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An ample brick house by John Holden Greene for the spinster sister of Zachariah Allen and Lydia Allen Dorr, this is one of the several commissions for that family. While it shares many of the characteristics seen in other Greene houses, like the Beckwith House, its scale far surpasses any of the Greene’s other houses and approaches Zachariah Allen’s much-later house across the street as well as the John Brown House. The house was built after Greene’s sojourn in Savannah, and the full-length windows with wrought-iron balconies on the façade evoke that region. Allen (1788-1860) lived here with her youngest brother, Crawford (1798-1872), and, given the more modest familial settings of her siblings’ generation, it may well have served as the family seat for a generation or so. As with so many old Providence houses, the design, program, genealogy, and family relations all still remain to be explored in order to reveal the whole story.

– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture

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© 2025 Guide to Providence Architecture. All rights reserved. Design by J. Hogue at Highchair designhaus, with development & support by Kay Belardinelli.