Three essays in the Colonial Revival style, fewer than ten years apart, showing the transition from first- to second-generation designs in that long-lived mode. Clarke & Howe’s Whitmarsh House has the forthright, high-shouldered, amply proportioned mien of those houses built from the early 1890s into the first decade of the twentieth century. The Farnsworth (104 Prospect) and Holbrook (106 Prospect) Houses, both by Jackson, Robertson & Adams, were designed and built at the same time and gave the architects the felicitous opportunity to consider and to realize the possibilities for manipulation of each design to maximum effort. Farnsworth’s siting, massing, and stripped-down detail make it quite comfortable. Shifts in each of these aspects at Holbrook give it a much more welcoming mien. Both Farnsworth and Holbrook were manufacturers, but in the unrelated industries, and no connection between the two men or their families has yet emerged to connect these commissions.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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