Masonry row houses are exceptionally unusual in Providence, where wood-frame detached housing is the norm. This sophisticated design represents more a desire to project an image of large-city sophistication than a need for such dense housing. Built for the heirs of Thomas Poynton Ives, specifically his widow, Hope Brown Ives (1773-1855), and their three children, Charlotte, Moses, and Robert, the row no doubt owes its form to the earlier Ives Row. The building’s concept and overall program (more on that below) were probably determined by the client while specific design elements and the construction fell to Tallman & Bucklin, the design/construction firm that the family firm, Brown & Ives, employed consistently throughout the mid-19th century.
Athenæum Row has an interesting history. As an income-producing property for the Ives Heirs, the row originally had five units leased as single-family houses. Residents in Athenæum Row were typically upper- and upper-middle-class individuals and families, including friends, colleagues, and even relatives of the owners. Quite often their residence here was relatively short, two or three years, and one discernable pattern is that of the first home of well-to-do newlyweds who bided their time here while they completed construction of their own single-family houses somewhere nearby on College Hill. By the early 20th-century, however, the units were divided in ownership, and multiple flats filled the buildings. In the recent past, several of the units have been lovingly restored and reduced in density to one or two apartments per unit.
As originally configured, the units featured a small parlor and a dining room in the 1st story of the main block, while the principal drawing room was at the front of the 2nd story, occupying the full width of the unit. This configuration was typical of earlier and contemporary European row housing, but by the 1840s was certainly common in this country’s larger cities, where both clients and builder would have known many examples.
— 2006 Festival of Historic Houses Guidebook
A row house built in brick as an income-producing property was a rare occurrence in mid-nineteenth-century Providence. Even as the Greek Revival was fading statistically, this building, which positioned the principal parlor of each unit across the full width of the second story, lent a somewhat sophisticated urban presence to a city that generally favored detached wood-frame houses. The five attached single-family dwellings provided income for the heirs of Thomas Poynton Ives, who himself had built another brick row about thirty years earlier across the street at numbers 270-276. Tallman & Bucklin provided both design and construction. Rented to upper-income individuals and families (including Ives family relatives), the row’s units were gradually converted to multiple apartments in the early twentieth century, a trend now in gradual reversal.
— 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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