12th Avenue Neighborhood Planning

I think it is today at 1pm delayed from the storm

It is believed that Sayles Tavern (also known as Pidge House or Pidge Tavern) was built in 1641 and was located on the Pawtucket Road (now North Main Street) on the current Providence/Pawtucket line. According to History of Providence County, Rhode Island, edited by Richard M. Bayles (1891), "One John Foster was the possible owner, and after him came John Morey and Philip Esten (1769) and Jeremiah Sayles. From the latter the estate passed to his daughter, who was the wife of Ira Pidge, from whom the tavern seems to have derived its permanent name, although it is also known as the Jeremiah Sayles Tavern. James S. Pidge, a son, inherited it and conducted it. The tavern is particularly famed as having been the headquarters of Lafayette in Sayles' time, being situated hard by the 'French camping grounds'." A marker at the corner of Summit Avenue and Brewster Street, which can still be seen today, marks the location of these grounds.

Sayles Tavern is mentioned, in a letter from Joseph Curwin to Simon Orne, in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft, as a landmark on the way from Salem, Massachusetts, to Providence.

Pidge House was demolished in the late 1960s. When he was a boy, according to vcrail.com, Pidge descendant Charles Clegg's "family moved to Providence, RI, to Pidge House located on North Main Street. The structure contained many false walls and secret passageways that Charles spent his idle time exploring. In the late 1960s Chuck was appalled when an unsentimental Uncle had the house razed to accommodate his expanding business. When learning of this affront to his beloved childhood home, Chuck declared the act, 'a damn shame!'"

This was from the quahog- http://www.quahog.org/factsfolklore/index.php?id=115

I think "late 1960s" from the vcrail site is a typo. The aforementioned book by John Geake and photographic evidence suggest it was torn down in the late '50s (and was little more than a shell by 1954).

That is what I thought Paul mentioned as well and sounds like a good reason for all to attend a March tentative ,meeting in 2010 for the Oak Hill Neighborhood Association when we will speak to the Pidge Tavern