A path filled with benefits, both spiritual and commercial

June 19, 2011|By Christopher Klein, Globe Correspondent

Washington slept here: the Stephen Hopkins House.

PROVIDENCE — Shortly after Puritan outcast Roger Williams founded this city, settlers cut a cow path across the Providence Plantations “for the benefit of all.’’ The dusty trail eventually grew into the city’s most historic avenue, yet Benefit Street remains true to its communal origins, and those who stroll underneath its leafy canopy and visit its venerable institutions continue to reap its benefits.

Williams would probably be proud of what’s become of the old bovine thoroughfare carved into College Hill. The renegade preacher so valued equality that he designed an egalitarian community without a town center and apportioned equivalent plots of land to settlers. While Benefit Street is Providence’s most fashionable address — sporting gaslights, brick sidewalks, and plenty of boot scrapers and brass door knockers — it still feels inclusive rather than exclusive.

Modest dwellings stand shoulder to shoulder with grand mansions. Power brokers in suits and ties dine on the outdoor patio of the University Club as college students saunter by in tank tops and flip-flops. Inside the county courthouse and beneath church spires, sinners from all walks of life seek salvation from higher powers.

The best way to explore Benefit Street, dubbed “the mile of history,’’ is to join one of the Rhode Island Historical Society’s 90-minute walking tours, which begin at the John Brown House Museum. Tours traverse the civic and educational heart of the street, rather than its full length, and take visitors inside two of its notable attractions. (Sites visited on particular days vary based on opening hours of attractions.)

The Historical Society guides lend texture to the amazing architectural tapestry that unfurls down the street, thanks in large part to dogged preservation efforts in the last half-century. “Every architectural style is here: Colonial, Federal, Victorian, late Georgian, Gothic, Greek Revival. You pretty much see it all, but none of this would be here without historic preservation,’’ says my guide, Barbara Barnes.

Across the street from the John Brown House, we visit the blooming gardens of the 1792 Nightingale-Brown House, an immense, boxy, wood-frame manse once owned by Brown University’s namesake, Nicholas Brown Jr., and now property of the college. After a brief stop underneath the soaring steeple of the 1816 First Unitarian Church, home to the largest bell ever cast by Paul Revere’s foundry, we enter the Stephen Hopkins House, another structure with important Colonial ties.