The Thomas Poynton Ives family, which contributed the site for the Athenaeum, appropriately built Athenaeum Row as an investment property beside it. This Ionic-fronted row, originally five attached houses, allegedly introduced the “English plan” for row houses to Providence. The principal rooms were not at entrance level, as was then common here, but at the next level, corresponding to the English first story or the Continental piano nobile, which the steep slope made sensible. Innovative and sophisticated for Providence, English planning little affected the city's building patterns at the time, although there are Victorian successors—for example, the Knowles Row, nearby, which provides an interesting comparison (
PR80).