to North Burial Ground and Patucket Falls |
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PROVIDENCE |
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across the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar
Archer Harris' sumptuous but hideous French-roofed mansion in the East Side residence district
the Baptist church
the Brown warehouses
Capt. Tillinghast's cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill
Christian Science Church
City Hall
Congdon Street
Congregational Church on the hill
the Crooker decorating firm
Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street
docks along the southerly part of the Town Street (Providence wharves)
Dr. Whipple's Georgian homestead
Epenetus Olney's Crown Coffee House tavern
First Baptist Church of 1775
the Fleur-de-Lys Building in Thomas Street, near the Rhose Island School of Design "...a hideous Victorian imitation of seventeenth century Breton Architecture which flaunts its stuccoed front amidst the lovely colonial houses on the ancient hill, and under the very shadow of the finest Georgian steeple in America..." -- The Call of Cthulhu
Gregory Dexter's place
Hacher's Hall
Hazard Weeden of 598 Angell Street
Herrenden's Lane
the Historical Society
Hope Street
Jenkes Street
John Carter Brown Library, Brown University
John Hay Library, Brown University
John Merritt place on the Neck
Joseph Curwen's 1761 home in Olney Court on Stamper's Hill, just north of Gregory Dexter's at about the foot of Olney Street
Joseph Curwen farm on the Pawtuxet Road
Joseph Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street
the Journal office
the little white farmhouse
Main Street
The Mansion House in Benefit Street (formerly named Golden Ball Inn)
Market House
Meeting Street (Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods)
Mile-End Cove
Mr. Biddle's Wharf
Mr. Douglass's Histrionick Academy in King Street
a narrow hill street leading up from an ancient waterfront swarming with foreign mongrels
The Neck
The North Burial Gound on the Pawtucket West Road
old brick colonial schoolhouse
the old Market House
old Town Street (beside the river)
old white church
Olney Street
Pardon Tillinghast's wharf, far south in Town Street
Power's Lane hill
Post Office Square
Presbyterian Lane near the new college building
a private hospital for the insane near Providence
Prospect Street Prospect Terrace
Public Library
queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside (which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased's home in Williams Street)
Rhode Island School of Design
Sabin's Tavern near the docks
Shepley Library in Benefit Street
Sign of Shakespeare's Head (where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution)
Sign of the Golden Lion
St. John's Church (formerly King's Church)
St. John's churchyard (formerly King's Church)
Stamper's Hill (northwest of the Ward Mansion and west of Town Street)
the State House
Stephen Hopkins home
Stephen Jackson's school opposite the Court-House Parade
Thayer Street
Thomas Street
Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on Weybosset Point
Walter C. Dwight studio is near the foot of College Hill The warehouse at Pardon Tillinghast's wharf, far south in Town Street
Water Street
Waterman Street
wharfage near Mile-End Cove
"The latter sort is splendidly exemplified by a case in the ancient city of Providence, where in the late forties Edgar Allan Poe used to sojourn often during his unsuccessful wooing of the gifted poetess, Mrs. Whitman." -- The Shunned House
"There is Providence quaint and lordly on its seven hills over the blue harbour, with terraces of green leading up to steeples and citadels of living antiquity..." -- The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
"Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case may be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him."
"In 1746 Mr. John Merritt, an elderly English gentleman of literary and scientific leanings, came from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in standing, and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the best residence section."
"Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance."
"A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home."
"The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky."
"Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old "Town Street" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street--the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods--he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespeare's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old water-front recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent."
Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He like mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings." -- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward