The Calder House is typical of the many moderate-scale houses built for members of Providence’s rapidly growing mercantile and artisanal middle-class in the later 18th and early 19th centuries. John H. Calder was a pewterer.
Typical of the period, the house is a simple rectangular-plan box-like form with architectural attention concentrated in three areas: principal entrance, window caps, and cornice. The façade is articulated into an asymmetrical four-bay off-center-entrance format, a smaller variation on the more usual five-bay center-entrance organization. The door frame itself was also moved here from the mid-18th-century Tillinghast House on South Main Street.
Moved from Charlesfield Street to this location in 1949, the house is sited back from the street, a posture dictated by 20th-century zoning regulations. As built, it would have been located much closer to the street, as are its neighbors across the street.
— 2008 Festival of Historic Houses Guidebook
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