33 Years Ago Today

This is the house where it all began in Providence, Rhode Island--a beautiful house on Charlesfield Street, just off Hope St. where my spouse and I met when we were in college many years ago. 
It was a wonderful time, living with 20 people in a beautiful second empire victorian house.  My room was the library, and it had built in bookshelves and 12 foot ceilings.  It was stunning (although when Brown University took it out of the hands of students and decided to renovate it, they described it as filled with murals reminiscent of Salvador Dali, for me it was the most elegant place that I had ever lived).  The house had quite an effect on me. First, I met the love of my life there. Second, once I had raised my children, I immediately moved into a Victorian home of the same era (an Anglo-Italianate rather than a Second Empire, but same graneur, same era).

This house was built in 1866 by Frederick Fuller.  His brother George built a house at 73 Charlesfield St. a few years later, and I lived in that house before I moved to Frederick Fuller's house down the block. 

Frederick Fuller's grandfather (also named Frederick Fuller) 

began the foundry business at the Cranston ore beds in 1833, making nearly all of the castings for the mills of the Pawtuxet valley of that period. In 1840 Frederick Fuller purchased the buildings which were erected by the Fox Point Foundry Co. The builders of the foundry never completed nor operated it, but sold the property to Mr. Fuller, who immediately began business on quite an extensive scale for those days. At that time it was considered one of the most important foundries in New England.  When water was introduced  into the city of Boston, many of the large water mains of the Boston water works were cast at Frederick Fuller’s foundry, evidence that the foundry was equipped for doing the heaviest of work that was required at that time. Mr. Fuller carried on the business in his own name until his death in 1865. His sons, Frederic and George Fuller, became his successors and they adopted the name of Fuller Iron Works, which name has been retained over since. They each built these substantial houses soon after they inherited their family business.  The foundry was carried along as a firm until the death of George Fuller in 1894.