The Old Stone Bank building dates from 1898, when the Providence architectural firm of Stone Carpenter and Willson enlarged the original facility, designed in 1854 by C.J. and J.R. Hall. Stone Carpenter and Willson was the city's dominant architectural design firm until its dissolution in 1908. The building has remained almost unchanged, except for a brick addition to the rear in the mid-1950s.
Brown University has agreed to acquire the gold-domed Old Stone Bank building and adjacent Benoni Cooke House from the Resolution Trust Corporation. The gold-domed bank building, a fixture of the Providence cityscape since the turn of the century, will be the centerpiece of a facility that will provide galleries, storage areas, offices, public education space and a bookstore for the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, currently housed on the University's Mount Hope grant in Bristol, R.I. Brown will seek funding for nearly $12 million in acquisition, restoration, renovation and new construction and will begin a public fund-raising project next year. The University has given itself three years to raise the funds and undertake the renovation and construction needed to bring the museum to Providence.
