The Lippitt family had owned the property that would become 271 Angell Street for decades before Mary “May” Balch Lippitt Steedman decided to build her own home on the rear end of the property. As many Providence residents know, the Lippitt family was both politically powerful and exceedingly wealthy in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
May’s father, Henry Lippitt, was a textile-manufacturer-turned-politician and the first Lippitt in an impressive political dynasty that has extended to the present day. From 1875 to 1877, when May was in her late teenage years, Henry Lippitt served as the Republican governor of the state of Rhode Island. Years later, from 1895 to 1897, one of May’s brothers, Charles Warren, also served as governor of Rhode Island. Another brother, Henry Frederick, was a U.S. senator.
Like their male counterparts, the women of the Lippitt family found a way to be involved in politics despite not actually being able to vote for much of their lives. After May’s eldest sister Jeannie contracted scarlet fever and became deaf at the age of four, the matriarch of the Lippitt family, Mary Ann Balch, dedicated herself to the education of deaf children. In one census record from 1880, next to the mark indicating Jeannie’s deafness under the “Deaf and Dumb” column, the surveyor wrote in, “not dumb,” potentially at the insistence of Mary Ann Balch, who did not believe deafness had to be a handicap. May was also outspoken about politics; her most fervent activism came during the 1910s against a woman’s right to vote, believing equal voting rights would completely upend the status quo that had benefitted her for her entire life.
The Georgian Revival home that is now 271 Angell Street was constructed in 1912 while May was organizing against women’s suffrage. At this point in her life, she had been windowed; in 1907, her husband Charles Steedman committed suicide while on a family vacation in Paris. According to May’s account of that time, Steedman had begun drinking heavily, leading to a general sense of despondency which eventually resulted in his taking his own life.
May lived in this home — next door to her childhood home, the current Lippitt House Museum — with her son and a rotating staff of servants until she died in 1938. Despite initially fighting against a woman’s right to vote even as the 19th Amendment was ratified, May’s politics evolved considerably throughout her lifetime. She eventually came around to supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, written by suffragette Alice Paul — a piece of gender equality legislation that to this day has not been ratified. By the time she died, she had served in a number of leadership roles in the Republican party, both on a state level and nationally.
After May died, her and Charles’ Steedman’s son, Richard Charles Steedman, inherited the home.
You can read more about the political lives of the Lippitt women in this article by Lippitt House Museum Director Carrie E. Taylor.
You can also read our complete 1969 historic house marker report on 271 Angell Street here. We have included the description of this home from our 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture, authored by William McKenzie Woodward, below as well.
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Mrs. Steedman wisely ignored two bits of advice when she decided to build on the back part of her parents’ property (199 Hope Street): she proceeded with construction at a time when prices were considered high, and she built her house close to the street. She therefore avoided post-World-War-I inflation and got a large garden in the rear. The principal living rooms face the garden on the south, a configuration similar to that in her parents’ house, with service and circulation entrances on the street side. For the design of her house she turned to Clarke, Howe & Homer, exceptionally fine practitioners of Georgian Revival as this robust example illustrates.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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