The combination of rural and aesthetic in this country suburb and the success of the mix of late Victorian–Queen Anne design in expressing these sentiments is evident in two nearby buildings, both unfortunately altered. The first, at 474 Fruit Hill Road, is St. James Episcopal Church (1879, Howard Hoppin; twentieth-century side addition). Reported in the Providence Journalof the time as being in the “Dutch style,” it is a picturesque composition which is both monumental and self-consciously pretty—a prettiness rather exaggerated in an otherwise commendable restoration. At 354 Fruit Hill Avenue is the Fruit Hill School, now an American Legion Post (1879, William E. Colwell[?]), in the Queen Anne style, with an intimate scale, snug gables, deep overhangs, and fanciful ornament, but insensitively altered for its present use.
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