Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library

49 Main Street

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Harrissville Historic District

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Photographed by Devry Becker Jones (CC0), September 19, 2026

1. Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library Marker

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The Harrisville Historic District is significant as a physical record of the area's development as an industrial village. Such villages are an important part

Photographed by Devry Becker Jones (CC0), September 19, 2026

2. Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library

Today, the building is named the Carlton F. Brown Memorial Building.

of the economic and social history of Rhode Island and constitute a major portion of the state's environment. Harrisville is unique among Rhode Island mill villages, for it represents both general trends common to other such villages and developmental forces peculiar to Harrisville alone. The buildings and sites within the district serve to document the establishment and growth of the Harrisville and Graniteville Mills and of institutions created to serve the residents attracted by these mills. The mills, worker's housing, churches, school, library, public buildings, and hotel are an important artifact of social history, an illustration of a mode of life pursued by many Rhode Island residents in past generations. Among the many nineteenth-century buildings that constitute the bulk of the village fabric, there is a significant group of early twentieth-century public buildings and housing. The Town Buildings and New Village, erected under the auspices of one-time Harrisville Mill owner Austin T. Levy, stand as a memorial to his paternalistic attitude toward the community and his unusual, almost Utopian, vision for shaping social and urban

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development as well as that of the company.

Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library (1937); Jackson, Robertson and Adams of Providence, architects): A 1-story brick structure in a neo-Colonial style modeled after Georgian architecture of the middle Atlantic region. It is composed of two staggered, parallel, flank-gable-roof blocks joined by a short gable-roof connector. The part closest to Main Street has a projecting, gable-roof central vestibule on the facade with a doorway framed by pilasters, an entablature, and a segmental pediment. There is also a large multi-pane bow window on the south side. Mary Smith, wife of Jesse M. Smith, established a fund in the late 19th century to endow a library in Harrisville. The money was used to construct the Memorial Block on the present library site. This was a 3-story brick structure containing shops, the town clerk's office, the district court, meeting rooms for fraternal organizations, an auditorium, and a space for the library. By the early 20th century the Memorial Block was considered ugly and outmoded and Stillwater Company owner Austin T. Levy proposed its demolition and replacement by new civic buildings erected for the town at his own expense. In accordance with this plan Memorial Block was torn down and the front (westerly) section of the present library was built in 1937. The rear (eastern) section is a subsequent addition.