A 2020 Rhode Island School of Design student dissertation project imagined a new use for the churchyard of St. John’s Episcopal in Providence, a place which in its time was a favorite Lovecraft haunt…

the intended design strategy is to keep the upper surface of the landscape untouched as much as possible, but create a spatial condition of the churchyard downwards. [Thus juxtaposing] the two sides of the world separated by death [via] a tunneling technique that creates an earthy quality in the spaces, emphasizing the reality of being underground, beneath a churchyard.

As Lovecraftians will recall, the master made frequent nocturnal visits to “St. John’s hidden hillside churchyard which Poe used to love [in 1847-48]”. He was also please to find that local early astronomer John Merritt, a London man before Providence, had a tomb. Lovecraft had his own thoughts on what lay beneath…

there must be some unsuspected vampiric horror burrowing down there & emitting vague miasmatic influences [Many friends have fearful feelings there. My friend Cook was afrighted there] by a certain unplaceable, deliberate scratching which recurred at intervals around 3 a.m.” (Lovecraft to Helen Sully, Letters to Talman, p. 305)

Finding this RISD student work (the author seemingly oblivious of Lovecraft and Poe) seemed a fine cue for one of my Friday ‘Picture postals’ posts. By sheer co-incidence I had also reached the St. John’s passages in the book containing the Sully letters.

The 271 North Main Street church building (opened 1810) which replaced the King’s Church (1722) is not to be confused with St. John’s Roman Catholic Church on Federal Hill (Lovecraft’s model for the ‘Free-Will Church of the Starry Wisdom’) which was demolished in 1992. Unfortunately there are few vintage postcards to be found. Just two of the church itself.

And a later one, which judging from the colour printing method and the typography on the back might be late 1950s or early 60s. The garish colour is here de-saturated…

But there is also this fine atmospheric glass-plate record-picture from circa the mid 1930s…

Lovecraft may have stepped inside, since the place had a la Farge stained-glass window. It was then open for services and presumably visitors, but today is said to be decaying rapidly. He noted that in his time (c. 1890-1930) burials had continued, but that those were only of the worthy rectors and bishops of the church. It sounds from the letters like it was more enclosed, overgrown and hidden by trees in the 1920s and 30s than today. The glimpses that can be obtained on Street View hint that much of the surrounding vegetation is now cut back, presumably to aid police surveillance re: druggies and vandalism?

Today I’m told the churchyard is accessed from up on Benefit Street, and I think I’ve found the un-signed entrance here on Street View. Though Lovecraft probably wouldn’t venture far down the path today, before swooning in horror… at the hideous pre-cast concrete modernist bunker, built right next to the ancient church and churchyard. What were they thinking of? Vampiric under-crypts, possibly.