Rhode Island | c u r i o

Thomas Alexander Tefft: Architect Extraordinaire

November 12, 2013 by rness | 3 Comments

I wear a couple of hats here at Brown University, one as staff member of Digital Production Services, aiding in the production of digitized resources for library collections and faculty projects, and another as a MA student in the Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. Often, these professional and academic roles overlap and intersect. Increasing student and faculty engagement with library collections through use of digitized materials within the Brown Digital Repository is a rewarding aspect of the work we do in Digital Production Services. Quite often, I find myself utilizing the digital resources that I have had a hand in creating in my own scholarly research. For instance, the topic under discussion in my graduate section for AMST1250B: Graves and Burial Grounds this week has been the gravestone designs of Rhode Island architect Thomas Alexander Tefft.

Original receiving tomb designed by Tefft.
Image: Swan Point Cemetery

The Thomas Alexander Tefft architectural drawings 1844-1859 are a part of Brown Archival and Manuscript Collections Online, and the nearly four hundred Tefft drawings that constitute the collection are available in the Brown Digital Repository. I knew that Tefft was a native Rhode Islander (born in Richmond in 1826), and a graduate of Brown University (Class of 1851).[1. Mitchell, Encyclopedia Brunoniana (Brown University Library, 1993; pp. 536-537).] I also knew that Tefft designed many local private residences and public buildings, like Providence’s first Union Station and Rhode Island School of Design’s Memorial Hall. What I didn’t know was that Tefft was also a prolific designer of tombs, monuments and gravestones, many of which can be viewed in Swan Point Cemetery.

Tefft’s design for Central Congregational Chuch, now RISD’s Memorial Hall.

Tefft’s signature rundbogenstil (or rounded arch) Romanesque style[2. Curran, The Romanesque Revival: Religion, Politics, and Transnational Exchange (Penn State Press, 2003; p. 139).] can be seen both in Swan Point’s receiving tomb, which I had the opportunity to view last week as a part of our class’s walking tour of the Cemetery, and in the details of RISD’s Memorial Hall (originally Central Congregational Church) on Benefit Street. The towers of the building, seen in Tefft’s drawing, were damaged in the 1938 hurricane and subsequently removed. While Greek and Gothic revival styles were all the rage in America during the 1830s and ’40s, Tefft favored the revival styles of the Renaissance and the Romanesque. Brown’s collection of Tefft architectural drawings include designs for over 50 gravestones and tombs, in which the range of revival styles can be seen in the Classical, Egyptian, and Romanesque motifs he employed.
Remarkably, Tefft’s substantial body of work was created in just 14 years. In 1859, at the age of 33, the architect died of a fever while in Italy on a Grand Tour.[3. Curran, The Romanesque Revival: Religion, Politics, and Transnational Exchange (Penn State Press, 2003; p. 139).] Initially, Tefft was buried at Florence’s English Cemetery, but in February of 1860 his body was shipped back to Providence and re-interred in Swan Point Cemetery. Teftt is buried beside James Bucklin, another important figure in Rhode Island architecture, under a gravestone of his own design.[4. Mitchell, Encyclopedia Brunoniana (Brown University Library, 1993; pp. 536-537).]

The Tefft gravestone design, which now marks his own grave in Swan Point Cemetery.

In 1988, the Department of Art at Brown University collaborated with the National Building Museum on a student-curated exhibit held at Brown’s Bell Gallery. The catalog for the exhibit, Thomas Alexander Tefft: American Architecture in Transition, 1845-1860 is a wonderful resource to consult for more information on Tefft’s short but astonishingly creative career.

RISD’s Memorial Hall. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The Art School Down the Hill

November 7, 2013 by lelgin | Comments Off on The Art School Down the Hill

Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design are within steps of each other, so it’s no surprise that the two have a great deal of overlap in the community. While my full time work is as a photographer at Brown, I have taught photography at RISD (also my alma mater) in their Continuing Education department since 2002. I often use examples from my work at Brown to talk about lighting, lens selection, and other photographic techniques. I was advisor to RISD|CE’s digital photography certificate program for ten years, and during that time I would bring students to Brown to view our studio setup, and talk about the safe handling and digitization of cultural heritage materials.

It is due to my personal connection to RISD and RISD|CE that I was so excited to come across materials over a century old from RISD while photographing at Brown. I’ve been working on digitizing broadsides from the late 1800s, and have found several items from RISD, including bulletins introducing their evening drawing courses for men, art needle work courses for women, listings of their daytime, evening, and youth course schedules, and even an application to the school. As we continue to work our way into the turn of the century, I’m hoping we find even more.

The RISD bulletins are part of the Rider Broadsides collection, which contains a wide range of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, scrapbooks and newspapers from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. Named for the collector, Sidney S. Rider, Rider Broadsides is the largest private collection of Rhode Island-related materials, and we expect this digitization project to keep us busy for the better part of the academic year.

College Hill: What Was There

October 4, 2013 by rness | 1 Comment

Brown University Library Digital Collections are a rich resource for historical photographs. The collection Images of Brown contains over 4,000 digital objects alone, with more being added all the time. This collection contains many historical photographs of the campus, but also of the surrounding neighborhood of College Hill (upon which the University sits). The WhatWasThere project allows users to tie historical photographs to Google Street View and makes it possible to envision how your environment looked in the past by fading the photograph in and out. I chose to work with two photographs taken between The John D. Rockefeller Library and the John Hay Library. The photographer in each would have been standing close to the gates to the University looking down College Hill. In the tree lined views, neither library exists. The Hay was completed in 1910, and the “The Rock,” as it is commonly known, wasn’t built until 1964. The first photograph I chose to “fade” represents a view looking down College Street, sometime in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The street is deserted but for a solitary figure caught in motion. What is now the RISD College Building can be seen in the distance. The second photograph appears to be slightly more recent, with the addition of tracks in the street for trolley service. A streetcar filled with passengers approaches the east side. Not all opted for public transit on this sun-filled day; several men in bowlers and boys can be seen walking (even running) up the hill. A dog seems to be accompanying them on the trek (click images for zoomable views.) The interactivity which comes from being able to fade historical photographs from a past era to the present illuminates the past, sparks our imagination, and prompts us to see our daily environment us quite differently.

I encourage you browse the Brown Digital Repository for historical photographs, and to also find interactive ways to experience them. It’s fun navigating familiar streets as they appeared in the past. We would love to hear from you @BrownCurio if you make a successful fade using an image from Brown’s Digital Collections!

Looking up College Hill from South Main Street, in the winter of 1880.

College Hill seen from the gates of Brown University, 1870

Like Fishes Swimming in the Air

May 9, 2013 by rness | 1 Comment

Digital Production Services recently began digitizing broadsides from the Sidney S. Rider Collection on Rhode Island History. Rider was a Providence bookseller, publisher, and antiquarian, who presented the library with his collection (the largest private collection of materials related to Rhode Island), in 1913. The broadsides are being chronologically digitized with our Aptus-II 12 camera back, after being registered in our internal tracking system by our student assistants. To introduce the registration process to a student, I pulled a broadside from a box of 18th century materials. The item was dated March 16, 1752 and was published in Newport. The single sheet is a public notice for a course of experiments and lectures on the “newly-discovered Electrical FIRE: containing, not only the most curious of those that have been made and published in Europe, but a number of new ones lately made in Philadelphia.”

The broadside states that the daily lectures, given by Ebenezer Kinnersley, would take place in the council chamber at the Newport courthouse, at 3pm over the the course of a week, or two, in March of 1752. Two columns list topics of the lectures, facts regarding the nature and properties of electricity (“that our Bodies at all Times contain enough of it to set a house on Fire”, and that it has “An Appearance like fishes swimming in the Air.”) An explanation of Mr. Muschenbrock’s wonderful bottle (the Leyden jar), is also promised.

Ebenezer Kinnersley was a scientist, inventor and lecturer, involved with Benjamin Franklin’s electrical experiments in Philadelphia. In 1751, encouraged by Franklin, he traveled to New York, Boston, and Newport delivering lectures on “the Newly Discovered Electrical Fire”. It was during this series of lectures that Kinnersley first announced the effectiveness of the lightning rod, and made practical suggestions on how houses and barns might be protected from the “destructive violence” of lightning. The broadside indicates that the explanation of the cause and effects of various representations of lightening will prove to be “a more probable hypothesis than has hitherto appeared.” Kinnersly’s Newport lecture took place in March of 1752, a full three months before Franklin’s kite experiment.

Anyone sufficiently interested in enlarging their minds by attending the lectures, which were hoped to be “worthy of Regard & Encouragement”, could procure tickets “at the House of the Widow Allen, in Thames Street, next Door to Mr. John Tweedy’s.” Newport residents could not satisfy their interest in electrical fire for free, however. Tickets for the event would cost the curious thirty shillings.

Rhode Island’s First Political Rivalry

March 14, 2013 by Matthew McCabe | Comments Off on Rhode Island’s First Political Rivalry

Modern portrait of Hopkins. Collection of Brown University.

Flatbed scanning is a pretty routine task, often done by rote, earbuds firmly in place. Sometimes, however, a piece will catch my eye, make me curious, and send me to journeying across the Internet seeking answers. Such was the case recently, when I was working with items from the Rider Broadsides collection, which chronicles Rhode Island history. I grew up in Rhode Island, and received a bachelor’s degree in History from Brown before returning to the University for graduate studies in Public Policy. The focus of my undergraduate work was early U.S. history. In baseball jargon, this collection was right in my wheelhouse.

Portion of letter from Hopkins supporters, praising Hopkins and suggesting coalition.

The broadside that caught my attention features text from four letters between Samuel Ward, Stephen Hopkins, and supporters of the two men. I knew that Ward and Hopkins had been colonial governors of Rhode Island – and rivals – but that’s where my knowledge ended. Some research revealed to me that Newport, Rhode Island was the colony’s preeminent city in the early days, but by the 1750s, Providence had become a successful commercial port, and competition between the two cities manifested itself in a political rivalry. Stephen Hopkins, a friend and business partner of the Brown family of Providence, was first elected governor in 1755. Samuel Ward was supported by the Greene family of Warwick, and was aligned with Newport interests. The two men traded power, although Hopkins was far more successful, winning the governorship nine times to Ward’s three.

The broadside was issued in April of 1767, a month before the contentious election of 1767. Ward was the governor, and Hopkins was trying to replace him. The document was published by Ward, and contains the text of several letters to Ward from Hopkins and friends of Hopkins. The Hopkins faction suggests a power-sharing agreement, with the two sides splitting the various colonial offices. One group of Hopkins supporters, however, made the mistake of framing their proposal with a list of statements praising Hopkins and criticizing the current state of the colony under Governor Ward. This list is one reason that the Ward faction gave for rejecting the coalition proposal.

Hopkins won the 1767 election, according to one historian, with the help of, “personal influence, money, and liberal amounts of rum.” Hopkins only served a year before deciding to reach out to Ward to end their competition for the governorship. The ex-governors went on to serve as Rhode Island’s delegates to the Continental Congress; Hopkins became the first chancellor of Brown University.

Letter from Samuel Ward, rejecting coalition proposal.

Looking back at events like the Ward-Hopkins controversy makes us realize that we’ve always had factions in America, and we’ve found ways to move past them. This broadside, while a piece of Ward propaganda, was also an attempt to provide the “Freemen of this Colony” with both sides of the debate so they could “form a true Judgment of the Proposals which have passed between the Two Parties.” The day has passed when such pamphlets were universal touchstones that spurred debate. Modern media fragmentation makes it easy to go through life without exposure to contrasting views. I imagine men like Samuel Ward and Stephen Hopkins would have found such lack of meaningful debate objectionable.

~Matthew McCabe ’09 MPP ’14

BrownTown and Traces of the Past

March 1, 2013 by rness | Comments Off on BrownTown and Traces of the Past

BrownTown with Marvel Gymnasium in background, c.1947

Historic photographs of a particular place often depict a community no longer present, while exhibiting architectural and geographic traces that we can recognize. It is these traces that connect us to the past, and which also distance us from it. The work that I did preparing digital images for Images of Brown, allowed me an often nostalgic, and sometimes surprising view, into a place that I have called home for nearly 30 years, the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island. The area is an historic one, much of the architecture and terrain today is similar to as it was a over a century ago, and very familiar to me. Which is why, I stopped and took notice when I was reviewing several images which were captioned BrownTown. What was this BrownTown? I recognized surrounding buildings, but never knew that a BrownTown existed. I crossed the street to the Brown University Archives and began consulting the folders of material on the construction, maintenance, and eventual destruction of BrownTown, Providence, Rhode Island.

The corner of Elmgrove Ave. and Sessions St., 1946

Cement posts being installed on the corner of
Elmgrove Ave. and Sessions St., c.1946

After the end of World War II, The G.I. Bill encouraged many World War II veterans to seek a college education. Brown reacted by opening The Veterans Extension Program in the fall of 1946, bringing the University into the national spotlight as a leader in assuring veterans education. From 1,400 applicants, 486 WWII veterans were accepted to the University through a streamlined application process. Over 100 of these students were married and either had children or were expecting. There was a critical housing shortage nationwide, including Providence. Where would they live?

The problem was uniquely solved when the U.S. Government War Surplus Division donated a dozen former Navy barracks to the University, and the city offered to lease to Brown, the Sessions Street Playground at the Corner of Elmgrove Avenue and Sessions Street. (Currently, the site of the Jewish Community Center of Rhode Island). Eight barracks would fit on the lot. They were brought in sections from the Coddington Point site in Newport, and set up on cement posts. This temporary emergency housing was given the name, BrownTown, and on December 9^th, 1946, 100 families moved in to the furnished apartments.

Brown Town, Joe Schaefer’s room

Each of the units had an icebox, hotplate, and a tiny iron sink. Flower pots and flower beds distinguished the different residences, as did the informal naming of the “streets”, or rows, between the barracks after wartime locales, Guadalcanal, Normandy, Pearl Harbor, etc. In local newspapers, Brown is described as being a good landlord, pets were allowed, and rent was low at $26-$42 a month. BrownTown’s population exploded. At one time, the hundred families in Brown Town had a total of 120 children. Fifty babies were born during the summer of 1947. Student residents juggled academics with family life, attending baby caring clinics, forming babysitting pools, and building play pens, to keep children out of Elmgrove Avenue, described at the time as a speedway for motorists.

Brown Town was a thriving community for four years, but it was erected as a temporary community, and in 1950, after the inaugural class graduated, half of the buildings were removed. BrownTown was fully razed on June 1951. The fleeting phenomena of BrownTown is summed up in a student essay titled The Suburban History of BrownTown 1946-51, as a “quick life and death of a suburban suburbia.”

Roger Williams on Thanksgiving

November 21, 2012 by Ann Caldwell | Comments Off on Roger Williams on Thanksgiving

First Baptist Church, Providence, RI

James Carroll’s opinion piece in the Monday, November 19, 2012 issue of the Boston Globe was titled “How R.I.’s Roger Williams Gave us Thanksgiving as we know it.” Hmm. . . . That immediately halted my search of our digital collections for turkeys, grandma’s house, and proclamations. He begins by saying that “Americans are confused about Thanksgiving” and goes on to talk about Roger Williams, “a Puritan who defended the right, one could say, to be religiously impure.”

This got me reflecting on Roger Williams and our collections. As I was sitting at my desk I looked out the window and realized I was looking at the First Baptist Church in America, established by Roger Williams in 1638. This is the first and oldest Baptist church in the New World. Williams belief in the practices of the church wavered throughout his life, but he remained steadfast in his defense of religious freedom, and his influence caused Rhode Island to be a unique haven of religious liberty in the seventeenth century

The story of Roger Williams’ search for religious freedom and expulsion from Massachusetts is repeatedly told. Here it appears in a broadside to be sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” As Williams stepped ashore on what is now Gano Street in his search for freedom, he was supposedly greeted by friendly native Americans. The words in the final line, “What Cheer, Netop, What Cheer” were supposedly spoken to the banished Puritan Roger Williams, by the Narragansett Indians as they encountered each other in what would become Rhode Island.

“Roger Williams Cabin”

As we begin the holiday season with Thanksgiving, we should keep James Carroll’s opinion piece in mind and “look back gratefully at those who created the American ideal. . . . Roger Williams did indeed create the American soul. He’s the founder to whom, therefore, the nation’s deepest thanks are due. But the way to express such gratitude is by protecting authentic religious liberty from those who, using the phrase as a banner, would destroy it.”

Roger Williams Momument

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