Rochambeau House

Rochambeau House

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Mary Elizabeth didn’t hesitate to join the Red Cross in France, eventually running a kitchen for the American soldiers. It was during this time that she fell in love with French architecture and art, a style that she hoped to bring back with her when she returned to America.

After spending several years as a married couple in New York City following the end of the war, Mary Elizabeth Sharpe and her new husband Henry Sharpe began to look for houses in Providence to settle down. Finding none that appealed to their sensibilities, they sought to build their own on a plot of land that Henry Sharpe had previously bought on Prospect Street, directly across from his sister. Construction began in 1927, and Rochambeau House was completed in 1929, the ideal French château for the Sharpes to live in.

Rochambeau House would serve as the perfect backdrop for Mary Elizabeth’s personal collection that she had so carefully built up during her time as a businesswoman in New York City; along with the help of her artist friend Florence Koehler, Mary Elizabeth filled the space with reproductions of Louis XV and Louis XVI style furniture and paintings by notable French modernists like Henri Rousseau, along with a number of other notable art pieces from around the world such as Japanned desks and reproductions of ancient Greek statues. Mary Elizabeth would live in Rochambeau House until her death in 1985, when the building was then donated to Brown University to serve as a cultural center for the French and Hispanic studies departments. Much of the furniture and art that she had so carefully chosen remains within.