When the three-story clapboard building was built in 1772, four years before the American Revolution, the town of Providence ran along the east bank of the Providence River for about a mile, putting Shakespeare’s Head near the banks of the Great Salt Cove in the northern part of the town.
The building originally served as a printing office, shop, boarding house and home of John Carter, printer and publisher of the town’s first newspaper, the Providence Gazette, precursor to the Providence Journal. The property was given to John Carter’s wife, Amey, by her father, John Crawford. A sign displaying an image of William Shakespeare marked the shop’s location (the printing press was in the basement level). Carter had apprenticed with Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia; When Franklin became Postmaster General of the colonies, he appointed Carter the Postmaster of Providence in 1775, a position he held through 1792. During that time, a corner of the house served as Providence’s first post office.
The Carters enslaved two African-American women in the house from the time they moved into it in 1772 through 1789, when they were freed: Ingow and her daughter Fanny. Ingow left the house upon her manumission and Fanny remained as an indentured servant for at least one year (it was the custom at the time for girls to remain in indenture through the age of 18). From historical records, it appears that mother and daughter were purchased from Arthur Fenner Junior or Senior (Fenner Senior was the fourth Governor of Rhode Island). In this period, urban enslaved women were very likely to work caring for the home and family – preparing food, cleaning the home, washing laundry and caring for children were all common jobs. In addition to Ingow and Fanny, an enslaved man named Primus King (enslaved by Benjamin King in 1777) was an apprenticed laborer in the house’s printing press during this period.
In the 18th century, the Providence Gazette participated in the economic systems of slavery by advertising for the sale of enslaved people and for the capture of runaway slaves – but it also printed abolitionist content during this time, including articles and letters. Around the turn of the 19th century, the printing press moved out, but the building remained a home to the Carter family through the early part of the 19th century and a boarding house from about 1850 through the early 1920s, when the house had as many as 25 tenants at a time who were laborers, painters, carpenters, and machinists. During this time, ownership of the building transferred out of the Carter family: in 1906, Shakespeare’s Head was purchased by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad Company during the construction of the railroad and nearby tunnel, while remaining a boarding house. In 1925, it was acquired by James Stockard, who owned What Cheer Garage across the street, now RISD studio space. Stockard rented out rooms in the house, including to artists for use as studio space, but by the early 1930s the house was vacant.
In 1937 the house was condemned by Providence’s building inspector and was slated for demolition. At this point, a group of early preservationists formed the Shakespeare’s Head Association (SHA) for “the purpose of preserving historical and architectural antiquities in the City of Providence, including the acquisition, preservation and maintenance of the building located at 21 Meeting Street, known as Shakespeare’s Head, as well as other buildings of historical and architectural interest, and of carrying out a general program of activities requisite exclusively for the foregoing purposes.” Its members included Henry Sharpe, Abby Burgess, Martha Day, John Hutchins Cady, Henry Hart, and John Wells, who purchased the building in 1938.
Architectural plans of Shakespeare’s Head, completed by the National Park Service as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in 1936, include references to two locations in the basement marked as “probable slave pits,” which may have served as storage spaces used by the enslaved women in the house – or they may have housed those fleeing slavery via the Underground Railroad as the written documentation produced at the time notes, “The house was a general meeting place for influential settlers, and, so legend has it, dungeons in the cellar were used in the famous ‘underground system’ of aiding slaves to escape to Canada from bondage of the South.” Similar references to the building’s connection to the Underground Railroad can be found in secondary sources in the 20th century but PPS is not yet aware of substantiated information that it served this purpose. The HABS collection consists of drawings, documentation, and photographs of more than 43,000 historic sites in the country.
In 1939, the Shakespeare’s Head Association commissioned a landscape plan from James Graham in the colonial revival style, which remains the garden’s current design. In 1954, SHA board meeting notes relate that there were plans to make Shakespeare’s Head into a museum of printing arts, but that idea foundered, so the decision was made to begin renting space out to civic groups such as the Girl Scouts, the Junior League of Rhode Island, and the Federation of Garden Clubs. In 2013, PPS became the sole member of the SHA and steward of the building when the Junior League of RI withdrew from the ownership agreement. In 2015, the SHA finally dissolved, nearly eighty years after its founding, and PPS became the sole owner of the building.
– Based on research conducted by public historian Traci Picard, 2024
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Another cube, this time in clapboard and with a monumental center chimney. No other house in Providence so thoroughly reflects multiple uses in the eighteenth century. Carter published the Providence Gazette, operated the local post office, sold books and stationery, and lived here with his wife and twelve children. The printing presses were in the basement (almost at ground level in the rear), a post office and shop were on the first floor, and the living quarters occupied the two top floors. The separate entrance for family members, at the second story level on the east side of the building, is an original feature, though now reached by modern stairs. The handsome Colonial Revival gardens at rear were first installed in the late 1930s, when this deteriorating building was acquired by the Shakespeare’s Head Association, whose formation to save this building was a signal event in local preservation activities.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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