Purchases often satisfy more than one of our collecting areas: here early American architecture and the history of Newport & Rhode Island. The book is a bound compilation of the first two volumes (26 issues) of the periodical The Architectural Sketch Book (Boston: Osgood & Co., 1873-1875).
As per its title, the magazine was designed for “architects wishing to exchange among themselves copies of their own sketches.” Hence what it lacked in sustained analysis it made up in the range of fully captioned heliotype illustrations of private villas, public structures and commercial buildings across New England, including the Bellevue Ave. mansion shown above (and another half dozen RI buildings in Providence, Pawtucket etc.)
As such, it provides researchers today with a slew of information: details of design, materials, construction techniques, cost etc. Indeed, the eminent Henry-Russell Hitchcock tells us that “for the later decades of the 19c, periodicals are perhaps more important sources than books.”
Illustrated above is a view of the Nathan Matthews cottage, built in 1872 on the East side of Bellevue Avenue between Shepard and Victoria Avenues. The house was one of the largest Newport Stick Style villas, borrowing heavily from Richard Morris Hunt’s seminal JNA Griswold house of a decade earlier, and was lost to fire in 1881.
