About Providence Telephone Building
Historic Architecture, Architecture, Interesting Places, Other Buildings And Structures
The Providence Telephone Company is an historic commercial building at 110-116 Union Street in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. Now a five-story brick, stone, and terracotta structure, it was built with three stories in 1893 to a design by Stone, Carpenter & Willson. The street level facade is limestone, with a three-part entrance bay and two smaller flanking bays. The entrance bay is partititoned by Ionic columns, and the smaller outer bays are flanked by Corinthian columns. A complex entablature of grotesquework separates the second and third floors. The fourth and fifth floors, added in 1906, are more simply treated, with a simple parapet at the top. The Providence Telephone Company, incorporated in 1880, occupied this building from its construction until 1917, by which time its rapid growth had outgrown the building's capacity.
