History & Architecture
The Old Brick School House is currently open by appointment while we renovate and bring the building into ADA compliance. To visit, please email info@ppsri.org.
The historic garden at Shakespeare’s Head building is open to the public year-round from dawn to dusk.
The Old Brick School House, 1769
PPS Office & Meeting Hall
The Old Brick School House (credit: Warren Jagger)
The PPS offices are located in the 1769 Old Brick School House (24 Meeting Street), a rare and important site of Providence’s educational history. It is a marvel of historic preservation, a multi-faceted structure that has existed in numerous iterations since its original construction in 1769. A two-story, brick building in the Georgian style, the school house stands on a site that traces its colonial history back to 1636, when the land was first granted to William Carpenter, one of the 12 original proprietors of Providence along with Roger Williams. The school house is also located on the ancestral lands of the Narragansett and Wampanoag nations. PPS acknowledges that our work throughout Providence and the State of Rhode Island takes place on their traditional and unceded homeland and works to build respectful relationships with all those who call this land home today.
While not the first school house built in Providence, it is the oldest one still in existence and one of the earliest surviving brick school houses in the country. Since its construction by a group of education-minded citizens who intended to establish a public school system for the children of Providence, the building has existed in many forms: as an arsenal during the Revolutionary War; a primary and grammar school; classroom space for Brown University (at that point known as Rhode Island College) during the construction of University Hall; the first school for African-American children fully supported by the City of Providence; a sewing and cooking school for recently arrived immigrants; an open-air school for tubercular children; the original home of the Meeting Street School of the Society for Crippled Children and Adults in Rhode Island, now located on Eddy Street; and, since 1959, the offices of the Providence Preservation Society. Its many roles in Providence’s history are nearly unmatched by any structure in the city.
The Old Brick School House has had many lives, all of which influenced the course of education in Providence. PPS is proud to steward such important Providence history. The 2022-2023 project to renovate and update the school house as a home for 21st-century preservation in Providence honors the building’s heritage as a site of education, community, and assembly.
OBSH Historic Structure Report: a report completed by Myron O. Stachiw in 2014 (large file, 8.6 MG)
Rhode Tour: an excellent tour of Rhode Island’s Black Heritage with a stop describing the Brick School House’s role in educating Providence’s African American children.
February 1960 PPS newsletter article on the acquisition of the Brick School House.
Shakespeare’s Head Building, 1772
Shakespeare’s Head (credit: Warren Jagger)
21 Meeting Street has been known as “Shakespeare’s Head” since colonial times. Also known as the John Carter House, the building is a square, three-story structure with a low hip roof, a center chimney, and a five-bay façade. The name “Shakespeare’s Head” recalls the colonial era, when the building was used as a print shop and post office by John Carter, who had trained with Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. His family lived upstairs. The writing-related enterprises inside were advertised by a sign featuring the head of Shakespeare on a pole outside the building.
John Carter built the house in 1772 and published the city’s first newspaper, The Providence Gazette, here until 1793. The Carters enslaved two African-American women in the house from the time they moved into it through 1789, when they were freed: Ingow and her daughter Fanny. Ingow left the house upon her manumission and Fanny remained as an indentured servant for at least one year (it was the custom at the time for girls to remain in indenture through the age of 18). From historical records, it appears that mother and daughter were purchased from Arthur Fenner Junior or Senior (Fenner Senior was the fourth Governor of Rhode Island). In this period, urban enslaved women were very likely to work caring for the home and family – preparing food, cleaning the home, washing laundry and caring for children were all common jobs. In addition to Ingow and Fanny, an enslaved man named Primus King (enslaved by Benjamin King in 1777) was an apprenticed laborer in the house’s printing press during this period.
Around the turn of the 19th century, the printing press moved out, but the building remained a home to the Carter family through the early part of the 19th century and a boarding house from about 1850 through the early 1920s, when the house had as many as 25 tenants at a time who were laborers, painters, carpenters, and machinists. The Shakespeare’s Head Association acquired 21 Meeting Street in 1938, and ownership was transferred to the Providence Preservation Society in 2016.
Shakespeare’s Head Garden
1939 Shakespeare’s Head Garden Plan
The garden behind the building known as Shakespeare’s Head is also stewarded by the Providence Preservation Society. Following the 1938 hurricane that devastated much of Providence, the garden was redesigned by landscape architect James Graham in the Colonial Revival style (original 1939 garden plan). Since then, it has been modified slightly to simplify maintenance and more accurately reflect the earlier colonial period of the house itself.
For many years, landscape design and care was provided by Shakespeare’s Head Association board member Lalla Searle, a landscape architect who also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Barbara S. Gwynne Fund, established at the Rhode Island Foundation, contributes to the ongoing care of the garden.
The 2021 Cultural Landscape Report goes in-depth about the history and significance of the garden. It also includes a maintenance plan for future improvements.
Late 20th-century plan and plant list
Present Day Partial Plant List: Foxglove, Hellebore, Iris, Rosa Mundi, Scotch Rose, Fothergilla, Native Columbine, Gas Plant, Lady Fern, False Fern, Peony, False Indigo, Mayapple, Solomon’s Seal, Goatsbeard
Shrubs: Lilac, Dwarf Viburnum, Common Boxwood, Rose of Sharon, Oak Leaf Hydrangea, Bottlebrush Buckeye
Trees: Carolina Silverbell, Quince, Bartlett Pear, Linden, Magnolia Stellata, Amur Cork