Weird Island

45. ARCHITECTURE: Turk’s Head Building

Episode Summary

How did the Turk’s Head building get its name? Well, it’s actually built on the site of a colonial house and a store that had an unusual sign mounted outside--a wooden carving of an Ottoman Sultan. The store became known as "at the Sign of the Turk's Head." To visit: 1 Turk’s Head Place, Providence, RI 02903

Episode Notes

To visit: 1 Turk’s Head Place, Providence, RI 02903

Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

It was a Saturday, September 23rd, 1815 and a storm raced towards New England. As it made its way to Providence, the gale surged up the Narragansett Bay and water levels climbed and flooded the lower parts of the city. Dozens of ships were deposited on the streets of Providence. One smashed its way through the third story window of an Insurance company building, and some people dragged sailors into their homes through windows.
Chimneys toppled, trees and shingles and wood fragments whipped through the air like projectiles. Almost 500 homes and 35 ships were destroyed. Somehow, despite the destruction, only two people in Providence died.
There hadn’t been a storm this bad in close to 200 years, and while it was relatively short, incredible damage was done. The financial loss represented almost ¼ of the total valuation of the city.
In the aftermath, the trees and houses that still stood were said to be coated in white salt, giving the city a snowy look. Nearly 300 armed men were stationed to prevent looting. The shattered remains of boats and homes, furniture, memories drifted in the Cove.
And among the bobbing wreckage, a strange, enormous disembodied head floated out into the water. Carved from wood and painted in bright colors, it was the head of an Ottoman Sultan, wearing a black turban and sporting a large beard. And it probably would have been kind of an unusual sight to see floating by, its eyes looking up into the rapidly clearing skies.
I’m Sara and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be telling you about the Turk’s Head building and how it traces its unusual name back to colonial days and a wooden sign of a Turk’s Head that stood outside a shop–that is, until a storm swept it away.
The Turk’s Head building is a 16 story skyscraper that stands at the intersection of Westminster and Weybosset Streets in what is considered to be Providence’s Financial District. The building is unusually shaped. It’s designed like a V right in the center of the intersection, sort of like New York’s famous Flatiron Building. And it’s got a curving front directly above this open space where the two streets come together. If you stand in that space and look up, you’ll see a face peering down at you from the third floor of the building. It’s a stone-carved man with a turban and a long mustache. His fingers grip the ledge above two windows, and he appears to be scowling or frowning at what he sees below.
This stone sculpture and the building itself are known as the Turk’s Head, but why? Where does that name and imagery come from?
It turns out, the Turk’s Head building traces its name back further than you might have expected, to the late colonial days. The modern skyscraper was built on the site of a house, built sometime around 1750 by a man named Jacob Whitman. Whitman was originally from Massachusetts, and he came to Providence around 1740.
The oral history says that shortly after coming to Providence, Jacob Whitman and another man named Samuel Currie met one day on the balcony of an old hotel and tavern and asked the other men who were there enjoying a drink for advice on the best place to purchase land. One person pointed across the river at some marshy land and said to Whiman, “Buy that swamp. After your day’s work, you can fill the lot on moonlit nights from the sand hill beside it.”
But Currie was given different advice. Someone recommended that he purchase a lot on what is now called Constitution Hill - or part of College Hill, which was then considered a more central and valuable piece of land. At the time, there was a divide between the East and West Siders. With the more wealthy merchants living on the East Side. Both Jacob Whitman and Samuel Currie did as they were advised, and Currie’s land never really increased in value. But the land Whitman bought, the salt marsh that he filled with sand, became one of the more valuable pieces of land within Providence.
And Whitman also grew to be one of the best-known and most prosperous west-siders. Prominent enough to be friendly with the East-Side merchants and traders. And that’s because Whitman ran a blacksmith shop that specialized in the production of ironwork for ships, which would be especially useful to those wealthy merchants.
Whitman would eventually accumulate the full block of land, and in addition to his blacksmith shop, he built a home at what would become the intersection of Weybosset and Westminster Streets. His home was described as a large, gambrel roofed structure - which is pretty much your typical looking colonial home. It’s said he had an extensive garden, with ornamental shade and fruit trees and shrubs and flowers that attracted the local neighborhood children. And he ran a shop as well. And eventually Whitman’s Block became pretty universally known. But there was something specific that drew attention to Whitman’s place, beyond his beautiful gardens, his blacksmith shop and his store.
Likely right at the corner, facing the bridge over the Providence River, was a post as high as a lamp post and on it was mounted the famous Turk’s Head.
In early America, shopkeepers and tradespeople used pictures or symbols instead of street numbers to identify their businesses, because not all people could read. And Whitman’s store became known as “At the Sign of the Turk’s Head.”
So, where did this Turk’s Head come from? The truth is, no one’s really sure. People were trying to figure it out as far back as the late 1800s, and there are a few different prominent theories.
Zachariah Allen believed it was the figurehead from a wrecked ship named the Gran Turk. Others believe Whitman, through his connections with ship captains, received the figurehead from a ship named Sultan, either as a gift or through some sort of trade.
But it also turns out there was another shop, Smith & Sabin’s, which was located fairly close by, on the opposite side of the river, and Smith & Sabin’s shop was called “The Sultan, at the Sign of Mustapha, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire” or shortened to “The Sultan Mustapha” or “The Sultan’s Head.” And it’s possible this carved figurehead was first displayed there, between 1763 and 1769. Some sources state that Smith & Sabin did own a ship named Sultan, which was wrecked prior to 1763, although I had a hard time confirming that, but it’s possible this carving was the figurehead from their ship. But other theories, including theories from later generations of the Whitman family, claim it was a work of art created specifically to advertise the original shop, which sold “dry goods, both East and West-Indian, at the lowest rates.” Historian and author Henry C. Dorr believed the Sign had many owners, and eventually ended up in the possession of the Whitman family.
When it comes to the look of the sign, it’s pretty distinctive sounding. It’s described as being “heroic in size” and painted in exaggerated, bright colors. But it’s also described in this way that, even though we can’t see it, just the description makes it sound like it was probably fairly racist. It’s described as having a black turban and a large beard, okay, but it also apparently had a bright red tongue hanging out and flared nostrils. It was said to be terrifying to children and women and a never-ending subject of remark to the country people who came into the market. I’m not sure why they would have chosen to make him look terrifying, when the aim of the sign was to advertise that the store sold foreign, sought after goods. But perhaps it was just to get attention, or the representation just demonstrated a fear of the unfamiliar.
It certainly got attention. The intersection of those two streets became locally known as Turk’s Head, and people still refer to the area with that name today, despite the fact that the sign was absent from the location for just about 100 years.
While it’s uncertain when it was set up there, we do know when it came down, in that massive 1815 storm that dislodged the sign from its post and carried it out into the Cove. But in the aftermath of the storm, as the sign bobbed along in the water, so did Jacob Whitman Jr. and his son George. They were in a boat in the Cove trying to recover the wreckage of the gale, when it’s said they saw in the distance a large, black object floating in the water. As they approached, they were amazed to find the Turk’s Head and they brought it back home. It was never set back up in front of the shop, but was instead stored under the cellar stairs of Jacob Whitman Jr.’s home for a number of years. Later, he would send it down to Montgomery, Alabama, where his son George set it up in front of his own business. There’s a rumor that one night, a group of drunken young men stole the sign and packed it up in a box and sent it to the Governor of Alabama. After it made its way back to George Whitman, he stored it in a warehouse. And it’s believed that warehouse later burned down.
So the original Turk’s Head sign is lost to history. But, today, it’s commemorated on the Turk’s Head Skyscraper that stands in its place.
Around 1845, the Whitman Block of properties was sold to the Browns, who purchased it as an investment. The Brown Land Company razed the block, which had been described as filled with handsome brick family residences that were talked about all over the town and state. And in the place of these residences and businesses, they erected a skyscraper. Built in 1913, it was one of the earliest skyscrapers in Providence, and when it was built, it was the tallest in the city, until 1922 when the Biltmore was built.
It was designed by architectural firm Howells & Stokes, and was likely inspired by New York’s Flatiron Building. Though it’s about four stories shorter and more of a V shape with the tapering less acute and dramatic. But it does produce the same kind of looming effect, which one critic described as “canyon-like,” when you’re standing before it. The reference to the Flatiron Building was likely intended to represent Providence’s emerging prominence as a city, while the carved granite Sultan or Turk’s Head represented the city’s pride in its past.
The developers commissioned the Art Deco stone relief that peers down from the 3rd floor to honor the original sign that gave the area its name. And inside the building, the motif continues in the lobby, with a mosaic inlaid in the floor of an Ottoman Sultan.
Also in the lobby are two high-water marks. They’re not from that Hurricane of 1815, which by the way, the word Hurricane didn’t exist in 1815, so it was called a Gale. But they're from the Hurricane of 1938 and Hurricane Carol in 1954. And it’s like these two high water marks also represent the unusual story of the Turk’s Head. It all kind of came full circle. Only, these two later storms that flooded through the building weren’t able to carry the new granite Turk’s Head away.
There’s something kind of interesting about this story, about what gets remembered. I mean, there’s a skyscraper that commemorates an old sign. Why? And the thing is, it’s not the only colonial sign of its type. Like I mentioned, this was reasonably common before literacy rates were high. But it’s not really something I’ve ever thought about. I’ve never heard about specific historical signs.
But, this week, while researching the episode, I also started listening to the audiobook version of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. And woven throughout the book are references to other Providence businesses with iconic signs that I might never have picked up on otherwise. He refers to a shop “at the Sign of the Elephant in Cheapside” which, it turns out, was a real business, run by a man named James Green. And he also refers to “Thurston’s tavern at the sign of the golden lion,” which I couldn’t find any actual record of, at least in Providence. There were shops, usually jewelry shops, “At the sign of the golden lion” in other cities. And Lovecraft refers to the, “Sign of Shakespeare’s Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution.” Today, that building at the Sign of Shakespeare’s Head is remembered as the John Carter House. And it was once a print shop that published the city’s first newspaper.
With all of these other notable colonial signs, I kept asking “Why is this the one we remember most?” And I honestly have no idea. Maybe it’s because Whitman made something of a previously under developed area and really came to define that area. Maybe it had something to do with the specific imagery of this sign that stood out. Or maybe this is just the one that happened to be remembered long enough and well enough to be replicated on a skyscraper. Maybe there’s no good reason at all.
Thanks for listening, and thank you to Carole for suggesting this week’s episode! Also, thank you so much for taking the time to rate and review the podcast. I mentioned last episode that Spotify has recently added the ability to rate podcasts, and I really appreciate how many of you left a rating right away, both on Spotify and in other places. I noticed and I’m so grateful.
If you’ve got an episode idea, I’d love to hear it. You can find me on Instagram at weirdislandpodcast or you can send me an email at Weird Rhode Island @ gmail.com. See you next week as we uncover more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!