Back in May I briefly mused on Lovecraft’s barn, where in 1934 he stored crates of the old 18th century books that he had grown up with and inherited.

In the Moe letters I’ve now come across another mention of this barn. It was located “about a mile away” from Barnes Street in 1930, and it then contained Lovecraft’s carbons for his pre-“Dagon” period of writing. This places the location approximately under this marked area…

This at least narrows the field, for those with access to barn-level street maps from the period. The ‘mile’ might be a little further in, if Lovecraft factored ‘wiggle-room’ into his walking distances.

One possible clue is that his younger aunt lived “about a mile away” from Barnes Street, before the move to 66 College Street. Her pre-1933 vicinity might be the best place to start looking for a barn.

It may also help to know that “Old Providence Barns” were catalogued and photographed by John Hutchins Cady in 1948.

This barn is to be differentiated from the substantial 1881 horse-stable at Lovecraft’s boyhood home, which he told Moe was being demolished in August 1931 (Letters to Maurice W. Moe, page 311). Though it must have had a hay-loft to store the winter horse feed, and one letter states that this stable was later used to store the books of a friend-of-the-family. One imagines that dry book-storage, located within a mile of Brown University, might have been in demand during that period.