The earliest extant and most impressive of the cubical, three-story houses that symbolized wealth and social standing in Providence for several generations beginning at the eve of the Revolution, this unlucky building, distinguished by an original principal entrance taken from the English architectural pattern book Builder’s Compleat Assistant (1750) by Battey Langley, was raised to insert a storefront in the mid-nineteenth century. By the 1920s, when this area had become thoroughly commercial, its fine interiors were removed for installation in museums in Brooklyn, Milwaukee, and Denver, an approach to preservation common at the time.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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