Turk's Head Building, Providence

The Turk’s Head Building is an early office skyscraper completed in 1913 for the Brown Land Company. Designed by Howells & Stokes, it rises 16 storeys and occupies a wedge-shaped site. Its rounded point once appeared like the prow of a ship marking the entrance to the commercial district. The design is often compared with New York’s Flatiron Building, although this structure is shorter, broader and set at a less acute angle.

The name comes from a wooden figurehead once displayed above merchant Jacob Whitman’s shop. Taken from a ship called Sultan, it represented an Ottoman man and became a well-known meeting point. During the Great Gale of September 1815, the carving was torn loose and carried into the floodwaters. It was recovered but later disappeared. A large stone version now looks down from the building’s curved façade, surrounded by decorative reliefs of lions, seashells, flowers and other forms.

The upper floors once contained the private Turk’s Head Club, a meeting place for business leaders, politicians and university graduates. The building also housed the office of Ada Lewis Sawyer, the first woman to take and pass the Rhode Island bar examination. Most of the interior remains private office space, but the unusual shape, carved head and smaller masonry details can be viewed from the surrounding public walkways.