It appears an odd bit of Belgravia was dropped here from the sky. The Burrough sisters, who grew up next door at number six (each married a Draper brother), inherited in the late 1860s the land on which this stands. In the late 1870s they built this four-unit row, with each having a unit to occupy and a unit to rent. Maximizing space and return on investment was clearly a high priority for these obviously thrifty Yankee ladies. Two architect business partners, Lloyd Kent and William Cruise, and their families moved here in the early 1950s and continued a live/lease arrangement similar to that of the Drapers. The architects removed or simplified the by-then highly unfashionable excessive High Victorian Gothic detail and painted the whole thing white. Now itself something of a mid-twentieth-century period piece, this remains Providence’s only completely single-family row.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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