Modeled on Mount Vernon at 52 Power Street, your John Brown House became the first mansion built in Providence. Completed in 1788 and built between 1786 and 1788, this was the first mansion to be built in Providence and takes its name from its first owner, John Brown — a statesman, merchant, slave trader, and early benefactor of the University. His brother Joseph, an amateur architect who had also designed the First Baptist Church in America, designed the building.
Notable guests include George Washington, who is reported to have visited for tea; Brown admired Washington, modeled this house on Mount Vernon, and even commissioned a mural of Washington's inauguration in one of the rooms. The carriage house holds a chariot owned by Brown and purportedly used by Washington during a visit to Providence. President John Quincy Adams called it "the most magnificent and elegant private mansion that I have ever seen on this continent.
The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968 and was sold in 1901 to Rhode Island industrialist and banker Marsden J. Perry, who renovated... Notice the carriage house adjacent to the mansion, and the building and street that frame this corner of College Hill.