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House

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c. 1800(?) 339 Howard Ave.

This late-eighteenth-century house with the same format as the Arnold House ( SC10) also reveals a provincial effort to lift a plain house to an unexpected degree of sophistication and monumentality. Whereas the typical house in Rhode Island by 1800 shows door and window openings as separate entities, this elevation features a wide, projecting board molding (really too wide) across the front serving as a unifying band for downstairs openings. To it the base of the entrance pediment over the transom light is aligned; against it the exaggerated splayed lintels of the first-floor windows abut. Such unifying moldings are more typical of ambitious late colonial design than of the fully developed Federal style, and indicate a builder who holds with the past. The blunt vigor of his interpretation, however, has a charm of its own, although the suspiciously small pediment may in fact be a twentieth-century alteration.

Writing Credits

Author: 
William H. Jordy et al.
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Citation

William H. Jordy et al., "House", [Hope, Rhode Island], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/RI-01-SC13.

Print Source

Buildings of Rhode Island, William H. Jordy, with Ronald J. Onorato and William McKenzie Woodward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 270-270.

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