As a fascinating foil for the large Italianate houses just around the corner (see Tully D. Bowen House), this house, designed by Thomas A. Tefft, begs the question of scale, especially juxtaposed against the joined-at-the hip Federal double house (numbers 8-10, William and George Bucklin Houses [ca 1824], John Holden Greene, architect) next door. Despite the gutsiness of its fenestration, the calculatedly smooth wall surface, and the full third story (Look at me! I’m an Italian Renaissance Palace!), it can’t quite establish the requisite monumentality one wants and will see on this tour just around the corner. Sweet, a carpenter, built this for almost-immediate sale to a relative; the ambition that chose high-style solution on a doll-house scale recalls a similar project at 10 Thomas Street sixty years earlier.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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