wow, I’m staying in a Lovecraft story house

[ADDENDUM: This is apparently based on a disputed source. The manager of the building thinks it’s the place behind us, not this place, and so do many others. Too bad.]

Didn’t realize it until I saw a hint at it yesterday, and now it’s verified.

From the beginning of Section 2 of “The Shunned House” (p. 101 in the Library of America edition). The doctor in question is the narrator’s uncle, doomed to death in the shunned house at the end of the story:

“[The doctor] lived with one manservant in a Georgian homestead with knocker and iron-railed steps, balanced eerily on a steep ascent of North Court Street beside the ancient brick court and colony house where his grandfather –a cousin of that celebrated privateersman, Capt. Whipple, who burnt His Majesty’s armed schooner Gaspee in 1772– had voted in the legislature on May 4, 1776, for the independence of the Rhode-Island Colony. Around him in the damp, low-ceilinged library with the musty white panelling, heavy carved ornamanteel, and smallpaned, vine-shadowed windows, were the relics and records of his ancient family, among which were many allusions to the shunned house in Benefit Street. That pest spot lies not far distant– for Benefit runs ledgewise just above the courthouse along the precipitous hill up which the first settlement climbed.”

The “damp, low-ceilinged library” is where I eat breakfast. The place is a bed & breakfast now.