The steps to the Providence Public Library. Lovecraft would have known these steps as man and boy.

Waterman Street, Providence, in its heyday circa the mid 1900s. The young fellow who’s seen bounding off the tram could even be a 15 year-old Lovecraft.

“… civilisation and Waterman St.” — H. P. Lovecraft, Lord of a visible world: an autobiography in letters, page 185.

“I came to Marblehead in the twilight, & gazed long upon its hoary magick. I threaded the tortuous, precipitous streets, some of which an horse can scarce climb, & in which two waggons cannot pass. I talked with old men & revell’d in old scenes, & climb’d pantingly over the crusted cliffs of snow to the windswept height where cold winds blew over desolate roofs & evil birds hovered over a bleak, deserted, frozen tarn.” — H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Kleiner, 11th January 1923.

tarn, from the Middle English, a small and usually circular lake located high in bleak moorland hills or mountainous terrain.

The curious light-house at Bullock Point, Providence. It’s across the river and about four miles south, so is not something Lovecraft would have encountered or glimpsed every day. And so far as I know he never took a steamer to New York (though he did see people off at the docks, such as Morton, who were going back to New York that way). But it’s the sort of place he might have glimpsed on his youthful bicycle and play expeditions over to that side of Providence, and would have later encountered pictorially on postcards such as this.

In a letter of 1921 Lovecraft recalls “our boyhood play-scenes — East Providence, Seekonk, and Rehoboth”. This was in the context of returning there in an unexpected car trip around his old haunts, on which he states that “I had not been there for eight or nine years”. This statement would place the last visit there circa 1912, perhaps about the time this postcard was made.

I should note that he also had his rooftop observatory until at least 1919, from which he could see far and in detail along the shoreline with the aid of his telescope. Letters sent to Galpin record him training his telescope not only on the stars, but also down and across the river during the day.

Lovecraftian role-players may also like this crisp scan of another local lighthouse postcard from circa the 1940s, to print up as a gaming prompt…

The offices of the Providence Journal, at night, as Lovecraft would have known them as a boy and young man.

Benefit St., Providence, with what appears to be a roving ice-cream pedlar and his cart.

Appears to be a view north along Benefit Street, from the point where Angell Street comes down the hill (from the right of the picture) and ends, and then drops down the hill as Thomas Street (the downward opening of which is seen on the left of the picture). See part of the name “Angell St.” written above the lamp-glass…

There’s a glass plate of the scene, at what appears to be an earlier point in time (1890s?)…

Betsy Williams cottage in Providence, as seen in early spring when its underlying ‘tentacular’ growth structure was visible. Most postcards show it in summer, swamped in leaf-and-bloom. Lovecraft sent a “picture postal” of it to Derleth…