The interior concourse or ‘Promenade’ of the main train station in Providence.
This opened when Lovecraft was about age 8, in 1898. Then the station was expanded for platform-length in 1910. Since Lovecraft preferred to travel to places such as Boston and New York by rail, rather than the ocean-going steam ships, the station concourse and platforms were a familiar place to him. He would also have met friends there, when they arrived.
So far as I know he never took a steam-ship to New York from Providence, at least not as an adult. But he did go down to the ocean-going ship jetties at Fox Point (at the foot of the East Side) to ‘see off’ visiting friends such as Morton who were going home to New York by ship. Presumably he also went there to meet occasional arrivals from New York and other points, such as when Samuel Loveman travelled to Providence by sea in the mid 1930s. There was apparently also a service from Fox Point to Great Britain, so the Anglophile Lovecraft may have wistfully perused the timetables board for British departures while there…
He was not averse to smaller-scale sea-travel when the rates were low…
I myself have taken advantage of phenomenally cheap boat rates (50¢ round trip) & have visited ancient Newport repeatedly this summer…
This was presumably the Providence to Newport boat trip which Long mentions in his memoir of Lovecraft. It was taken, at least once, along with Long and Morton.
Since he was not averse to sea travel, I assume that it was the cost of a regular passenger fare ticket from Providence to New York which deterred him. This is rather suggested by a letter of 1922 in which he whimsically considers stowing away on the New York boat, presumably due to being unable to afford the fare, in order to be with Samuel Loveman…
… a possible Lovemanic [Loveman] move to N.Y. [New York] … then Grandpa’d get there if he had to be a stowaway on the New-York Boat!
Here we see the circa 1919 prices…
Update: Fox Point is not to be confused with the central dockside in Providence, from which smaller ships departed. Here is the north end of the city’s central docks circa the end of the 1900s.
