Historic Walking Tours of Narragansett Pier
Left, Historical and Architectural Resources of Narragansett, 1991 Right, Irving H. Chase Family Memorial Collection (SCM)
Canonchet
Canonchet, located adjacent to the present South County Museum site on the Canonchet Farm
tract, was Narragansett Pier’s largest and most elaborate dwelling. Designed by William R. Walker
of Providence for former Governor William Sprague, the extravagant residence was completed in
1873 on the site of Sylvester Robinson's Canonchet Farm.
It was an extravagant Victorian dwelling, bristling with towers, turrets, bay windows, verandas,
and decorative ironwork, all piled together into one huge, picturesque mass. Sprague was part
heir to one of America’s largest textile manufacturing firms, founded by his grandfather and
expanded by his father and uncle.
The estate derived its name from Canonchet, the last of the Narragansett Indian sachems, who
was supposed to have camped on this site. Governor Sprague’s mansion was the showplace of
the Pier and was visited by many famous Victorian-era Americans, including Ulysses S. Grant,
Horace Greeley and Henry Ward Beecher.
In 1909, Canonchet was destroyed in a spectacular fire. A few tiles dug up when a new home
was built on the site in the 2000's, and the ruins of a stone stable building constructed about 1900
are all that remain of the estate. The stable burned in 1950; it earlier had housed of a riding school.
The Stable ruins
Though it burned more than a century ago, Canonchet was such an important landmark that its
name is still associated with the site on which it stood. Part of the property is now a town park;
part is the site of the South County Museum.
In addition to the site of the Sprague mansion, the area is significant in Native American history.
A grassy plain near the south end of Pettaquamscutt Cove was probably the site of an Indian
settlement between 2000 B.C.E. and 1500 C.E., and local tradition states that this spot was a
favorite campsite of Canonchet, son of Miantonomi and grandnephew of Canonicus.
Canonchet became chief sachem of the Narragansetts in the 1660s; he was executed during
King Phillip’s War of 1675-76. His memory is commemorated by a statue near the post office,
by sculptor Robert K. Carsten, by a nearby lake, and in the former Sprague property, now a town
park located on Kingstown Road.