I’d not seen this one before, and it gives a pleasing sense of the oceanic nature of Lovecraft’s city. By M.D. Mason, dated and issued in 1896, it shows the layout of central Providence as it was when Lovecraft was about six years old. Lovecraft’s College Hill is just out of sight, off the left hand side of the picture.

Finding it on eBay led me to the same picture plastered with watermarks at the stock-shovel site Alamy. This at least gave me the proper title “View of the city of Providence as seen from the dome of the new State House”. From there I found the inevitable Library of Congress public-domain source. It turns out it was issued as a supplement to the local newspaper, and thus the young Lovecraft almost certainly saw and perused it closely. Thus imbuing an early sense of his city as closely connected to the illimitable ocean.

He may even have seen the same view later, from the State House.