Handicraft Club

You will see below some selected data that gives a pretty full background. Lovecraft and his aunt would have nown much of this from memory, other from reading the Providence Journal over the years.




Handicraft Club

Selected Letters (Arkham) Howard Phillips Lovecraft, - 1976 - 424 pages
It is near the top of the same hill (and on the same side) half-way up which my aunt boarded in 1927 at the Handicraft Club in the old Truman Beckwith house. You doubtless recall that brick edifice and its old-fashion'd terraced garden ...

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THE TRUMAN BECKWITH HOUSE

Truman Beckwith acquired the Larger Part of his Estates after he was Seventy Years of Age. John Greene designed the Truman Beckwith house. It will also be remembered that he designed the First Congregational Church the Sullivan Dorr house the Dexter Asylum St John's Church and Mrs John Carter Brown's house on Benevolent Street. When the family of Truman Beckwith learned that he was to build his house at the corner of College and Benefit Streets one of them said I can t see why Truman wants to build up there in the lots. The young merchant knew his own mind and built in the lots. The Handicraft Club occupies the house at the present time. Mr Beckwith whose span of life was from 1783 to 1878 lived most of his life in Providence though in his earlier years mercantile pursuits took him to other cities for several years - to Savannah where he bought cotton. In these interests he built a hundred years ago a cotton warehouse on South Water Street. The following year 1818 he was one of the men who established the Merchants Bank in Providence. Mr Beckwith pursued varied interests. He had some taste for architecture and was on the Building Committee that erected the Dexter Asylum in 1827- 28 and on that of the What Cheer Building in 1851. He was in the cotton business for fifty five years and the larger part of his extensive estate was acquired after he was seventy years of age.

HANDICRAFT CLUB. Providence, R. I.
Alice Peckham, . . . President
Agnes De Wolf, . . . Treasurer.
Mrs. James W. Thornley, First Vice-President.
Mrs. Howard Johnson Greene, Secretary.
Julia Lippitt Mauran, 375 Olney Street, Second Vice-President.

Providence, R I
The Club was organized in 1905 with a membership of ten;
the Year Book for 1911 shows a membership of one hundred and ninety,
of whom eighty are Craftsmen and one hundred and ten Associate members.

The annual meeting is held the first Tuesday in November.
Entertainments are given every Tuesday, followed by teas.
The Club is affiliated with the National League of Handicraft Societies.
Instruction was given in basketry, wood carving and metal work at the club house on four afternoons during February and March for the benefit of the craftsmen members, a nominal fee being charged to pay for the cost of materials.
The annual exhibition and sale was held in the Club rooms November 29 to December 21, 1910. The sales amounted to $511.53. Work of the craftsmen members of the Club was on exhibition and sale in May, 1911.

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NATIONAL LEAGUE OF HANDICRAFT SOCIETIES.
42 College Street, Providence, R. I.
Executive Committee.
Huger Elliott, . . . President. Helen Plumb,Providence.

Organized in 1907. The annual meeting is held in May; the fiscal year begins March 1. The membership consists of thirty-five affiliated societies.