Providence Georgian-colonial is a slice of history
Former governor Christopher Del Sesto and his wife lavished their attention on this East Side house
By Avis Gunther-Rosenberg

PROVIDENCE -- A former Rhode Island governor's home is for sale. Almost untouched since Governor Christopher Del Sesto first moved there in the 1940s, 5 Wingate Rd. is a slice of history. The 4,000-square-foot brick Georgian-colonial was built in 1920 for physician Fred A. Coughlin, and purchased by the Del Sestos in 1948 despite the fact that they owned two other properties. "My parents had bought a lot on Blackstone Boulevard and were going to build says Ronald W. Del Sesto, a Providence attorney and honorary vice consul of Italy and one of three Del Sesto sons. (The others are Johnson & Wales College treasurer and senior vice president Christopher T. Del Sesto of Cranston and Gregory T. Del Sesto of Boston.) "They'd also bought a house in East Greenwich with a tremendous amount of acreage, but my mother became enamored with this house because of the detail. She thought the main staircase was the most glorious staircase she'd ever seen. My mother and father used to say they'd seen a lot of East Side houses, and this was the prettiest living room." Christopher Del Sesto, governor from 1958 to 1960, and later a Rhode Island Superior Court judge is perhaps most remembered for the gubernatorial term he didn't serve and his role in "the long count of 1956." In a confusing election that seems a foreshadowing of the 2000 Florida presidential election, Del Sesto appeared to have won by 427 votes. His opponent, Dennis J. Roberts, challenged the counting of absentee ballots. Ultimately, the 4,954 absentee ballots were thrown out and Roberts won. Del Sesto, an attorney and CPA, went on to defeat Roberts two years later, and served a single term as governor. He died in 1973.

A colorful character
His wife, Lola, died last June at the age of 91. Mrs. Del Sesto was a colorful character with interests in music, history, fashion and travel. An avid reader, she made sure there was a small library in almost every room of her home. In a 1960 Providence Journal interview, she told a reporter that she sometimes stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading books or fashion magazines. She designed her own clothing and accessories, and had a collection of four dozen hats to match her dresses. Most of her outfits were made from fabrics she collected on her travels to Europe. She treated her house with the same attention to detail she gave her wardrobe, hiring artisans to decorate details that otherwise might go unnoticed. The dining-room chair rail is a prime example. She instructed workers to paint finely-contrasting shadows within the tiny vertical etchings in the moldings, to make them stand out. In the living room, she engaged an artist to paint a mural over the fireplace. In the Renaissance-style painting, three women are grouped in the foreground -- one holding a scroll, another a lute and the third a book. A fourth woman is pictured behind them, dancing in a meadow. The figures represent Lola Del Sesto's love of poetry, music, literature and dance. "My mother was a concert pianist and had a great love of the opera and was involved in a lot of Italian cultural societies," Ron Del Sesto says. "My father was very much a supporter of her endeavors. Those were the heady post-World War II days, and people did a lot of entertaining. Towards the end of the evening, my mother would sit at the piano in the living room and play popular French tunes." Importing only the best Two years after the Del Sestos purchased the house, they took a trip to Italy, France and Switzerland on a cruise ship. While in Venice, Mrs. Del Sesto commissioned a glass artist to hand paint stemware to be displayed in a china cabinet in her new dining room. "My father wasn't paying attention, because he thought, 'Silly woman, how will she get it here,' " Ron Del Sesto says. "Six or seven months later they arrived. Her dinner parties in here were beautiful." A servant's-call buzzer under the table still operates. "My father used to play tricks on the grandchildren" Ron Del Sesto says. "He'd step on it, and tell them someone was at the back door. No matter how old they got, they always let him believe he was tricking them." The same European cruise that netted the stemware also brought what has become part of the kitchen decor ---- framed covers from the dinner menus arranged over the seating area. The kitchen walls are covered with white art-deco Vitrilite glass tile, dating back to 1920. Vitrilite, which is no longer produced, appears in the bathrooms as well. The master bathroom, for example, is done is lilac, pink and green Vitrilite. Kitchen redone in the '70s Unlike the rest of the house, which is preserved in its 1920s-1940s state, the kitchen was redone in the '70s, not one of home decorating's most shining periods. Everything from the Solarium floor to the cabinets and appliances are done in the beige/yellow/orange palette so popular then. The governor's library is located just off the kitchen, convenient to his habit of "getting up from the dinner table, and -- to reinforce his point -- going into the library and bringing back a book to read from it," Ron Del Sesto says. The library walls are covered in knotty-pine raised-panel wainscoting, and there are built-in bookcases along two walls. Three flags ---- the American flag, the Rhode Island flag, and the governor's flag stand in the corner for convenience while showing the house. They used to flank the fireplace in the living room. Doors in the library lead to the back courtyard. Upstairs, in the master bedroom, Lola Del Sesto had two cherubs painted over the bed. The cherubs are reclining in garlands of flowers. The colors are picked up in the bathroom Vitrilite. The large family house has three bedrooms on the second floor and two more on the third. One third-floor room, once a maid's bedroom and later an office, houses three of the four steamer trunks the family took on their cruise. They no longer have the 13 valises that also went with them. While the details in the house are beautiful, it does need work, including plaster and painting. The house sits on a 9,000-square-foot corner lot near Elmgrove Avenue. It was recently listed at $698,000. Real-estate taxes are $10,874.
Sharon Steele of the Sharon Steele Group, Providence, has the listing.

Published 10/27/2001

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