Background

If the houses on Benefit Street could talk… In the late 1950s, most of the 18th- and 19th-century homes lining this “Mile of History” were in disrepair and seemed destined for the wrecking ball. Fortunately, the Providence Preservation Society saved the day. Together with capital provided by private citizens, PPS came up with an aggressive plan to preserve the entire neighborhood. Today, the expanse of the Benefit from Wickenden to Olney streets is one of the most impressive representations of Colonial and early Federal-style buildings in the country.

Lesser-known History

(The information presented here was gathered by Bela Teixeira and Rosemary Santos. Teixeira is executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, and Santos is on the board of directors of the Heritage Harbor Museum.)

The Old Arsenal, the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery building, 176 Benefit St.= Built in 1840 by famed architect Russell Warren, the building looks unmistakably military with its turrets. The building was the site of an illegal meeting of the Ku Klux Klan on May 17, 1924. Usually associated with the South, the Klan was active in Rhode Island during the 1920s. It organized a meeting at the Arsenal that attracted some 200 men. The group had no permit to meet on state property and had obtained entrance to the Arsenal by claiming it would hold a religious meeting. Later, Rhode Island's Gov. William S. Flynn denounced the Klan and forbade the group to use state property for meetings.

The Old State House, 150 Benefit St.= Work began in 1760 and was largely completed by 1762, but funds for finishing the interior were appropriated as late as 1771. The building's symmetrical composition and use of red brick with rusticated brownstone and painted wood trim reflect the late English Baroque architecture of the period of William and Mary and Queen Anne. It is now home to the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission. Here, at the time of the American Revolution in the late 1700s, there were intense debates between factions represented by Brown brothers John and Moses over the issue of slavery and a proposal by some slaveholders to free their slaves in order to let them serve as soldiers. Moses Brown, being a Quaker, was as opposed to slavery as John was in support of it.

Charles Shaw House, 132 Benefit St.= In the 1920s, this circa 1850 house served as the Providence home of the Prince Hall Masons. One of the country's oldest Masons' lodges, the all-black association was founded in 1797 by Prince Hall, a black Bostonian who had fought in the Revolution. Finding that blacks were not welcome in white Masons' lodges, Hall started a lodge in Boston that sparked brother lodges in Providence and Newport.

Sullivan Dorr House, 109 Benefit St.= Built in 1810 for the prominent Dorr family, the Dorrs found themselves split politically during what later became known as the Dorr Rebellion of 1842, which challenged state government.

Judge Staples House, 75 Benefit St.= Built around 1850. A small cemetery behind the house contains the graves of members of four black families who lived in the house from the 1930s to the 1950s. Across the street in the graveyard behind St. John's Episcopal Cathedral is a slate tombstone from the 1700s memorializing “Three Respectable Black Persons, Phillis, Rose and Fannie Chace, Who Served in the Family of Sam'l Chace Esq.”

Anecdotes

robert savitski 02-03-2008 I lived @ 134 Benefit st... while poking around the place found some newspapers where the headlines were... “President Lincoln shot”... anyway... thought it interesting

Alex Pausley  The two houses on the northwest corner of Church Street ( I think that’s the right name) and Benefit Street were St Dunstan’'s School in the 1940’s. This was an Episcopal Choir school with grades 1-9 that provided boy choristers for St Martin’s Church on the east side, and Grace Church downtown. The back yard was all concrete where we played ball during recess, with a high fence separating it from the Cathedral graveyard downhill on the west. On occasion a ball would go over the fence, and there was a hatch and ladder we could pop through and down to search for our ball among the ancient stones. The building on the corner was associated with Edgar Allen Poe and one of his young ladies. The timbers of the house showed deep charring from a fire that apparently was sucessfully extinguished thus saving the building. I graduated in 1947 from the school.

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