Here’s a hi-res composited version of the map sheets from Plat Book of the City of Providence Rhode Island, 1918, which I’ve centered on 66 College Street, Lovecraft’s last address. 66 is set back from College St., and actually sits halfway between College St and Waterman St. S.T. Joshi says in I Am Providence that the tiny alley leading back to 66 from College St. was once called Ely’s Lane. The “Paxton” just north on Waterman was the boarding house where Lovecraft sometimes had his meals.
Update: The Paxton was the ‘Arsdale’ by Lovecraft’s time. Later the “old Arsdale” at 53-55 Waterman Street became the “Hopkins House” dormitory for boys in 1946, when there was a sudden and pressing need to accommodate vast numbers of students returning from the Second World War. My thanks to Schultz and Faig for the additional information.
Above: (No.66 detail from Plat Book of the City of Providence Rhode Island, 1918)
Lovecraft’s desk window looked west from the upper floor, and in the other corner he had a seat looking through two paired windows (one facing west and another south). So his desk would have been looking at the back parts of the Alpha Delta Phi (Brunonian chapter) fraternity house at Brown. This appears in “The Haunter of the Dark” as: “Students in the Psi Delta house, whose upper rear windows looked into Blake’s study, noticed the blurred white face…”
Missing picture
Above: Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house. You can see how the curved frontage section corresponds with the map. Lovecraft’s home out of sight directly behind the fraternity house. In the left of his view from his two west windows he would have seen the NE upper windows of the short wing at the back of the fraternity house.
The house has now been moved. Thanks to Andrew Kuchling for the photo (below) of the site of 66 College Street, as it is now. The western view from about 15 ft. above the roof of that little extension of the List Art Building (seen here) would give an approximate indication of the main view from Lovecraft’s study desk. One would need to point the camera so that the Psi Delta house windows are on the far left of the picture being taken and the roof of their little low square building is in the left quarter of the picture.
You can see the location in relation to the road in this picture by Will Hart…
Sadly it now appears there are trees in the way of Lovecraft’s old view, as you can see in this picture by Will Hart …
Remote-controlled hover-drone with HD camera needed, I’d say, to hover just to the left of the top of the central bright green tree in the above photo Alternatively one of the building windows might do it. Keep in mind you’re facing west, so avoid late afternoons and sunsets or you might have difficulties with photographing straight into the sun. A clear bright winter morning might be best, when the leaves are off the trees.
Those 1875 and 1918 on-line atlases of Providence are almost like time machines. I could spend hours with them. I think the “Paxton” (across the back yard at 66 College Street) was functioning as a boarding house by the 1930s–Barlow stayed there when he visited Lovecraft during the summer of 1936 and I think other visitors stayed there as well. (Lovecraft could sometimes arrange for a “spare room” for visitors at 10 Barnes Street, where he lived 1926-33, but perhaps because of the presence of his aunt in the shared quarters at 66 College, he does not seem to have ordinarily provided sleeping quarters for visitors there.) You’re right that Lovecraft and his aunt Annie Gamwell sometimes took their meals at the boarding house across the back yard, the aunt I think more often than Lovecraft himself. Some Lovecraft letters speak of eating holiday meals there, especially Thanksgiving. Turkey (white meat) with sage dressing (the spicier the better) and mince pie was probably the author’s favorite meal although spaghetti with meatballs and parmesan cheese with ice cream for desert probably came a close second–both followed of course by strong coffee (enhanced with heaping treaspoons of sugar)[*]. For Lovecraft a turkey dinner was probably usually a once-a-year meal unless he could find it as a “special” at cheap eatery like Jacques (Jake’s). Whether he ever slipped over to Federal Hill for some good spaghetti I know not. Probably most of his spaghetti-eating in later years was from cans of “Chef Boi-ar-Dee,” although he sometimes did buy cartons of delicatessen prepared foods. When his wife Sonia first introduced him to spaghetti in New York City in 1924, they were probably eating at restaurants. John’s in Brooklyn was a favorite.
[*] When Lovecraft visited Edith Miniter in Wilbraham MA in 1928, it seems that the only complaint of his hostess Evanore Olds Beebe was the sugar deposits he left after drinking his coffee from her fine antique china. I think he customarily used multiple teaspoons of sugar for a single cup of coffee.
Thanks for that, Ken, very interesting. I just spotted that you referenced the 1918 Platt book in your Curwen house monograph. I found it independently yesterday, looking for maps of Cat Swamp 🙂