to North Burial Ground and Patucket Falls
mystic
violet hills
PROVIDENCE

Broad Street
to Edgewood
and Pawtuxet

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

Athenaeum

the Baptist church

Brown University

the Brown warehouses

business section

Capt. Tillinghast's cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill

Christian Science Church

City Hall

Church & Benefit

College & Benefit

Congdon Street

Congregational Church on the hill

the Crooker decorating firm

Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street

decayed squares

Deserted Church

docks along the southerly part of the Town Street (Providence wharves)

Dr. Whipple's Georgian homestead

Epenetus Olney's Crown Coffee House tavern

Federal Hill

the Fenner's place

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

Great Bridge

Gregory Dexter's place

Hacher's Hall

Hazard Weeden of 598 Angell Street

Herrenden's Lane

the Historical Society

Hope Street

Hopkins Street

Jenckes & Benefit

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

lower town

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

Moses Brown School

Mr. Biddle's Wharf

Mr. Douglass's Histrionick Academy in King Street

Mrs. Whitman's home

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 Court

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

The Shunned House

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

Venerable Dwelling

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

Westminster Street

"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