Cutler House added to National Register of Historic Places

THE NATIONAL Park Service has added the Susan S. and Edward J. Cutler House on the east side of Providence to the National Register of Historic Places. / COURTESY R.I. HISTORICAL PRESERVATION & HERITAGE COMMISSION
THE NATIONAL Park Service has added the Susan S. and Edward J. Cutler House on the east side of Providence to the National Register of Historic Places. / COURTESY R.I. HISTORICAL PRESERVATION & HERITAGE COMMISSION

PROVIDENCE – The National Park Service has added the Susan S. and Edward J. Cutler House on the East Side of Providence to the National Register of Historic Places, Edward F. Sanderson, executive director of the R.I. Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission, announced this week.
The National Register of Historic Places is the federal government’s official list of U.S. properties whose historical and architectural history makes them worthy of preservation.
The house, built in 1880, at 12 Woodbine St. is a well-preserved late Victorian, stick-style home with many of its original finishes and historical architectural features remaining intact, according to a press release from the commission.
The one-and-a-half story balloon frame cottage is on the north side of Woodbine Street, near its intersection with North Main Street, in the Mount Hope neighborhood. The southern façade of the house has a rectangular bay window, with a front porch entrance on the west elevation and a cross-gable roof. A wood-frame, gable-roof garage, built in 1921, is behind the house.
The Cutler House’s stick-style design was a popular form of architecture in the Northeast from the 1860s to the 1880s, with wood siding; steeply-pitched, cross-gabled roofs; and decorative trusses – or stick work – in the gable peaks. Stick style architecture was frequently featured in the period’s house pattern books, promoting affordable and comfortable home design for the middle class.
In 1879, Susan S. Cutler bought two lots in the Grand Estate Plat for $200, one on Woodbine Street and one on Lancaster Street.
Susan and her husband Edward, a broom manufacturer, erected the first house in the William G. Grant Estate plat and moved in by 1881. A decade later, the Cutler family sold their house and the adjoining lot to Abel P. Inman, a railroad engineer who rented the Woodbine house to tenants. At the time there was a strong demand for rental housing in Providence, as immigration swelled the population, and the Mount Hope neighbourhood took on an urbanized character, filling with multi-family housing, according to the commission.
From 1906 to 1910 the family of Philip Smith, an Irish-born clerk and meat cutter, resided in the house. From 1911 to 1913, John Campbell, a rubber worker born in Scotland lived at 12 Woodbine St. with his daughters Jeannie, a bookkeeper, and Sarah, a clerk for Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing. The final family to rent the house was Weston Eayrs and Carrie Chilson Smith.
Frank Kiernan purchased the property in 1915, remaining in the family until 1981 when his daughter Mary sold the property to its current owner, Jill Tyler.
Said Sanderson, “The history of this late 19th-century house and its multiple owners and tenants reflects the transformation of Providence into a metropolis of diverse families and neighborhoods. The ‘new’ houses built more than a century ago like the Cutler House have become part of the city’s heritage.”
A listing on the National Register results in special consideration during the planning of federal or federally-assisted projects and makes properties eligible for federal and Rhode Island tax benefits for historic rehabilitation projects. Owners of private property listed on the National Register are free to maintain, manage or dispose of their property as they choose.

No posts to display