Penny the cat enjoys resting in the Swansea Public Library. Journal photo / Bob Thayer

Most of the stone and brick buildings along Swansea’s Main Street, including the Christ Church, the Town Hall and the public library, were built with money donated by the town’s leading citizens during the late 1800s, Frank Shaw Stevens, and later, his widow, Elizabeth Stevens.

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Swansea Village

Even the Stevens’ residence, a yellow Victorian mansion at 24 Main St., is still in service to the public good, and is operated today as a residential treatment center for adolescent boys

The mansion was built around 1851 by James E. Birch, a young stagecoach driver from Providence who made his fortune in the stagecoach business in California during the Gold Rush. Birch built the house for his fiancÉe, Julia Ann Briggs Chace, a Swansea native.

Birch and Stevens were good friends who had met in Providence when Stevens was a store clerk, and they were in business together in California. Birch was president of the California Stage Company, and Stevens was vice president. In 1856, the Birches named their newborn son Frank Stevens Birch.

Birch died in a shipwreck in September 1857; early the next year, his widow, Julia Briggs Chace Birch, met Stevens when she went to California to settle her late husband’s affairs. She married Stevens in July of that year, and gave him control of her husband’s estate. After Julia died in 1871, Stevens married his second wife, Elizabeth Stevens. Stevens died in 1889, and Elizabeth Stevens died in 1930.

Today, except for the stream of traffic on Main Street, Swansea’s village center, which is a historic district, looks much as it likely did when Birch and Stevens were making their fortunes in the Victorian era. Main Street and Elm Street are shaded by mature trees, and except for the public buildings and several large houses, most of the historic homes are modestly sized. In the past there were small, mom-and-pop type stores in the village, but at the moment there are no retail or business establishments, in stark contrast to Route 6, the town’s largest commercial center, Route 118, home of the Swansea Mall, and Route 136.

Single-family houses listed for sale in Swansea this week ranged in price from $174,900 for a two-bedroom, one-bath house to $1.4 million for a 1998 house with waterviews, four bedrooms three full bathrooms and one half bathroom.

The downturn in the regional real estate market has had its effect in Swansea. Last year’s median sales price for single-family houses in town was $270,000, but the median for the first seven months of this year dropped to $250,500, a decrease of close to 7 percent, according to the Warren Group, a Massachusetts firm that tracks real estate sales. Last year, 183 houses sold in Swansea; but the pace of sales has slowed this year. According to the Warren Group, 110 houses sold in Swansea in the first seven months of 2006; only 85 sold for the first seven months of this year, a decrease of almost 23 percent.

cdunn@projo.com