Nightingale-Brown House
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Nightingale-Brown House
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Front elevation, 2008
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| Location | 357 Benefit St., Providence, Rhode Island |
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| Coordinates | 41°49′22″N 71°24′13″W / 41.82278°N 71.40361°WCoordinates: 41°49′22″N 71°24′13″W / 41.82278°N 71.40361°W |
| Area | 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
| Built | 1792 |
| Architect | Caleb Ormsbee |
| Architectural style | American Colonial, Georgian, Italianate |
| Part of | College Hill Historic District (#70000019) |
| NRHP Reference # | 89001242 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | June 29, 1989 |
| Designated NHL | June 29, 1989 |
| Designated NHLDCP | November 10, 1970 |
The Nightingale–Brown House is a historic house at 357 Benefit Street on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is home to the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University. The house is architecturally significant as one of the largest surviving wood-frame houses of the 18th century, and is historically significant as the longtime seat (from 1814 to 1985) of the Brown family, whose members have been leaders of the Providence civic, social, and business community since the 17th century, and include nationally significant leaders of America's industrialization in the 19th century. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989.
The house is a large three-story wood frame structure, set on a lot roughly 1 acre (0.40 ha) in size, built in 1791 for Colonel Joseph Nightingale. Its main facade is five bays wide, with a central projecting section. The center entrance is framed by sidelight windows and topped by an elliptical fanlight window. This framing is one of the earliest known uses of such windows in the United States. The entrance is sheltered by a square porch supported by columns, with a low railing above. Atop the doorway is a Palladian window, whose side windows are topped by dentillated cornices. The projecting section is topped by a triangular pediment, whose deeply recessed tympanum is modillioned and filled with a window. The corners of the projecting section, and of the main and side blocks, are all quoined, and the window surrounds on the first two floors also feature quoined and voussoired surrounds. The main block is covered by a hip roof, with a low balustrade surrounding it. This appearance largely matches the first known image of the house, a drawing made in 1802.
In 1814, Nicholas Brown, Jr. purchased the home. His descendants owned the house until the death of Anne S.K. Brown in 1985, at which point it was donated to Brown University. In 1853 John Carter Brown hired Thomas Tefft to design a carriage house for the property, and in 1858 a two-story addition was added to the south side. It is unknown if Tefft was involved in the design of the addition, but it has stylistic similarities to the carriage house.
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