One of the first houses in Providence to sport Greek Revival monumentality and detailing, albeit applied to a long-standing domestic-architecture form, this was designed and built by Warren, Tallman & Bucklin, the design-and-build firm then at work on the monumental Greek Revival Arcade. Enoch Clarke sold this house soon after construction to John Slater, brother of Samuel Slater, who introduced mechanized textile production to the United States in the 1790s. John Slater came to this country around 1805 to manage Slatersville, the new textile-mill village in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. His descendant, Horatio, gave the house in 1901 to Brown University for use as a dormitory for the recently established women’s college, Pembroke. It was remodeled on the inside and expanded to the west in the 1960s by the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island as an elderly-care facility. Unfortunately, the addition uses the same architectural vocabulary as the Diocesan offices on North Main Street (Episcopal Cathedral of St John & Diocesan Office) but, fortunately, is far less visible from this vantage than from below.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
Built by Enoch W. Clarke, this two-and-a-half-story brick Greek Revival House is set side to the street. It has a low hip roof and a five-bay entrance front on the south side with a tetrastyle Greek Doric portico. A fine iron fence separates the entrance yard from the street. The house was sold to John Slater, brother of famous textile manufacturer Samuel Slater. John Slater emigrated from England about 1805 to manage Slatersville, the new industrial village in North Smithfield which Samuel Slater and a group of Providence investors had founded. The house remained in the Slater family through the nineteenth century, and in 1901, Horatio N. Slater, benefactor of Brown University’s Slater Hall, gave this building to Brown University for use as the first dormitory for the recently established women’s college, Pembroke. At that time, a third story was added. In 1967-68, the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island extensively remodeled the house, removing the third story and returning the exterior more or less to its original appearance, while gutting the interior and building a three-story wing on the west side to create Hallworth House, a convalescent home for the elderly. This large addition is less visible from Benefit Street than from the west, North Main Street, where its dark brown, cast-concrete mass relates to the complex of the Cathedral of St. John.
Bibliography:
Providence: A Citywide Survey, p. 141
–Providence’s Recent Past (2010), a PPS map by Ned Connors.
Last edited April 8, 2025 by Elisabeth Brown
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