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Steere-Harris House

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c. 1760; wing probably later. c. 1840, door. 310 Pleasant View Ave. (near the junction of Farnum Pk.)

The Steere-Harris House is yet another instance of the five-bay, two-and-one-half-story format with six-over-six sash, with an off-center chimney and asymmetrical window distribution. The windows are stretched out about as far as the formula can be managed, with the intervals of clapboarding separating the center door and its window from the four windows to either side a little overextended. Yet the relatively wide spacing between the outer window pairs suggests some effort to regularize the rhythm of openings across the front, but here left unresolved. The door is a Greek Revival modernization.

Arranged in an arc around the former millpond behind the farmhouse, a colony of clapboard apartment units with multipitched roofs comprises the farm's final crop. Countering what would otherwise be barrackslike plainness, up-and-down gable pitches, in-and-out massing, and picturesque grouping, together with a perfunctory “green,” do their best to transform suburban apartments into a “village.”

Writing Credits

Author: 
William H. Jordy et al.
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Citation

William H. Jordy et al., "Steere-Harris House", [Smithfield, Rhode Island], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/RI-01-SM18.

Print Source

Buildings of Rhode Island, William H. Jordy, with Ronald J. Onorato and William McKenzie Woodward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 256-256.

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