A Hous Widow

Robert l? Emlen A Hous f 0 r Widow row Architectural Statement and Social Position in Providence, 1791 Builtfor an artisan and shopkeepet;the interior of the Set-itDodge house was embellishedto a high standardfor the widow of one of Providences’ leading merchants. n the middle of picturesque rate, large-scale detailing in a middling Thomas Street, on College Hill in Providence residence and illustrates the Providence, Rhode Island, stands way in which architecture was used as a a house built about 1786 by the statement of social distinction by the lead- silversmith Seril Dodge (1759- ing family of postwar Providence. 1802)I (fig. 1). While typical in size of Seril Dodge chose to build his many wood-frame houses built in house next to the new meetinghouse of Providence in the last two decades of the the Charitable Baptist Society, built in eighteenth century, the Seril Dodge house 1774-75 on land occupied by the descen- is unique among these modest structures dants of Thomas Angell. The lane that in the elegance and extraordinary detail of passed through the Angel1 descendants ’ its interior finish work Although it has home lots, just north of the property they attracted the notice of architectural histo- sold to the Baptists, was originally known rians since at least 1934, when it was one as Angells’ Lane. In the nineteenth cen- of the first buildings in Rhode Island to be tury it became the town road known as recorded by the federal Historical Angel1 Street, with the exception of the American Buildings Survey, no explana- first block which, through a misreading of tion has been offered as to why such an the legend on a survey, was named ordinary house should boast such extraor- Thomas Street.1 dinary interiors. Recent research into the Construction of the Baptist meet- history of the building now reveals the inghouse on Angells’ Lane began in 1774. reasons for the incongruity of this elabo- Designed to hold fourteen hundred Old-Time New England Fall/Winter 1999 Page 5 Fig. 1. ThomasStreet in Providerue, 1999. The Seril Dodge/Avis Brown houseis in the middle of Thomas Street, ha&iuay down the hill. In 1906 the housewas raisedone story to make spacefora grocerystore at streetlevel. Photographby the author. people, fully one-quarter of the popula- century both the Baptist meetinghouse tion of Providence of that time, the new and the Seril Dodge house were associated church dominated the hillside overlook- with the Brown family of Providence, ing the Providence River when it was who had a hand in developing Thomas completed a year later. Based on designs Angell’s homeshare lots. By the end of the in James Gibbs’s 1728 Book OfArchitecture, colonial period no one enjoyed a more the meetinghouse has been described as elevated position in the cultural, civic, and “the outstanding architectural work of the business life of Rhode Island than the pre-Revolutionary period” in Provi- brothers Nicholas, Joseph, John, and dence.2 A symbol of Providence’s emer- Moses Brown. They had established one gence in the 1770s as a cultured and of the great trading and manufacturing dynamic town, the new meetinghouse firms in colonial America and were was the subject of the first view of founders of the university that would ulti- Providence ever to be published, an mately bear their name. For five genera- engraving in the August 1789 number of tions the family had been prominent the MassachusettsMagazine (fig. 2) .3 members of the Baptist Society It was In the last quarter of the eighteenth architect Joseph Brown who, after travel- Page 6 Fall/Winter 1999 Old-Time New England Fig. 2. Y4S. W I&w of the Baptist Meeting House, Providence,R.I., ” engravingby Samuel Hill from the August 1789 issueofMassachusetts Magazine. Courte_yRhode Island Historical Society, Providence, Rhi (x3) 851. ing to Boston to study the great churches, merchant Nicholas Brown served as a adapted a plate published by Gibbs for the director of the lottery to raise funds to Providence meetinghouse design. The build the church, and his younger brother Old-Time New England Fall/Winter 1999 Page 7 John took charge of its construction.4 two rooms on each side and with two Although their youngest brother Moses interior chimneys, one on each side of the left the Baptist Society in that year to join hall (fig. 3). In the wave of building that the Society of Friends, he recognized the followed the conclusion of the war, many value of the undeveloped land adjacent to houses were constructed on nearby the new meetinghouse. In 1786 he pur- Benefit Street, though most of these con- chased the part of the Thomas Angel1 formed to the old central-chimney plan. homeshare lot that fronted on Angell’s Seril Dodge’s house was laid out accord- Lane, to the north of the church.5 Soon ing to a newer style, in which separate thereafter Seril Dodge, a young clock- chimney stacks permitted individual fire- maker and silversmith who had recently places to be built in each of the side rooms moved to Providence, built his house on and allowed daylight and fresh air to pass this lot. Possibly the artisan’s means were the length of the house through an open so limited that he built first and intended central hall, like the houses in the neigh- to buy the land later, when his fortunes borhood being developed across the improved. In Samuel Hill’s 1789 engrav- Providence river on the Weybosset, or ing (see fig. 2) the new house can be seen west, side of town. Two-and-one-half facing the church, standing on the land stories high and measuring thirty-six by still owned by Moses Brown. twenty-nine feet, Dodge’s house was According to Angells’ Lane: The smaller in dimension and shorter by a History of a Little Street in Providence, the story than the thirty-seven-by- thirty-five- Seril Dodge house was constructed in foot house Deacon Edward Taylor was 1786.6 When Moses Brown purchased the building at the same time on the adjacent property in that year from the Angel1 fam- lot (see figs. 1,3 & 4). With his income as ily the deed makes no reference to any an artisan and shopkeeper, perhaps it was structure standing on it, and Dodge likely all that Seril Dodge could afford at the started building as soon as the property time. Prospects must have soon improved changed hands in April. It is clear that the for Dodge, for in 1790 he purchased the building was finished in 1789; in addition second of Moses Brown’s building lots on to its being pictured in the Samuel Hill Angell’s Lane and began construction of a engraving of that year, the house is identi- three-story, brick-clad house for his grow- fied in a deed of sale. In September 1789, ing family (fig. 4).9 When he vacated the when Moses Brown sold the land beneath first house the following year, he sold the house to Seril Dodge, Brown’s deed to both building and land back to Moses the silversmith identifies the property as Brown, in whose family it would remain “the House Lot being the same whereon for the next 116 years. said Dodge has built a Dwelling House in In May 1791 Nicholas Brown, part- which he now lives.“’ ner in the mercantile house of Brown and The new wood-frame house was Benson, died at the age of sixty-one, designed with a central hallway flanked by leaving behind his wife, Avis Binney Page 8 Fall/Winter 1999 Old-Time New England Fig. 3. Thomas‘ Street 1932,“pencil drawing on paper by Helen M. Grose. In this drawing the original doorway of the Seril Dodge/Avis Brown houseis shownjfteen feet abovethe street.Courtesy the ProvidenceArt Club. Brown, and two children-his son and ing to a long-established practice of namesake Nicholas Brown II and his insuring that the family homestead daughter Hope. He also left behind a con- descended in the male line of the family. siderable fortune, the bulk of which he Perhaps he was aware that in the fall his bequeathed to his children. He had been son Nicholas would be married to Ann married to Avis only six years, and, as his Carter, who would eventually become the second wife and the stepmother of his new mistress of his brick house. But the children, Nicholas Brown evidently did language and terms of his will indicate that not expect her to share equally in the he also had great affection for his wife and Brown family fortune. In fact, he that he meant to support her in appropri- intended his son and business partner ately comfortable circumstances. “I give Nicholas to become the new master of his and devise to my beloved Wife Avis Brown brick mansion house on Main Street, for and during the term of her natural life where the family firm had its counting my House, together with the lot whereon house and wharf He planned for Avis to it Stands & the out Houses and Appurte- move to a smaller house of her own.10 nances situate in Providence and on the When he displaced his widow and west side of the Great Bridge nearly oppo- left the Main Street mansion to his name- site to the Long Wharf which Estate lately sake, Nicholas Brown was acting accord- belonged to Metcalf Bowler deceased; & Old-Time New England Fall/Winter 1999 Page 9 Fig. 4. 7’he Seril Dodge/Avis Brown houseof about 1786 and the Seril Dodge houseof 1790, photographbefore 1909.

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