Built between 1786 and 1788, this mansion belonged to John Brown, a Providence merchant, U.S. congressman, and one of the founding benefactors of Brown University, for which he served as treasurer for 21 years. Brown was also an active slave trader who, in 1797, became the first American convicted under the federal Slave Trade Act of 1794. His brother Moses Brown broke with the family business to become one of Rhode Island's leading abolitionists, and the brothers' public disputes over slavery played out in the state's courts and newspapers. The house, now a museum operated by the Rhode Island Historical Society, directly interprets the family's role in the slave trade alongside its Revolutionary-era history.