Eleazer Arnold House

The Eleazer Arnold House is a historic house built for Eleazer Arnold in about 1693, and located in the Great Road Historic District at Lincoln, Rhode Island. It is now a National Historic Landmark owned by Historic New England, and open to the public on weekends.

Eleazer Arnold House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
U.S. Historic district Contributing property
1909 postcard
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Location	487 Great Road, Lincoln, Rhode Island
Coordinates	41°54′10″N 71°25′14″W
Built	c. 1693
Architect	Dick Richards
Architectural style	Colonial
Part of	Great Road Historic District (ID74000051)
NRHP reference No.	68000006
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	November 24, 1968[1]
Designated NHL	November 24, 1968[2]
Designated CP	July 22, 1974

The house is a relatively large "stone-ender," a building type brought from the western part of England and used most commonly in northern Rhode Island. This geographic-specific aspect may have been due to the attribution of the work to John Smith "the Mason" of Smithfield, Rhode Island and his family. It was built two stories in height, with four rooms on each floor, a lean-to, exposed fieldstone end-walls, wooden side-walls, and a pilastered chimney. By the 20th century, a gable had been added to the structure.

In 1919 the house was donated to Historic New England (then the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) by Preserved Whipple Arnold. It has since undergone two phases of restoration. In 1920 the first stabilization efforts were led by Norman Isham; and in 1950 the house and chimney received a thorough structural rehabilitation. In this second restoration, later alterations were removed to return the building to its 17th-century appearance.

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1968, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 for its architectural significance.[2][3] In 2005 a dendrochronology survey of the tree rings confirmed the 1693 construction date.[4]

Today the building closely resembles its form during the early settlement in Rhode Island, though some details, including the leaded glass windows and the front door and its surround, are 20th-century replacements.