Home Economy Government Preservation society sells Shakespeare’s Head Building to nonprofit for $750K

Preservation society sells Shakespeare’s Head Building to nonprofit for $750K

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PBN Staff

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05/29/2025

21-Meeting-Street-shakespeares_head-building — THE SHAKESPEARE’S Head Building at 21 Meeting St. in the College Hill Historic District in Providence was sold to the Center for Reflective History with support from the Civis Foundation for $750,000. / COURTESY PROVIDENCE PRESERVATION SOCIETY/ WARREN JAGGER

PROVIDENCE – The historic Shakespeare’s Head Building has been sold. The house at 21 Meeting St. in the College Hill Historic District was sold to the Center for Reflective History with support from the Civis Foundation for $750,000, the Providence Preservation Society announced Thursday. The Center for Reflective History is a new nonprofit organization established

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PROVIDENCE – The historic Shakespeare’s Head Building has been sold. The house at 21 Meeting St. in the College Hill Historic District was sold to the Center for Reflective History with support from the Civis Foundation for $750,000, the Providence Preservation Society announced Thursday. The Center for Reflective History is a new nonprofit organization established this year to uncover, preserve and explore the social histories associated with the building over the two and a half centuries of its existence. The group will spend the next two years developing plans for the space that will likely include exhibitions, public programs, educational activities and platforms for civic dialogue. “The property will be named Primus House. We envision it as a dynamic space for critical inquiry, where the complex and often overlooked intersections of history are explored in ways that resonate with contemporary global issues and inform our collective future,” said Stephanie Fortunato, project manager for Civis. The Providence Preservation Society has owned the property since 2015. When the organization initiated a request for proposals for its purchase in April 2024, staff and board leadership learned that the building’s first owner, John Carter, had enslaved two people in the house. PPS paused the sale and commissioned local public historian Traci Picard to produce a research report last summer. Picard found that two enslaved African American women lived and worked in the house for nearly 20 years: Ingow and her daughter, Fanny. Ingow and Fanny were freed in 1789, but Fanny remained onsite as an indentured servant until the age of 18. In addition, an enslaved man named Primus King, enslaved by Benjamin King of Newport, worked in the house during the Revolutionary Period. He may have been involved with the printing operation, although details are still being discovered. In the latter half of the 19th century, at the height of Providence’s immigration boom, the property became one of many boarding houses in the area, housing as many as 25 tenants at a time, many of whom were laborers, painters, carpenters and machinists. “This property was saved from demolition in 1937 by a group of civic leaders who came together to preserve and maintain it,” Providence Preservation Society Executive Director Marisa Angell Brown said. “Preservation work is not just about saving buildings – it is also about research, storytelling and creating new connections with the past. We are proud to have played a role in bringing the lives of Ingow, Fanny and Primus out into the light, and look forward to working with the new center in the years to come.”