Mrs Ballou, the wife of a wool manufacturer and bank director, purchased this lot during the prosperous mid-1860s but did not build, curiously enough, until the economically depressed mid-1870s. The house she and her husband occupied for only a few years is highly reminiscent of the lively wood-frame dwellings build contemporaneously as vacation houses in watering spots on France’s Norman coast: irregular, with an asymmetrical plan and massing, emphatic roof and dormers, and a combination of medieval- and renaissance-derived trim.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
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