Room of the Day: New Life for Historic Wallpaper Landscapes

Anne Clark had one reaction after seeing the walls in two rooms of the 200-year-old Providence, Rhode Island, mansion she had been hired to restore: “What are you going to do with that?” The wallpaper was a little overwhelming, to say the least. The full-color woodblock-printed landscapes had been commissioned by the home’s first owner just after its construction in 1814. Joseph Brown, a founder of Brown University, designed and built the 6,570-square-foot house for daughter Eliza Ward; she lived there for over 30 years. The house passed through multiple hands over the years and underwent a variety of renovations, but the wallpaper remained.

The house had been on the market for a few years before a couple relocating from Chicago to Providence bought it. They hired Clark to restore the house, which was in need of some 21st-century updates as well as some general maintenance. Various features had been added over the years, some of them dated blunders that begged for removal, but it was the wallpaper that Clark worked tirelessly to bring back to its original state. “In the end the wallpaper is the story,” she says.

Photos by Tom Arena

Rooms at a Glance
Location: College Hill neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island
Size: The Incas room: 332½ square feet (31 square meters); The Bosphorus room: 342 square feet (32 square meters)

“Everybody on College Hill knew about this wallpaper,” says Clark, and they all seemed to be invested in its welfare. The current owner, upon arrival to Providence, attended a Providence Preservation Society house walk and joked about removing the wallpaper. “Everyone in the room gasped,” says Clark. The walls are visible from the street, and the home has been featured on various historic tours. Anything Clark and the homeowners did would be scrutinized.

Ward had commissioned the wallpaper from Dufour & Cie, a French company, soon after the house was completed. It would have taken more than a year for it to arrive, on panels that had been pieced together and custom cut for the room.

This style of wallpaper gained popularity in the 19th century in the U.S., and striking examples still exist on the East Coast. “People didn’t get to travel to these places, but they liked the exotic motifs,” says Clark. The walls in the first of the two rooms are covered in a print called Les Incas (The Incas) that features explorer Francisco Pizarro encountering the Incas for the first time. This room is where the couple entertains.


The brick federal-style home sits in the middle of the College Hill neighborhood, a designated historic district that dates to the 17th century, near the campuses of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The house has a historic plaque but is not on the historic register, and Clark was free to make changes to the home’s interior, she spoke with historians and preservationist groups and researched the house to understand its context and history.

But Clark didn’t want to return the house to the 19th century, either. It did not meet modern needs — there was no air conditioning, and each room had just one outlet and required rewiring. Clark’s primary goal was to make this 200-year-old house livable now while retaining its historic character. “It was a delicate balance of respecting the integrity of the house and trying to bring it up to today’s living standards,” she says.

The house is entered from the first floor, a change made by homeowner Marsden J. Perry around the turn of the 20th century to house his expansive Shakespeare collection. Those rooms sit just to the left of the staircase on the now-second floor.



Clark hired Robert Dodge, a local restorationist and RISD graduate, to restore the nearly 200-year-old wallpaper. For six months Dodge cleaned up the deteriorating paper, fixing water damage and reviving fading colors. He also restored some trees that had been given an impressionist treatment back to more of a woodblock aesthetic. ”There’s always a level or reinterpretation,” says Clark, but in this case Dodge tried to be as true to the original as possible. He painted by hand using casein paint — a milk-based, water-soluble, fast-drying paint.

The paper’s delicate condition and integration with the wall meant everything needed to be done in place. The walls are masonry, with small pieces of wood over that, then horse hair and plaster mixed together and applied over that. The wallpaper is attached to the plaster.



The second, more intimate, room features a wallpaper titled Les Rives du Bosphore (On the Banks of the Bosporus) a romanticized depiction of exotic Turkey. It shows scenes along the waterfront, interrupted by an unusual personalization over the mantelpiece. Ward is said to have been very fond of Maine, so what is assumed to be a hand-painted Maine scene covers the mantel. Palm trees flank the fireplace, with pine trees in the middle. “It’s very weird,” says Clark.

This room sits past the Incan room and has furniture that’s a little more lounge friendly. A balcony opens up off the French doors. A TV off to the side serves as a reminder of modern times but doesn’t overpower the room. “There isn’t really a hang room,” says Clark, but here the owners and guests can relax and warm up with one of the home’s seven functioning fireplaces.

The fireplace is original to the house and at one point the stone surround had been painted and glazed to match the wallpaper color. The paint had been mostly removed by the time Clark was hired, revealing what she believes is some sort of New England stone.

Clark assisted with sourcing some of the furniture for the rooms, but the homeowners owned many of the pieces already. There are English antiques, but the homeowners had collected modern and more exotic pieces as well. The result is kind of a global feel, which Clark hopes doesn’t feel too stiff or make the homeowners feel like they are living in a museum.

The camel side table came from the family of one of the homeowners. It isn’t an heirloom, but it’s something she really likes, and it matches this room perfectly. In fact, there are camels on the wallpaper portion directly behind it. “It finally found its real home,” says Clark.


The wallpaper is restored, but by no means is it done. “You can run your finger over it, particularly in the sky, and get blue fingertips,” says Clark. Pieces of the wall flaked off throughout the project and will continue to do so. The homeowners can take care of it like a member of the family, and Dodge is on call just in case.

There’s no need for art, because the walls themselves are art. “It really becomes a landscape in which you live,” says Clark.

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