Architects seldom have the opportunity to orchestrate a whole streetscape, as Jackson, Robertson & Adams did on both sides of College Street between North Main and Benefits Streets. Having just completed the Court House (Providence County Court House), they were engaged by RISD to design the growing school’s administrative building. The program was smaller in scale than the Court House, and the result, though more modest, is in some ways even more felicitous. They incorporated fragments of what was here, including the west wall of the Franklin House (1823), which forms the west end of this building, replete with datestone at its top, and the archway halfway up the hill. The Providence County Court House and the College Building create one of the most humanistic, urbane blocks imaginable; drive it or walk it, it never ceases to be satisfying.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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