It’s not surprising that architect Ogden Codman was responsible for the design of the crispest neo-Georgian house that Providence had thus far seen. Rhode Island was in the vanguard of the Colonial Revival, with two thoroughly Georgian/Colonial Revival houses as early as 1884, both now gone, but none of the many that came before this projected the suave urbanity of an Adamesque English town house as well as this. The interiors were fitted out in the Louis XV guise that Codman much favored and first essayed at the Vanderbilt’s Newport cottage, “The Breakers,” in the early 1890s, just before the publication of his landmark book, co-authored with Edith Wharton, The Decoration of Houses (1897). Brown University acquired the building for use as a faculty club in 1922; since 1938 it has served as the university’s infirmary, named after Elisha B. Andrews, university president from 1889 to 1898.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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