Providence from the North, 1849, a Library of Congress print. Here cleaned and rectified, and reduced to a more sensible size.
Providence from the North, 1849
01 Saturday Oct 2022
Posted in Historical context
01 Saturday Oct 2022
Posted in Historical context
Providence from the North, 1849, a Library of Congress print. Here cleaned and rectified, and reduced to a more sensible size.
What a beautiful image!
I believe the erstwhile state prison is in the foreground.
On the East Side, one can see the steeple of the First Baptist Meeting House and almost in the center of the image (more distant) what may be the Fox Point Observatory.
I’ve had second thoughts about the second tower in the center of the image. I think it is more likely John Holden Greene’s First Unitarian Church (1815-16) at Benefit & Benevolent Streets than the Fox Point Observatory. A Google search for Fox Point Observatory Providence easily yields an image of that structure, which despite being located on a hill was hardly as tall as depicted in the 1849 image.
Thanks Ken. The second-from-right tower definitely looks like a church steeple to me. This map may be useful: https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/ids:5271630 The only church I can find marked on it, in approximately the right position, suggests you’re correct – the “First Unitarian” is the tower in question.
I suspect that the Fox Point Observatory would have been too low down to feature on such a drawing. But perhaps it would be nice for the city to have an annotated version of this view, in due course. Then one could mark items even if a little out-of-sight, such as the Fox Point Observatory. There’s room in the sky to add a wealth of small copperplate annotations and thin lines going down.