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Cocumscussoc (Smith's Castle)

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Smith's Castle
1678 and later. 55 Richard Smith Dr. (open to the public)

Built on the foundation of an earlier house, Cocumscussoc was originally a fortified trading post on Mill Cove and later became the center of the eighteenth-century Updike plantation. Picturesque, but too much altered to be of firstrate architectural significance, it is nevertheless an important seventeenth-century house, interesting both as a rare seventeenth-century survivor and as the only extant trading post of the period in the state, which played a considerable role at the time in the South County economy. In 1948 the house was threatened with demolition, prompting a group of local citizens to buy and restore it for use as a museum.

Writing Credits

Author: 
William H. Jordy et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

State Police Barracks
Rufus and Mary Congdon House
E. E. Young House
Old Narragansett Church (Old St. Paul's Church)
Stephen Cooper House

Citation

William H. Jordy et al., "Cocumscussoc (Smith's Castle)", [North Kingstown, Rhode Island], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/RI-01-NK6.

Print Source

Buildings of Rhode Island, William H. Jordy, with Ronald J. Onorato and William McKenzie Woodward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 356-357.

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