This week on ‘Picture Postals’, another map and also a departure from the Providence theme. New York City’s subway and ‘elevated’ railway system in 1925, drawn by E.R. Trott and given away to customers by a large hotel. In Red Hook Lovecraft was living in the bottom-right corner of the map. See “CLINTON” written in capitals at an angle, and then find “Atlantic” and intersect the two… and you’re about there.

2988 pixels on the longest side, and thus readable if downloaded at full size. A very useful map if reading Lovecraft’s 1925 Diary and letters from New York, since it also has many of the street names, parks, ferry lines, museums, libraries, and even the dock numbers. All for 1925.

And to bring the map somewhat to life, here we glimpse a typical subway entrance with news-stand, at Columbus Circle in October 1925. On one of the southern corners of Central Park…

Note the news vendor’s baseball bat, ready to hand. Hoodlums got what was coming to them, in those days!

College Hill, Providence, as it might have looked had the 1960s planners had their way…

The same City planning document also has a useful early map showing and pinpointing many names that readers of Lovecraft’s letters will be familiar with…

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.

This week on ‘Picture Postals’, a folksy hand-draw map postcard which names, and also sometimes sketches, many of the city locations mentioned by Lovecraft in his letters. Possibly 1920s, judging by the design of the back and the existence of the Shepley Library as a possible destination.

As you can see, it can be turned three ways according to whatever direction the holder is walking. As Lovecraft once said…

everything cannot be carry’d in memory; so that it is well always to have a map in one’s pocket.

Continuing yesterday’s medical theme, this week on ‘Picture Postals’ I take a look at the exteriors of the main Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, as it was in Lovecraft’s time.

His uncle Dr. Clark has been an outpatients surgeon here 1876-1883.

However, in the 1930s both Lovecraft and his aunt were at the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital. Faig Jr. has this at the “Jane Brown Memorial Building of Rhode Island Hospital” and Joshi has “Jane Brown Memorial Hospital (now Rhode Island Hospital)”, so I assumed that JB and RIH are the same institution. But were they at the same location?

Today the “Jane Brown” in Providence has the address of “593 Eddy Street”, but Google Street View has some difficulty in getting me close enough. So, back to the 1930s. Where, exactly, was the 1930s Jane Frances Brown Building for Private Patients? I then found a reference to the…

“Jane Frances Brown Building for Private Patients, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence” (building commenced 1919, opened 1922, gift of Jesse H. Metcalf and Jane Frances Brown).

A 1919 article which anticipated the new “Jane Frances Brown” suggests an coherent and elegant interior…

And this led me to a good photo of the block, newly opened in 1922…

This then is where Lovecraft passed away. However, I was still uncertain if this was on the main Rhode Island Hospital campus, or was somewhere else in the city. A little more jumping around on Google Street View finally landed me at a reasonable view. The hospital block is still there, just across from the Eddy Street car-park. I don’t know if one would be able to ghoulishly peer up at Lovecraft’s exact “death window” from below (likely to be frowned on by the hospital, as it would disturb any current patients), and finding that out would take a lot more research.

An old map then pairs the relevant sites together, with the new 1922 Jane Brown block just south of the older Hospital campus. Seen here in relation to Lovecraft’s 66 College Street…

His mad mother was at the Butler Hospital for the Insane, a different place. Butler was also where his father died, also insane.