About Providence

BY D. MORGAN McVICAR
Journal Staff Writer

Journal coverage of the National Governors Association conference

PROVIDENCE — So, govs, here you are with so much to do and see, and — with all the crises you must solve — so little time. Where does a guy or gal from Bismarck or Tallahassee begin?

Lighthouses on our shores? Mansions on our avenues? Wagering at our tracks?

Whatever sails your boat across the Ocean State, there is perhaps one sine qua non for a career politician: Benefit Street.

A guided tour, courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society, is preferred. But if that proves inconvenient, an alternative is to tote along the Providence Preservation Society's equally informative "Guide to Benefit Street: A Mile of History."

And a colorful history it is, peopled with political, literary, and religious figures from the 1600s through the 1950s. Edgar Allan Poe flirted on this street. Statesmen defied England here. And the apparently somnolent George Washington slept here.

You will also see the style to which a governor became accustomed in the 1700s.

The Historical Society tour, which is offered Tuesday through Saturday at 11 a.m. and Sunday at noon, begins at the John Brown House, the grounds of which front Benefit, with the entrance on Power Street.

On a recent weekday, Barbara Nesto was the guide for a group that included five Nebraskans, in town for a wedding, a Californian and her Providence friend. Nesto, 70, is a retired social worker with a professed love of history and of her native city. She is spry, funny and well-schooled.

"You are going to see the history from American Colonial times to the present," Nesto says. "The reason we can show this to you is because of the efforts of the Providence Preservation Society, which in 1957 preserved one of the oldest sections.

"It was a time," Nesto says, "when urban renewal and Brown University were both trying to bulldoze Providence and lose some of our heritage. Even though it's a young country, we do have some things worth preserving."

Nesto tells us that Benefit was originally an Indian trail from Wickenden Street to North Main Street. The one-mile road was laid out in 1758. Providence had been established much earlier along the river on South Main Street, and John Brown's House was among the first built up the hill.

With the Revolution having formally ended with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, by 1786 the merchant Brown had "all this money burning in his pocket, so he built this magnificent house," Nesto says.

A sentiment apparently shared by John Quincy Adams, who called the John Brown House "the most beautiful and elegant private mansion that I have ever seen on this continent," according to the PPS guide.

We learn about the house's architecture, and move on to the Gen. Ambrose Burnside House, built in 1866 at the corner of Benefit and Planet Streets. It is a fantastical house whose " curved corner is an eccentric, though highly successful, solution to this awkward, hillside site," the PPS guide says.

The city erected a statue of Burnside on what is now Kennedy Plaza, though Nesto could not tell you why.

"He lost a key battle at Fredericksburg [after which he resigned]," Nesto says. "And after the war, his wife oversaw the construction of this house. Maybe he wasn't competent in any area," she says.

Nebraskan Richard Ogden, standing up for his fellow native midwesterner, points out that Burnside "invented the Burnside carbine." Breech-loading rifles, to be precise.

Stephen Hopkins was the governor of Rhode Island for many years, Nesto says as we give his red 1707 digs, which were moved three times, a once-over. He also signed the Declaration of Independence and served as chief justice of the Superior Court and the first chancellor of Brown University.

"He was a politician all his life," Nesto says. "He never amassed the wealth of John Brown. George Washington came here to get Rhode Island to sign the Declaration. He stayed in this house, in this modest public servant's house, rather than the elegant John Brown House. I think that says something quite nice about George Washington."

We are now heading into the academic section of Benefit, Nesto informs, home to Rhode Island School of Design buildings, including the signature museum, and The Athenaeum library, which though private, we are allowed to enter and peruse.

RISD's Memorial Hall, a Romanesque building of 1853, was once the Central Congregational Church, we learn.

"You see this as a Tuscan church," our guide says. "But where are the two towers? We had a terrible hurricane in 1938, and it took them off. And they've never been replaced."

As we enter the First Baptist Church in America, 1775, three Nebraskans sitting by the pulpit wave. One hollers, "We're reading the history. Would you like to see the history?"

No need with Nesto in our party. This is the third building for the congregation that was founded in 1638 by Roger Williams and other early settlers. The steeple was inspired by a plate showing designs for St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in London. John D. Rockefeller Jr. helped save the building in 1958 after it had fallen into serious disrepair.

On Thomas Street, we learn about the history of the Providence Art Club, the third-oldest art club in the country, founded in 1880, and owner of four adjacent buildings on the street.

A particularly funky building was partly designed by Sidney Burleigh in 1885.

"He was not a very good artist himself," Nesto says. "But he was very sympathetic to artists and this house was built as studios for artists. The back is total windows, and it is all artist studios inside."

Back on Benefit, we are silently approaching a building that is better seen than described.

"This is a very ugly building coming up," Nesto says, causing the Nebraskans to do a double take and laugh.

Nesto stops in front of the ugly building -- at 176 Benefit -- and points across the street at a complex that seems more post-war suburban than Colonial Benefit.

"In the 1940s, California was our dream state," she says. "And garden apartments were in vogue. This is our California garden apartment site. It's rather nice to have it."

We head down Meeting Street and stop in front of the 1769 Old Brick Schoolhouse. It was the first public schoolhouse in Providence.

"Previously, people, only wealthy people, paid women to educate their children in the front parlor," Nesto says. "In 1771, when the first building at Brown was being built, some of Brown's classes were held here. At the turn of the century, it became a school for TB children. They threw the windows wide open in the middle of winter, because they didn't know how to treat TB."

Our formal tour, which includes much more than has been included in this space, winds down at the 1762 Old State House.

In this building, two months before the Declaration was signed in Philadelphia, Rhode Island renounced its allegiance to King George III.

"I don't know what this state was going to do," Nesto says, "but they weren't going to take it anymore."

Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette were entertained here in grand style.

In 1904, legislators deserted what had served as the legislative and judicial seat of state government for almost a century and a half. Nesto ushers her lieges over to the window to see the "new" State House.

"I think we got a little ostentatious," she opines. "It is somewhat immodest. We were never very confident about artistic things, so I think we had to do something like that."

Beyond the Old State House lies the part of Benefit Street that Brown University and the feds wanted to raze, sparking the preservation movement in Providence spearheaded by Antoinette Downing, Beatrice O. "Happy" Chace and John Nicholas Brown.

"It all turned out very happily," Nesto says.

Proceed on with the PPS guide, and see, among others, the house that was home to a widow who flirted with Poe, and the home of Jabez Gorham, the founder of the world-famous Gorham Manufacturing Corp.

And then, you can return to Little Rock and Carson City and tell the folks back home about the Mile of History.

Information about the walks sponsored by the Rhode Island Historical Society is available at 438-0463 or 331-8575. The cost for the 90-minute walks is $10 per person. The PPS guide, which costs $2.50, is available at the society's headquarters, at 21 Meeting St. Call 831-7440 for information.