USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > The civic and architectural development of Providence, 1636-1950 > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
Weybosset Side, up to the close of the 18th century, had not yet become of civic importance. Numerous streets and country roads had been laid out; distill houses, rope- walks, tanyards, paper mills, shipyards, slaughter houses, and other industries had been established; and a considerable number of houses had been erected. The only important public buildings standing in 1800, however, were a meeting house (page 35), a school house (page 62), and a theatre (page 60).
As the 19th century progressed it was on Weybosset Side that the development of Providence was focused. New lands were created out of water areas, a new civic center was established, and a railroad terminus was built. A series of bridges, constructed across the river, linked more closely the Weybosset lands with those of the Neck. The westward trend terminated the commercial importance of the Neck while the high lands of the latter, protected from a business invasion by the steep hillside, continued as a cultural, educational and residential area, known as the East Side. A prelude to the fall in prestige of the ancient Towne street was a fire on January 21, 1801, which started in a brick storehouse at the rear of John Corliss' house and destroyed the buildings on both sides of South Main Street for a distance 500 feet south of Planet Street.2
The drift of business toward Weybosset Side commenced with the establishment of a bank and an insurance office on Westminster Street. The Exchange Bank opened its office
1. E.R.P., IV, 37.
2. Providence Gazette, Jan. 24, 1801. A total of 16 dwellings, 10 stores and II outhouses were burned, including the houses of Capt. Joseph Peck (formerly Hacker's Hall, page 37) and Ann Power (the Nicholas Power, 3d, mansion, page 29). "The dwelling of Mr. Corlis [still standing at 201 South Main Street] was several times on fire but was saved by persevering exertion."
71
WEYBOSSET SIDE
in a building at the corner of Exchange Street in 1801, where a permanent building was later erected (illustration, page 136) and the Washington Insurance Company built a three- story brick building in the following year at the corner of Washington Row. In 1802 the post office, which had been following the movement of the civic center from the environment of the Colony House to the Town Parade, was moved across the river to the Whitman house at Turks Head.3 A four-story brick building, part of which is still standing at the corner of Westminster and Dyer streets, was erected about 1813 to which the Union Bank (incorporated 1814) moved its offices a few years later (illustrations, pages 120, 189).
The earliest map of Providence, drawn from an actual survey, was the Daniel Anthony Map of 1803 (page 70). The built-up part of the Neck fringed its south and west shores,
-
R.I.H.S.
Providence Theatre Curtain, showing view of East Side, c. 1808.
including the area south of John Street and west of the sequence of Benefit Street and the present Carleton Davis Boulevard. On Weybosset Side, where tidewater covered a large part of the present business section, the bounds of the built-up area, from Providence river to the cove, followed approximately the lines of the present Elm, Chestnut and Friendship streets, Beacon Avenue, and Broad, Stewart, Westminster, Aborn and Fountain streets. Bridges spotted on the map include the Great Bridge at Market Square; Central (Red) and India (Washington) bridges over Seekonk river; Work House (Smith Street), Mill, Stevens and Randall bridges over Moshassuck river; and Tar Bridge over Woonasquatucket river at Olneyville.
3. William M. Bailey, "Turks Head and the Whitman Estate," R.I.H.S.C., V, 216. See also page 40. During William Wilkinson's term as postmaster (1792-1802) the post office was located in the Coffee House on the Town Parade; in 1802 Dr. Benjamin West, his successor, moved the office to Jacob Whitman's house.
72
1800 -1812
A second listing of street names was adopted by the Town Council in 1807,4 superseding the previous list of 1772 (page 47). On the Neck the sequence of Water, King, William's and Constitution streets (originally the Towne street) was re-christened Main Street. Certain early highways were identified by name, including Hope Street (originally the highway at the head of the lots, page 7), Angell Street (the way to the Upper Ferry, shown on map, page 14), and Harrington's Lane, originally Hearnden's Lane, now Rocham- beau Avenue. Of the new streets listed Williams, James, Arnold and Sheldon were named for owners of land taken: Rebecca Williams, James Arnold and Christopher Sheldon. John Street was named for John Innes Clark whose house (page 63) stood at the corner of Benefit; and Benevolent Street was so called for the Benevolent Congregational Society
MAGNAIR ILORIST
R.I.H.S.
Beneficent Congregational Church, 1809, Weybosset Street. Lantern added 1835.
(page 67). On Weybosset Side the sequence of Weybosset, Broad and High streets, from Turks Head to the present Cathedral Square, was named Weybosset. School Street was re-named Mathewson in honor of James Mathewson, early land owner in the vicinity, and was extended north to the cove. Snow Street was changed to Pine, and a new Snow Street was designated at its present location. The westerly part of Ship Street was re-named Chestnut. New streets on the official listing included Friendship, Pleasant (Eddy, north of Weybosset), Eddy's (Eddy Street from Ship to Elm),5 Sugar Lane (Clemence, south of Westminster), Clemence (north of Westminster, called Cook's Lane on the Anthony map), Aborn, Washington (east of Aborn), Richmond (Weybosset to Ship), Field (Richmond,
4. Town Council Proceedings, VIII, 535. The list includes 76 names, about double the number recorded in 1772 (page 47).
5. The intervening part of Eddy Street was tide-flowed. See illustration, page 80.
73
WEYBOSSET SIDE
Ship to Elm), Potter (Garnet), Prime (Clifford), Smith (Broad Lane on the Anthony map), and Orms. The Meshanticut road (1717), known also as Monkeytown Road, was named Cranston Street and the road through the stated common (page 23) became Martin Street, now Chalkstone Avenue.
Certain streets not officially listed were named on the Anthony map, including Cat Alley (Middle Street), Stewart Street, the road to the Old Hospital (Elm and Hospital
R.I.H.S.
Cathedral of Saint John, 1811, North Main Street.
streets), the road to the New Hospital (Plain Street), Johnston Road (Westminster, west of Cranston Street), and Greenwich Road (Elmwood Avenue.)6
The Beneficent Congregational Church was erected on Weybosset Street in 1809, in
6. The old hospital was built in 1776 for smallpox patients and the new hospital in 1797 for yellow fever patients. Both were on or near the site of the present Rhode Island Hospital grounds (page 137).
74
1800-1812
replacement of the New Light Meeting House (page 26). James Wilson, an Irish immigrant, formerly a Dublin cabinetmaker, was pastor at the time and may have had a hand in the design. In contrast with the traditional steeple, the roof was crowned by a dome and belfry rising above an octagonal base, which gave the building the popular sobriquet "Round Top Church." The interior contained 150 pews on the ground floor and spacious galleries.7 Extensive alterations were made in 1836 (James C. Bucklin, architect) including interior remodeling and exterior refinements. The belfry was removed and in its place above the dome a lantern was erected in replica of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates at Athens. The Greek entrance portico may have been added at that time. The original brick veneering of the stone walls was bared in 1935 with the removal of many layers of paint and whitewash (illustration, page 73).
The Richmond Street Congregational Church (southeast corner of Pine), commenced by Joseph Snow, Jr. (page 35), and completed in 1807 under the pastorate of Thomas Wilkins, was a wood building with a tin-lined spire which gave it the popular name of "Old Tin Top." It was abandoned by the society upon erection of a new church on the opposite corner of Pine Street in 1827, and was used subsequently for various purposes, including religious meetings, a circus and a brewery,8 until its demolition about 1895. Another church, the Second Baptist, was built near Muddy Dock (southwest corner of Pine and Dorrance) in 1807 and destroyed in the storm of 1815 (page 81).9
Across the river on the Neck Saint John's Episcopal Church (now the Cathedral of Saint John) was erected at the corner of North Main and Church streets in 1810-II, following the demolition of the original King's Church (page 25), the name of which had been changed to Saint John's in 1794. The new church was the first monumental work of John Holden Greene,10 the outstanding architect of the early 19th century. The corner- stone was laid by the Reverend Nathan B. Crooker June 5, 181011 and the church was consecrated on Saint Barnabas Day, June 11, 1811 (illustration, page 74). The building originally measured 70 by 80 feet, its axis perpendicular to the hillside, with a vestibule, projecting from the front, containing stairways leading to the main floor and the galleries, and a chancel at the rear. The walls are Smithfield stone, laid in random courses with brown- stone trimmings, pierced by pointed windows with wood traceries. Above the vestibule is a clock tower, crowned by a square wooden belfry - a Gothic design modeled after the old Trinity Church in New York which burned during the Revolution, its details inspired by the works of Batty Langley.12 In front of the vestibule is a semi-circular porch with columns, lintels, and a cornice with battlements. The transepts were added in 1867 and the interior has been substantially altered from time to time. The flat dome over the
7. Staples, p. 452; Arthur E. Wilson, Paddy Wilson's Meeting House, Boston, 1950, p. 149.
8. Staples, p. 455.
9. Greene, p. 144. The church was rebuilt on the same site, the name changed in 1831 to Pine Street Baptist Church. The title was again changed to Central Baptist in 1854 and a new building erected on the north side of Weybosset Street (page 127). The Masonic Temple was built on the Pine Street site in 1884, destroyed by fire March 19, 1896, and replaced by the present building the following year.
IO. John Holden Greene was born in Warwick September 1, 1777, and became apprenticed, in 1794, to Caleb Ormsbee, builder-architect, who designed the First Congregational Church (page 67). Greene died September 5, 18 50.
II. A copper plate records that the master builders were Smith and Asa Bosworth, stone layers, and John H. Greene, carpenter.
12. B. & T. Langley, Gothic Architecture Improved by Rules and Proportions (London, 1747).
75
WEYBOSSET SIDE
nave, supported by columns, is original.13 In the rear of the edifice is the old church yard where many of the early parishoners are buried.
The same type of Gothic design was adopted by Greene in the Sullivan Dorr house (illustration below), erected just prior to Saint John's Church. The site, at 109 Benefit Street, was a part of the original Roger Williams home lot, owned in 1798 by Zachariah Allen and inherited, in 1803, by his daughter Lydia who married Dorr the following year.14 The design of the house is supposed to have been suggested by Pope's villa at Twickenham. The main block, facing Bowen Street, has a center three-story section flanked by two-story
Photograph by John W. Auty
Sullivan Dorr house, 1809, 109 Benefit Street.
wings, all surmounted by parapet walls to conceal the flat roofs. The kitchen ell adjoins the east wing and beyond it, at right angles, are the stables and carriage house facing a service court. The elaborate cove-cornice, the entrance porch supported by clustered Gothic colonnettes, and the Palladian window over the porch, are of particular distinction. The interior is featured by a winding stairway in the semi-circular end of the central hall, and by wall decorations executed by Michele Felice Corné.15
Two houses were built farther south on the Neck, in the environment of the John Brown and Joseph Nightingale houses (pages 63, 65), completing a quartet of distinguished
13. This description of St. John's Church is based upon an unpublished manuscript on the works of John Holden Greene by Norman M. Isham.
14. Sullivan Dorr was father of Thomas W. Dorr whose activities led to the Dorr Rebellion of 1842 (page 113).
15. Antoinette F. Downing, "New Light on the Sullivan Dorr House," R. I. Hist., XVI, 33. The Dorr house was given by its owner, Miss Margarethe L. Dwight, to the Providence Preservation Society in 1956.
76
1800-1812
R.I.H.S.
Thomas Poynton Ives house, 1806, 66 Power Street.
R.I.H.S.
Edward Carrington house, c. 1812, 66 Williams Street.
77
WEYBOSSET SIDE
mansions. The three-story brick house (illustration, page 77), erected by Thomas Poynton Ives16 on a two-acre estate at 66 Power Street in 1806, is similar in mass and general propor- tion to the Brown house. The cornice is enriched by carved modillions and is crowned by a balustrade. The entrance doorway, and the window above it, have elliptical fan lights, and the semi-circular entrance porch is in the Corinthian order, surmounted by a classic balustrade. The grounds include a paved court yard, entered from Brown Street, and various out-buildings. John Corliss, Jr. erected a two-story brick house at 66 Williams Street, about 18II, on land extending through to Power Street. This was purchased in 1812 by Edward
R.I.H.S.
Houses at 18-20 Arnold Street, c. 1800.
Carrington who remodeled it and added a third story and a double entrance porch composed of superimposed Corinthian orders (illustration, page 77). At the rear is a courtyard leading to the stables on Power Street. The property was given to the Rhode Island School of Design, in 1936, by Miss Dwight, great granddaughter of Mr. Carrington. The house is open to the public.
The small frame houses of the period followed Colonial precedent (page 30) rather closely both as to plan and methods of construction. Many of them have survived in Providence, with concentrated areas along Benefit, John, Arnold, Transit and other streets
16. Cady, "The Thomas P. Ives House," R. I. Hist., XIV, I. See also page 57.
78
1800-1812
of "Old Providence."17 Most typical are those with gable roofs. Their ornamental features are confined principally to the various types of classic doorways, the more distinguished having fluted pilasters capped by pedimented entablatures with leaded fan lights (illus- tration, page 78).
While the gambrel roof had become rather obsolete on the Neck, a house of that type was built on Weybosset Street by Samuel Aborn about 1810 (illustration below). It became the Teutonia House in 1877 and was replaced, in 1891, by the Hodges Building, the first floor of which was tenanted, a few years later, by the Manufacturers Outlet
ORIENTAL
R.I.H.S.
Samuel Aborn house, c. 1810-c. 1890, Weybosset Street.
Company which subsequently expanded to occupy the whole block bounded by Weybosset, Eddy, Pine and Garnet streets.
A brick schoolhouse was built by Brown University at the head of College Hill, in 1810, to accommodate a Latin School which had been an appendage of the college, inter- mittently, since 1764. College supervision ended about 1852 and it afterwards became a private school for boys, known as University Grammar School. The building was torn down in 1900 and the Administration Building of the University (now known as Van Wickle Hall) was erected on its site.18
17. The area included in the original proprietors' lots (see map, page 10). A Map of Old Providence, spotting the locations of surviving buildings erected before 1830, was published in 1956 by the Providence Preservation Society.
18. Bronson, p. 58. See also page 205.
79
R.I.H.S.
View of Providence from the south, c. 1819, from an engraving by A. L. Boswell.
CHAPTER 8 1812 - 1822
I' N 1812 the United States was again at war with Great Britain as a result of commercial difficulties between the two nations. The blockading of European ports, during the Napoleonic wars, had been followed by an Embargo act, passed by the Congress December 22, 1809, forbidding the departure of any vessel from the United States to a foreign country. The embargo, instituted by President Thomas Jefferson, had crippled foreign commerce and had inflicted hardships on the merchants of Providence and other maritime cities who formally protested the act. The declaration of war June 10, 1812, was signalized by the tolling of bells and the raising of flags half mast, yet the citizens pledged their support to the laws of the nation and rose to its defense. In the course of the war Rhode Island's naval reputation was maintained by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, a native of South Kingstown. Summoned to organize a fleet on Lake Erie, he proceeded there from Newport with officers, seamen and ship carpenters, built four small vessels, assembled five others and, on September 10, 1813, captured a British squadron, by which act the United States acquired control of the Great Lakes.1
Foreign trade was resumed after the War of 1812 but never quite regained its former activity. Providence merchants had begun to sell their ships and to invest their capital in mills and, with the decline in ocean commerce, an industrial era was under way in which the inland waterways of the state were appropriated as sites for manufacturing plants. By 1812 over 30 cotton mills had been put in operation, within a radius of ten miles of Providence, in the Moshassuck, Woonasquatucket and Pawtuxet valleys, and a woolen mill was established on Moshassuck river, in Providence, for the manufacture of broadcloth.2
On September 23, 1815, occurred the "great storm" (illustration, page 82), with a southeast gale of extreme violence blowing from 9 o'clock in the morning until noon, accompanied by a tide which rose to a height of II feet 912 inches above mean high water.3 Extensive damage was caused by the combination of wind and tide; Weybosset and India bridges were carried away; Central Bridge4 was partly demolished; most of the buildings standing on the wharves were destroyed; the third story of the Washington Insurance Building was damaged by the bowsprit of the ship Ganges; the Second Baptist Meeting House was demolished (page 75); and many houses and barns were blown down. Nearly every vessel in the harbor was driven from its mooring; some were lodged on wharves, others were carried through Weybosset Bridge into the cove, and one sloop was blown across Weybosset Street and came to rest on Pleasant (Eddy) Street.5
I. Field, I, 618.
2. Field, III, 360. The mill was established by Sullivan Dorr, Samuel G. Arnold, Joseph S. Martin, Daniel Lyman, and E. K. Randolph under the name of the Providence Woolen Manufacturing Company. A large stone building was erected between Branch Avenue and the river, south of North Burial Ground, later the site of Allen Print Works (page 171).
.3. In the hurricane of September 21, 1938, the tide rose two feet higher. See page 270.
4. India and Central toll bridges spanning Seekonk river (page 58) had previously been damaged by a freshet, in 1807, involving extensive repairs.
5. Providence Gazette, Sept. 30, 1815.
8I
WEYBOSSET SIDE
R.I.H.S.
The great storm of Providence, September 23, 1815, from Fleetwood engraving in Rhode Island Historical Society.
Courtesy of The Providence Journal
Exchange Place during the hurricane of September 21, 1938.
82
1812-1822
Prior to the storm little change had been effected in the natural shore line of the river and cove above Fox Point. River walls had been built in 1792, upon which Weybosset Bridge abutted, extending on the east bank from the present Steeple Street to a point south of Market Square, and on the west bank from the southwest corner of the present Washington Row to Post Office Court (page 58).
Harbor lines were established in town meeting July 24, 1815, a few weeks before the storm, and were ratified by the General Assembly November 3 of that year.6 The lines started at Weybosset Bridge, where the channel was about 115 feet wide, and diverged as they extended southward, the east line running parallel with the shore of the Neck, already bordered by wharves, to Fox Point, and the west line traversing waters and marsh land on Weybosset side to Eddy's Point, near the foot of Ship Street. The defining of the shipping channel was of particular significance as it predetermined the pattern of docks and slips on the west side of the river (see map, page 90) and, by establishing the head of navigation at Weybosset Bridge, initiated a movement for the eventual filling of the cove waters.
After the wreckage from the great storm had been cleared away attention was given to the rebuilding of the bridges. The new Weybosset Bridge (the seventh at that location) was a fixed span, completed in July, 1816.7 Its length was 120 feet, the same as its prede- cessor (page 58); its overall width was 95 feet, including a 22-foot sidewalk on each side; and it was "firmly supported by 65 posts driven into the bed of the river."8 A new covered lattice bridge was erected at India Point, 250 feet long and supported by five stone piers, with an uncovered draw 93 feet long and 24 feet wide.9 Repairs were made to Central Bridge.
South Water Street, a waterfront highway 30 feet wide, was laid out parallel with the new east harbor line, from Market Square to Fox Point, by order of the Town Council June 2, 181710 following a petition from owners of waterfront property who agreed that if the town would lay out the street, the land between it and the river should remain open forever, with no permanent building erected thereon. That provision for safeguarding the development of the shore property, unfortunately, was set aside by a court decision in 1 844,11 the effect of which was to permit the later erection, from time to time, of ill-assorted and unattractive waterfront buildings, mostly of wood construction, between Crawford Street and Fox Point.12
6. C.E., Plan showing river lines and street lines between Crawford Street Bridge and Weybosset Bridge, No. 040215, July 15, 1914.
7. Pending its completion a temporary bridge was erected (Providence Gazette, Oct. 21, 1815).
8. Providence Gazette, July 27, 1816.
9. C.E. Report, 1872-73, P. 32.
IO. Providence Gazette, August 2, 1817. "We understand that this street, which will be an important improvement to the town, and is calculated to run south from the east end of the Great Bridge to the new stores of Gen. Carrington, has been lately laid out, and the intermediate docks are to be filled up as fast as practicable."
II. C.D. No. 5, 1866-67. Opinion of the City Solicitor [John P. Knowles] upon the right to erect buildings upon the wharves, quoting the Providence Journal of Oct. 6, 1845: "Upon the death of Christopher Arnold, one of the signers of the agreement and the owner of a house and wharf on the present Sovereign Street his estate was purchased by W. Coleman and Sons who, claiming to own the wharf, erected a building thereon for a blacksmith shop in 1844. They were indicted but were not convicted as the court refused to permit the record of the laying out of South Water Street, or the agreement relative thereto, to go to the jury, and no other evidence was offered. The result of the decision permitted the subsequent erection of a number of ware- houses and other buildings on the waterfront."
12. The area degenerated after the wharves became abandoned by the steamboat companies in the 20th century. A rehabilitation program was under way in 1955.
83
WEYBOSSET SIDE
The system of 17th and 18th century roads, radiating from the town of Providence, was extended and improved in the first quarter of the 19th century by the establishment of turnpikes, built and maintained by private corporations and operated for revenue derived from the collection of tolls. Many turnpike companies were chartered in the New England states with privileges, in some cases, of acquiring land for the construction of new roads and, in others, of obtaining jurisdiction over existing roads. Rates were established by the states, payable at toll houses, for various types of vehicles and various kinds of animals, with exemptions made for persons using the turnpikes for the purpose of attending public worship, funerals and town meetings. Provision was made for freeing each road when the amount of the original investment, in addition to 12 percent, should have been repaid.13 Turnpikes running out of Providence (see map, page 118) were as follows:
The Pawtuxet Turnpike (1825) was the origin of the present Eddy Street from Point Street southerly to the Pawtuxet road (Broad Street). The section between Point and Crary streets was on filled land (page 73), south of which the turnpike intersected town-owned land on which two hospitals were standing - the old Small Pox Hospital on the water side (later the City Wood Yard), and the Marine Hospital on the present Rhode Island Hospital grounds. At the town line, near the present Public Street, the turnpike entered the town of Cranston.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.