The Rose Land Park Plat Historic District [†] represents the rapid development of suburban housing in the Riverside neighborhood of East Providence in the early to mid-20th century. Recorded in 1928, the Rose Land Park Plat now contains thirty-nine single-family houses, arrayed in three blocks on Dartmouth Avenue, Florence Street, Princeton Avenue, the south side of Roseland Court and the west side of Willett Avenue. The subdivision was modeled on a streetcar suburb with a regular grid of streets and standard-sized house lots, but was built out as automobiles became more common. Consequently, several houses in the district were built with attached garages, and many (twenty-three) have detached garages. The pace of housing construction in the district was remarkably rapid: thirty-three houses (85%) were constructed between 1929 and 1939, and another four in the 1940s and 1950s. Over three-quarters (thirty-two) of the houses in the district were built by the plat’s original developers, Severin Carlson and Carl E. Johnson (and their wives), and all but one of the rest were built speculatively by other investors. (The district also has one circa 1900 farmhouse, and one non-contributing house, built circa 1979.) All of the housing stock is wood frame, often with brick, stone, or stucco accents, and typically 1-1/2 to 2 stories tall. The most predominant architectural style is English Cottage, but the district also contains examples of Cape Cod and various Colonial Revival styles. Despite some alterations to individual buildings, the district as a whole has very good integrity of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.
The Rose Land Park Plat Historic District represents the final decades of a century-long trend that saw the Riverside section of East Providence evolve from a sparsely settled rural area in the mid-19th century, to a suburban neighborhood by the mid-20th century. This transformation was related to the growth of nearby Providence into a densely settled and heavily industrialized metropolitan area, which promoted suburban development in outlying areas, facilitated by a concurrent evolution in transportation, from trains to electric streetcars to automobiles. The Rose Land Park Plat, recorded in 1928, lay within walking distance of a streetcar line and followed the model of a streetcar suburb, with a regular grid pattern of streets and standard-sized house lots; its original developers built about three-quarters of the housing stock here, evidently with the intent to sell to owner-occupants. The district contains good examples of several types and styles of domestic architecture prevalent in the early to mid-20th century, most predominantly English Cottage, Cape Cod, and Colonial Revival. The period of significance is circa 1900 to 1957, representing the district’s transition from a farmstead that had been owned by multiple generations of the same family (which built the earliest surviving house here), to a suburban residential neighborhood; the vast majority of buildings were constructed between 1929 and 1939.
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Street Names
Dartmouth Avenue • Florence Street • Princeton Avenue • Roseland Court • Willett Avenue