I’ve found a picture of the Paxton/Arsdale frontage. First, here’s the map oriented to the same viewpoint as the photographer…
Here we see the Waterman Street approach to the Brown University campus at the top of the hill, with the clock-tower in the distance. It’s 1909.
The twin pale buildings in the centre of the picture are the Paxton frontage. They have different roofs because they were once separate buildings, before being joined and painted alike. The resulting large boarding house was later called the Arsdale, then re-named again from 1946 as the male dormitory ‘Hopkins House’ housing some of the many Brown students returning from service in the Second World War. (My thanks to Ken Faig and David Schultz for discovering the later names of the place). Lovecraft lived at the back of this boarding-house and shared a courtyard garden and cats with it. His aunt ate either her main or midday meals here, and it seems that Lovecraft accompanied his aunt to festive meals here if he wasn’t in New York with the Long family. He may also have taken some meals here in the depths of winter. This was also the home of two of his late correspondents including Marion F. Bonner (for the letters see Lovecraft Annual 2015).
It’s also possible that Lovecraft would telephone from this building — there are two 1934 memoirs of Lovecraft in Lovecraft Remembered. In one, Kenneth Sterling discovers Lovecraft has no phone at home, in the other Dorothy C. Walter is telephoned twice by Lovecraft. Both are recalling 1934 at 66 College Street. In the Dorothy C. Walter instance Lovecraft was certainly at home, and would not have gone more than a few yards out of his door due to the bitter cold and ice outside. This suggests he may have made outgoing phone calls at the Arsdale, just across the garden court from 66 — unless perhaps the downstairs tenant at 66 had a phone that could be used. At the old address of 10 Barnes he had used his landlady’s phone for calls.
Update: my thanks to David Schultz for pointing out that the C.A. Smith letters indicate that Lovecraft’s aunt had a phone in her section/apartment of 66 College St.
Here we seen a long view from the tall Industrial Trust building. It’s late January 1929 and we can just make out the back of the Paxton/Arsdale. One can just about make out the garden space between Lovecraft’s house and the boarding-house.
Congratulations on discovering the postcard with the front view of The Paxton/The Arsdale. I’d be interested in your view as to whether the structure on the boundary between the boarding house and T. Tucker to the south is the shed whose roof served as Kappa Alpha Tau Headquarters. Regards, Ken Faig, Jr.
Hi Ken. No, it’s one of two glassed-in low wings, set either site of the Tucker house – you can see them clearly on your 1921 Fire map, in your PDF. Their roofs appear to be flat, and thus attractive to cats, but I doubt cats could access them.
HPL wrote “And by the way—mine [telephone number] is PLantations 2044—in the name of my aunt, Mrs. Gamwell.” Letter to Clark Ashton Smith of 29 June 1933. His “Remembrancer” information in the notebook in which he wrote story plots (not his commonplace book) also records the number, as his (only for convenience–he was filling in a slot).
Hi David, many thanks. I don’t have the Smith letters yet. So… (if Sterling was remembering correctly in his decades-distant memoir) then Lovecraft was probably being politely evasive in 1934 – recognising Sterling’s tendency to ‘talk and talk and talk’ he likely didn’t want to take the risk that Sterling would call up for two-hour phone conversations. So he refrained from mentioning that his aunt had a phone. That would be my guess.
Any news on your Annotated Yuggoth, and a re-issue/update of your Annotated Commonplace?