house was built in 1826 for wealthy Providence merchant Daniel Arnold at a location on upper Westminster Street near Cathedral Square, where it was one of four nearly identical houses whose design was attributed to prominent local architect John Holden Greene. Like many of Greene’s other Federal style designs, the Arnold-Palmer House exhibits a symmetrical primary facade, elaborate fanlight windows, and a monitor-on-hip-roof. The house was actually saved and moved to its present site (facing a surface parking lot) in the 1960s as part of the Weybosset Hill urban redevelopment project.

Beneficent House // 1967

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Located on Chestnut Street in Downtown Providence, this Modernist apartment building is the work of one of the most prolific architects of the 20th century, Paul Rudolph. During Downtown Providence’s period of urban renewal, which saw the demolition of much of Cathedral Square, planners sought a high-rise apartment building to house displaced elderly residents and others who hoped to reside close to downtown shopping and amenities. Working with the owner of the land, the Beneficent Congregational Church, housed in a 1809 building next door, architect Paul Rudolph, who was at the time Dean of Yale’s Architecture School, designed the brick building which employs horizontal bands in concrete which marks off floor levels and provides some breaks in the materiality, which was possibly inspired by Le Corbusier. The building was originally designed in 1963, but after years of delays and budget cuts from rising construction costs, the balconies and other design features were removed from the final product, leading to its present simplicity. While simple, the building retains intrigue, especially with the projecting window bays and offset openings, a departure from the block apartment buildings at the time. What do you think of Beneficent House?

Beneficent Congregational Church // 1809

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Located on Weybosset Street in Downtown Providence, the Beneficent Congregational Church, affectionately nicknamed “Round Top” for its striking dome, is significant architecturally and historically as an early Federal/Greek Revival style church and the oldest in Downtown Providence. The congregation was founded in 1743 during the “First Great Awakening” as a separatist spin-off of College Hill’s First Congregational Church (now First Unitarian Church). The offshoot occurred after when Deacon Joseph Snow, Jr. (1690-1773), a fiery preacher who was also a carpenter by trade, began preaching a more evangelical brand of Congregationalism than the more reserved members of the church could tolerate. Eventually, Father Snow, and his ardent followers established a second congregation on the west side of the Providence River in what was then an area of scattered residences and farms. The current church, the congregation’s second on the site, was constructed in 1809 from designs by Barnard Eddy and John Newman, but it was largely reworked into its present form in 1836 by the firm Tallman & Bucklin, who swapped the original Federal-era details for bolder Greek Revival trim, including the chunky Doric columns of the entrance portico, a paneled parapet, and an octagonal drum beneath the dome. That dome, along with the two-story front portico, survived the remodel unchanged in its overall form, and today it is sheathed in durable copper rather than the gold leaf that once covered it.

Former Providence YMCA Building // 1889

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Founded in 1853, the Providence YMCA holds the distinction of being the second-oldest YMCA in the United States. The YMCA had been born out of anxieties around industrialization and urbanization when young men arrived to the country and were vulnerable to the temptations and sins of alcohol, so a group of evangelical churches created a space for Christian men to spend their time productively at meetings and lessons and have access to recreational facilities. The Providence YMCA was dispersed into three buildings until 1889, when this building at the corner of Westminster and Jackson streets opened to great fanfare. The Young Men’s Christian Association and architects, the Providence firm of Stone, Carpenter & Willson, featured this new Romanesque Revival building in architectural publications showcasing the original proposal and the final approved design, with prominent oriel bays, spires, arched entrances and intricate roofline punctuated by dormers. The building contained a gymnasium, auditorium, classrooms, libraries, parlors, and reception areas. The 1889 building proved obsolete within a generation, and it was torn down in 1913 to make way for a new office block as the neighborhood commercialized. The YMCA responded by building larger, more purpose-built quarters further west on Broad Street, which was completed in 1915, a structure that still stands today, now repurposed to serve the city’s homeless population through Crossroads Rhode Island.

Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral Rectory // c.1878

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Built around the time of its neighbor, the Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul in Downtown Providence, this handsome brick masonry building with mansard roof was constructed as the rectory for the larger cathedral next door. Like the corresponding cathedral, this rectory was likely the work of premier ecclesiastical architect, Patrick C. Keely, who designed the structure in the Victorian/Ruskinian Gothic style with polychromatic stone voussoirs, a brownstone Romanesque style arched entry with floral capitals, and a mansard roof with bracketed cornice. Since its construction around 1878, the building has been added onto and connected to the Cathedral, but still retains its architectural significance. The building is home to the Diocese of Providence offices, a library, and remains the rector’s residence.

Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul, Providence // 1878

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The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul rises in Providence’s Cathedral Square, a sub-region of the city’s Downtown that was largely reshaped in the mid-late 20th century period of Urban Renewal. The monumental Romanesque style church is the mother church of the Diocese of Providence and was built on the site of the city’s first Roman Catholic parish, established in 1838. Designed by the prolific church architect Patrick Keely, the Providence cathedral broke ground in 1878 and was consecrated over a decade later in 1889. For this commission the blending of Romanesque and Gothic Revival detailing was likely inspired by both H. H. Richardson’s newly completed Trinity Church in Boston and on German and French medieval precedents. The structure is dominated by the two crenelated towers and displays strength with its bold proportions and use of reddish-brown stone. Inside, the cathedral is even more remarkable than its imposing exterior, distinguished by an overall multicolored, small-scale pattern of gray marble moldings and stained glass, complemented by a large Casavant organ with more than 6,600 pipes. Today, the miraculous cathedral is somewhat diminished in beauty due to the surrounding dead plaza, a scar on the built environment in Providence from Urban Renewal. In the 1960s and 70s, the entire western edge of Downtown had been slotted for redevelopment at a time when federal dollars funded mass demolition and rebuilding across American cities. The plan was designed by Modernist architect, I.M. Pei, who had envisioned a European-inspired courtyard, with a mix of residential and retail uses surrounding the church in the new development. Pei worked with the modernist landscape architects Zion and Breen on Cathedral Square, which was called a “conspicuous failure” within just a few years, a sentiment that has lasted a half-century since. The city has more recently pursued redesign proposals aimed at reconnecting Cathedral Square with the surrounding neighborhood, with the Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul as the centerpiece.

Fleur-De-Lys Studios // 1885

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The Fleur-de-Lys Studios is of the most architecturally significant and unique buildings in New England and can be found on Thomas Street in the College Hill section of Providence. Built in 1885 and a vivid expression of the Queen Anne style and showing the emergence of the Arts and Crafts movement movement in America, the handsome building blending is the result of a partnership between artist, Sydney Richmond Burleigh and architect, Edmund R. Willson as a dedicated creative hub for working artists, a purpose it still serves today under the stewardship of the Providence Art Club, who received the deed of the property in 1939 by Burleigh’s widow. Its design draws heavily on medieval English and Tudor Revival influences, with a striking half-timbered façade, stucco panels, carved heads as hanging pendants, and projecting casement windows that break dramatically from the surrounding colonial streetscape. What truly sets the structure apart, however, is its richly symbolic ornamentation—allegorical figures representing painting, sculpture, and architecture adorn the exterior. More than a century later, the Fleur-de-Lys Studios remains both a National Historic Landmark and a living workspace, preserving its original spirit as a place where art and architecture are inseparably intertwined.

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.