The public buildings of the colonial period were mostly erected during the era of commercial prosperity between 1730 and the passage of the Stamp Act and the Boston Port Bill. Well-known examples are the Newport City Hall, the Redwood Library, and the Jewish Synagogue, all designed by Harrison; the State-House, by Munday; Trinity Church, the oldest of all, built in 1724-25, and the Seventh-Day Baptist Church, built in 1729. These buildings bear the stamp of the best English work of the time, and evince the cultivated taste of their projectors and the skill and professional knowledge of their architects. With the exception of the Seventh-Day Baptist Church, they are still in good condition. The lines in some places have become curved where they were originally straight, roofs have become hollowed, and floors have settled; but the white-oak frames bid fair to outlive several generations of the more ambitious but more slightly constructed edifices of to-day. The colonial buildings of Providence, like those of Newport, Salem, and other New-England towns, are mostly of frame construction and of one general character. A few edifices of brick, showing the details of Free-Classicism, may occasionally be met with, but the latter material seems never to have become popular or to have been generally used in ordinary street-architecture. Among the more characteristic buildings of Providence and its vicinity may be enumerated, as belonging to the first period, the Caesar house and Green's stone castle,--the latter, at East Greenwich, having been erected in 1660. In the Caesar house the peculiar section of the roof recalls the Hazard house at Newport, although the latter clearly belongs to the intermediate stage between the second and third periods. The Witch house at Salem, 1690, recalls the Sueton Grant house at Newport, notably in the overhanging of the front at the line of the second floor. The Baptist Church at Providence, erected in 1774, and the Congregational Church, erected in 1816, are of the third period. The latter edifice is post-colonial in date, but, like many other buildings of its class, shows the conservative methods of the early builders and their immediate followers trained under their instruction and example. With the early domestic edifices of Providence I am not familiar enough to allude to them by name. Many of these houses are extremely rich in semi-classic detail both exterior and interior. The old John Brown house, built of brick in 1786, and now owned by Professor Gammell, is a fine specimen of the dignified and aristocratic type of the Georgian school. The panelling, mantel-pieces, carvings, etc., are of the richest colonial character, and are wrought with much feeling, and the doors are crowned with pediments, a feature not generally adopted in the colonies, although frequently met with in contemporary English work.