This tour (Tour 2-South) ends, appropriately enough, with two large-scale houses that anticipate the scale of economic activity glorified in the next tour. Both were home to prosperous mid-nineteenth-century textile manufacturers, the industry that put Providence on the map economically and, ultimately, politically. Whipple-Slater (pictured, at 54 College Street) began as a substantial Greek Revival house, as the front porch indicates, but its enlargement and remodeling at the hands of Alpheus Morse, perhaps the most skillful local practitioner of the Italianate style, transformed it into a suitable seat for William Slater, a member of the prominent textile-manufacturing family. Next door, to the left, the King House (at 48 College Street) typifies the large-scale Greek Revival house that the Whipple House had been before Morse’s architectural ministrations.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
The images below are taken from the PPS Gowdey Database.
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