The Mile of History

Benefit Street runs for roughly a mile along the slope of College Hill, parallel to the waterfront below, and what it contains is one of the finest collections of restored eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture in the United States. Not replicas. Originals. The John Brown House from seventeen eighty-six, the Nightingale-Brown House from seventeen ninety-two, the Edward Dexter House from seventeen ninety-five. Block after block of gambrel roofs, Federal-period doorways, and brick sidewalks worn smooth by two and a half centuries of foot traffic.

The street began as Back Street, a series of paths running behind the main commercial thoroughfare. By the late eighteenth century it had become a fashionable address. The Golden Ball Inn, which stood here, hosted George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette.

Preservation efforts began in earnest in the nineteen fifties, when the Providence Preservation Society started documenting and advocating for the historic fabric of the East Side. The restoration campaign was a success by most measures, the architecture survived.

It came at a cost. The restoration of Benefit Street displaced the working-class African-American and Cape Verdean communities that had lived here through the mid-twentieth century, converting a mixed-use neighborhood into what is now largely residential. The architecture is real. The social history of who was moved to preserve it is real too.

Both things are true about this street, and a mile is long enough to hold both.