Eastbayri.com

One of Arnold Robinson’s favorite examples of local architecture isn’t a church, a town hall or a multimillion-dollar home on Poppasquash or Sakonnet Point.

It’s the Country Club Cleansers on Child Street in Warren, a long concrete, brick and stainless steel commercial building that thousands of people drive by every day without giving a moment’s notice.

To Mr. Robinson, who has a master’s degree in historic preservation, it’s a “fascinating gem.”

“It was really built over a period of time in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. It’s one of the few Modernist buildings in Warren,” said Mr. Robinson, director of the Community Partnership Center at Roger Williams University. The center delivers project-based design and preservation services to local organizations and municipalities.

Mr. Robinson said the building is a wonderful example of 20th-century “drive-through architecture.”

“This is post-World War II; they’re driving their 1950s Buicks to Providence. You could drop off your laundry and pick it up on your way home,” he said, adding the business also offered a cheaper alternative. “They had a wet laundry service. They’d wash your clothes and you would get it back wet ... to hang on a line at home.”

He enjoys not only the modern look of the building, but its dual nature as well. “Here’s this building that was meant to look incredibly modern, but on the other side it’s still serving the old economy; one half of the building is all car-related,” Mr. Robinson said.

The structure certainly stands out among the more staid building designs in the area, but is it worth saving as an important link to our past? Mr. Robinson once asked his students that very question. After a “vigorous debate,” he said, they agreed the Country Club Cleansers — part of which now houses a carpet-cleaning service — is worthy of historic preservation.

‘Walking through time’

In Westport, work is already under way to preserve a very different type of building also prized for its architectural splendor: The Cadman White Handy House on Hix Bridge Road, dating from about 1710. The Westport Historical Society (WHS) acquired the home last year using funds from the Westport Community Preservation Committee and is now making improvements with the goal of opening it as a historic house museum.

The WHS touts the home — placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 — as one of the most significant examples of 18th-century architecture in the Southcoast region of Massachusetts. The society’s website says the Handy House “illustrates 300 years of architectural evolution” — from the first period Colonial lines in the east wing, to the Georgian mid-section and the Federal style of the west end.

“You walk through the house, from one end to the other, and you walk through 300 years of history,” said Jenny O’Neill, WHS director “You’re literally walking through time.”

And time has stood still inside the Handy House, since its interior has never been changed. “For whatever reason, it escaped modernization from the 1940s and onward,” said Ms. O’Neill, who credits former resident Eleanor Tripp for saving the home.

“She lived there from the 1930s. She instinctively knew that this house was very important,” said Ms. O’Neill. Mrs. Tripp, who would invite the public in from time to time, preferred living in a manner similar to the home’s past tenants. “She apparently used the outhouse and cooked under the open fire.”

Another Westport gem, said Ms. O’Neill, is the former Wolf Pit School (1833) on Old County Road. Also known as the Little School, the one-story Greek Revival building is distinguished by its unusual overhanging Doric portico. The last remaining one-room schoolhouse in town, it was restored in 2006.

“The thing about Westport is that it’s full of incredible architecture — Westport Point is a jewel — so it’s hard to pick just one,” Ms. O’Neill said.

‘Rockwellesque’

Similar to Mr. Robinson’s rationale for wanting to preserve the Country Club Cleansers building, architect James Weir likes the cluster of buildings on the former Cavaca gas station property in Tiverton because it represents a unique period of the town’s history.

Located just south of Tiverton Four Corners, the privately owned land also once housed a clubhouse for the fire department and sits next to the recently restored Tiverton Four Corners Schoolhouse No. 1.

Mr. Weir, of Eastdesign Architects in Adamsville, said the property is “reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell portrait” and has historic value to the town. Unfortunately, he said, the same zoning controversy that surrounded the property in 2001 “continues to rage” today.

The ‘Octagon House’

Catherine Zipf likes to take in a building’s surroundings when judging its architectural worth.

“For me it’s a little bit less about the individual building and more about the streetscape — how it feels when you’re walking through it,” said Ms. Zipf, an architectural historian and author from Bristol.

One of her favorite streetscapes is up and down High Street in her hometown. “It takes you by the Common and the Congregational Church. You have the DeWolf properties up and down High Street, the barn near the church. You have a little bit of this and that,” she said. “That’s what I also like about Warren and Newport and I think it’s what’s missing in Middletown and Portsmouth.”

High Street is also home to one of her favorite buildings: the privately owned Lemuel C. Richmond House (1856), more commonly known to locals as “The Octagon House.”

The leading exponent for octagonal houses was Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887), who thought they were more efficient, easier to build and healthier since they let in more light and air, said Ms. Zipf. Mr. Fowler was a phrenologist — someone who felt the bumps on a person’s head to learn about their personality. (The practice was popular in the 19th century.)

“He was kind of kooky, but his architectural ideas were pretty sound. These houses were never overly popular, but many do stand around the country,” Ms. Zipf said.

The Bristol home gets bonus points for its addition on the north side. Thomas Jefferson was one of the original builders of octagonal houses but even he struggled with how to add on to the homes, she said.

Among her other favorites is the “charming” Essex Library on Highland Road in Tiverton, even though the town has outgrown the space and plans are under way to build a new one.

“It’s more of a rough-cut stone,” said Ms. Zipf. “I like that it’s a little more rustic, which is befitting a community that’s a little farther away from the center of things. It’s a country library. That was all farmland back there and I like how the library speaks to that.”

She also admires The Citizens Bank building in downtown Bristol. Formerly the Old Stone Bank, it’s located at a key intersection.

“It is respectful but it still stands out,” she said. “That’s not a building that you drive right by without noticing. It’s crafted in its own way. Good Modernism is really very good and bad Modernism is really bad. This a good example. All the cutouts in front were designed by an artist.”

Civil War memorial

Just a short walk away from the bank is the Burnside Memorial (1883), another favorite of Mr. Robinson’s, but the “polar opposite” of his other choice, the Country Club Cleansers.

“It’s so unlike other buildings in town,” he said, noting that Bristol’s architectural landscape is largely made up of wood-frame homes.

The building is Richardsonian Romanesque, a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church (1872–77) in Boston. “He built buildings like no one had seen in America. Here’s this building landing in little old Bristol and it has its roots in Romanesque churches and buildings in Europe,” Mr. Robinson said.

He said the building works for him on two different levels. “It’s set back from the street — it’s meant to be quiet in the streetscape. The second part is its history; it’s this moment in Bristol’s time.”

Indeed, inside a room on the second floor is a wall memorializing the name of everyone from Bristol who served in the Civil War. “The Civil War was absolutely huge for America and that building is part of that tradition,” he said.

‘In this for the long haul’

Edgar Adams Jr., an architect and professor of architecture at Roger Williams University, is also enamored with the charms of downtown Bristol.

“Hope Street in Bristol is a masterpiece of main street urbanism — from the library and post office to the old YMCA and bagel shop,” said Mr. Adams, a Barrington resident who’s an expert on urban design. “The street provides a variety and scale that is magical. The variation in plan and in the section of the street allows the pedestrian to sit above it all and to have a uniquely privileged position.”

For a specific building, however, his favorite is Mercier’s Hardware on Water Street in Warren.

“I developed a love of hardware stores early in life, since my dad was a great tinkerer,” Mr. Adams said. “The building’s stately presence on the street, its weathered charm and worn wooden floors all speak of a past that makes the gimmicky packaging of some of the goods on the shelves seem so trite. There is a resolute quality to the building that says, ‘I am in this for the long haul.’”

As for his runners-up: “The Barrington Town Hall and St. Michael’s Church in Bristol are extraordinary buildings by extraordinary architects, and the tower of First United Church in Warren is one of the most beautifully proportioned in all of New England.”

Mr. Adams said he feels privileged to live in an area full of such rich, impressive architecture.

“I am so lucky to have such an amazing drive to work every day.”