Emperor Napoleon III’s ambitious remodeling of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s made elaborate mansard-roof buildings the height of style in the United States during the 1860s and 1870s. This one, designed by prominent Boston architect Gridley Bryant and built for a prosperous cotton and commission merchant, is one of the country’s earliest and the city’s most clinically elaborate Second Empire houses.

— 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture