The house that is now at 140 Power Street has been home to a variety of interesting Providence residents since its construction at the dawn of the 19th century. Originally located at 39 Benevolent Street, the structure was moved in 1950 to make way for new Brown University buildings. In the decades prior to its removal from Benevolent Street, it had been leased to Brown professors.

Little is known about the first inhabitants and commissioners of this house, painter Thomas Aldrich and his wife Elizabeth. However, one of its later occupants, Sarah Helen Whitman (maiden name Power) was an acclaimed poet and Rhode Island celebrity in the mid- to late-1800s. After a courtship famously conducted in the Providence Athenaeum, the widowed Sarah Helen became engaged to the writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe in 1948. Sarah Helen broke off the engagement after Poe broke his sobriety — a condition of their marriage. The two never married, and within a year Edgar Allan Poe was dead.

Throughout her life, Sarah Helen was a fervent activist for a number of issues, including but not limited to abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and vegetarianism. She was also an ardent spiritualist, attending the first recorded seánce in Providence in 1850. Her poetry was published in a wide variety of newspapers and journals, and her first volume, Hours of Life and Other Poems, was published in 1853.

When Sarah Helen moved into the home then at 39 Benevolent Street in 1866, she used it as a “literary salon, seánce parlor, and sanatorium for her sister,” according to Rhode Island College. Her younger sister, Susan Anna Power, struggled with mental illness throughout her whole life — Sarah Helen cared for Susan in the Thomas & Elizabeth Aldrich House until she died in 1877. Sarah Helen died only a year later. She is buried in North Burial Ground. You can find out more about Sarah Helen in a variety of places online and in Providence, including in the Sarah Helen Whitman Papers (1816-1878) at John Hay Library at Brown University.

After Sarah Helen and Susan died, Charles E. Goodspeed, a confectioner, and his family resided in the home until the 1930s. It then changed ownership a number of times, changing addresses in 1950.

Read our complete 2024 historic house marker report on what is now 140 Power Street. You can also read the original Gowdey report from the late-1960s.