Washington Square

Worth a glance on Washington Square are (along the north, or to the right looking out from the Colony House) number 8, the John Rathburn–George Gardner–Abraham Rodrigues Rivera House (c. 1722, altered c. 1740 and c. 1950), an older house modernized, like the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House (see above), in the mid-eighteenth century. It became the Newport Bank in 1804. Next door, at number 10, is its continuation, the Bank of Newport (1929), a good example of a Beaux-Arts alternation of colonnade and arch to make a banking room. On the left (south side of the square), at number 29 Touro Street, is the Peter Buliod House (c. 1755), one of several Newport houses with a rusticated wooden front. In 1795 it housed the Rhode Island Bank, the oldest in Newport, before Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry bought it in 1818. Number 39, the Joseph Rogers House (c. 1798), like number 51, the Wilbour-Ellery House (c. 1801), is a large, somewhat bare three-story, hip-roofed house with a fine fanlighted and pedimented entrance salvaged from another building in 1976. Finally, number 49, the Jane Pickens Theater, formerly Zion Episcopal Church (1835, with numerous alterations to 1976), designed by Russell Warren), once boasted a pure temple facade with a splendid freestanding Ionic colonnade across the entire front.