Blackstone Boulevard Realty Plat Historic District

About this property

The Blackstone Boulevard Realty Plat Historic District is a historic district roughly bounded by Blackstone Blvd., Rochambeau Ave., Holly St. and Elmgrove Ave. in Providence, Rhode Island. The district features architecture by Marshall B. Martin, William T. Aldrich and other structures of late 19th- and 20th-century colonial revivals. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. The Blackstone Boulevard Realty Plat Historic District is an approximately 40-acre (16 ha) suburban residential neighborhood in the northeast corner of Providence. Within it are over 100 large, high-style houses on ample, meticulously landscaped lots that line wide, tree-lined streets, now as during the period of significance. Integrity of both individual properties and of the district as a whole remains extremely high. The Blackstone Boulevard Realty Plat constitutes a distinguished collection of stylish early and mid-20th-century revival style dwellings as well as a representation of later contemporary styles-all designed and built by some of the locality's foremost architects and builders. Within the district's roughly trapezoidal area the streets generally follow a grid pattern. It is bordered on the east by Blackstone Boulevard, a broad north-south thoroughfare with two roadways separated by a landscaped esplanade, and on the south by Rochambeau Avenue. Holly Street and Elmgrove Avenue, both running generally north-south, lie just within the district's western boundary. Elmgrove Avenue continues in a gentle "S" curve to join Blackstone Boulevard at the district's northern boundary. Cole Avenue, a straight north-south street parallel to Elingrove Avenue and Blackstone Boulevard, links Rochambeau to Elmgrove and serves as the spine for four perpendicular cross-streets: Intervale, Westford, Wingate, and Harwich Roads. Balton Road completes the grid, running north-south between Rochambeau and Intervale. Houses in the district are located on large, wide lots that are 8,000, 10,000, or 12,000 square feet. A number of lots exceed even this generous size, and two large lots at the southern end measure 1.75 and 3.59 acres. At the time the plat was developed, the standard Providence house lot was 4,000 to 5,000 square feet. The use of deed restrictions in the design of the dwellings and in their placement within the lot affected the visual quality of the Blackstone Boulevard Realty Plat. Deed restrictions governed minimum lot size, minimum setback, distance between neighboring houses, and garage placement. With the exception of the two large lots, houses within the district are set back a uniform distance of twenty feet from the street.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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