This is one of several large houses built for members of an extended family descended from 17th-century English colonists, the Power family, who settled this part of town and for whom adjacent Power Street was named. Moses Brown Ives (1794-1857) and his sister Charlotte Ives Goddard (see 38 Brown Street) grew up in the neighborhood, across the street at 66 Power Street, and chose, like many of their relatives, to build here.
As first built, this ample Greek Revival house, one of the city’s few substantial houses in that style, had its principal entrance centered on Charlesfield Street, today’s rear elevation. After Ives’s death, descendants reoriented that entrance to the south side, overlooking the extensive gardens that still extend to Power Street, and updated the interior trim. What we see today on the inside is some of the original Greek Revival detailing overlaid with Italian Renaissance Revival motif fashionable in the mid-19th century. A subsequent generation of family members added the ample Colonial Revival porch that sweeps around the south and west elevations, all the better to enjoy the landscaped interior of the block. For almost a century, this was the official residence of the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. More than a decade ago, it returned to private ownership and continues to owe its fine state of preservation to those thoughtful stewards.
— 2008 Festival of Historic Houses Guidebook
The images above is taken from the PPS Gowdey Database, taken in 1957.
Like his great uncle and his mother before him, Ives built on land long held by his family. What we see now is a heavily re-worked, monumental stuccoed Greek Revival house (evident especially in the proportions) whose original entrance faced Charlesfield Street to the north. The principal entrance’s move to the south dates from architect Alfred Stone’s 1867 remodeling (far more evident internally but not visible to the public), and the sweeping porch was added in the late 1890s. The three children of Hope Brown and Thomas Poynton Ives built substantial houses near their parents, and this is one of the two that remain (the other being the Goddard-Iselin House). Moses Brown Ives (1794-1857), active in the family firm Brown & Ives, married Ann Allen Dorr, a daughter of Sullivan and Lydia Allen Dorr; their daughter, Hope Brown Ives Russell (1839-1909), gave her parents’ house to the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island in 1897, and it remained the bishop’s residence until the 1990s.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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