This area was the property of the Drown family from the eighteenth century. The opening of a railroad station here in 1855 on the Providence, Warren & Bristol Railroad served as impetus for residential development, which occurred in appreciable amount only after the Civil War. Alfred Drown laid out the Drownville plat on the family farmstead and, together with David A. Waldron, a Providence real estate agent, took an active role in its marketing. Drown's own house (1830, with late-nineteenth-century additions) still stands at 13 Alfred Drown Road, while Waldron occupied the handsome mansard-roof house at number 26, built in 1858. The community first became popular as a summer colony, attracting in particular a number of families from Pawtucket. The prominent Providence architecture firm of William R. Walker, a Pawtucket resident, is known to have worked in the neighborhood, but to date his name is associated with only one building.
Writing Credits
If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.
SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.