PBN: Five Questions With: Brent Runyon

By Mary MacDonald- April 17, 2019 10:30 pm

The Providence Preservation Society has chosen the Paterson Park neighborhood, part of the Blackstone Park Historic District, as the location for its 39th Festival of Historic Houses. While the list of individual homes open for tours is still being identified, the society has made plans to introduce a less-well-known historic district to the public. The neighborhood is part of a national historic district. It is bounded by the Seekonk River, Angell Street, Blackstone Boulevard and President and Laurel avenues. Executive Director Brent Runyon spoke to the Providence Business News this week about the event, to be held June 15-16.

PBN: Why was this area chosen for the 2019 historic home tour?

RUNYON: We thought about it about three years ago. It's a neighborhood we've been in twice before, in the '90s and the early 2000s. It's one of those neighborhoods that's really off the beaten track. It has some great history that we want to explore, and quality houses. Clearly representative of a very large majority of Providence homes. More recently, with the threat of [a historic home] demolition on Blackstone, it's also a good way for us to point out that while these seem to be historic houses, they are not protected.

PBN: The writer H.P. Lovecraft lived in this area. Is his home still standing?

RUNYON: He lived with his parents in other apartments in the neighborhood. We're not going inside any. We worked with Donovan Loucks [creator of a Lovecraft website, the H.P. Lovecraft Archive], who identified 15 other houses that we know Lovecraft had some relationship with. We are developing a brand-new tour. We are calling it a Young Lovecraft tour. It will be where he grew up, and some things [that influenced] him until his teens.

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Courtesy of Providence Business News