Barrington Center

The Wampanoag lived and traded across a large area called Sowams that included the land that became Barrington, traveling established trails along the Barrington and Warren Rivers to Rumstick Point, including the route now followed by Wamanoag Trail and County Road. Early Plymouth colonists called Barrington "The Garden of the Colony" for its setting on Narragansett Bay and the Providence River, its many streams and meadows, and its fertile soil. Barrington was incorporated as Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1717, became part of Warren, Rhode Island, in 1747, and became an independent Rhode Island town on June 16, 1770. At that time Barrington Villag stood about one mile north along County Road, where docks and wharves on the Barrington River behind the Congregational Meeting House, today's White Church, served waterborne traffic ferried from New Meadow Neck or down river, and Kinnicutt Tavern housed the first post office while also serving as a stagecoach depot and public stable. A new town center emerged after the Providence, Warren, and Bristol Railroad arrived in 1855, and Barrington Center, with its railroad station, prospered as the town's commercial and civic nucleus. Saint John's Church, built in 1858-1859, became an important addition, and nearby businesses included Bosworth's General Store, a post office, a grain store, and Chellel's Market, with Town Hall a short distance north. To the south, the Jennys Lane/Mathewson Road National Register Historic District preserves a neighborhood of early Victorian, Craftsman, and Queen Anne-style homes dating mainly from the 1850s to the 1920s. In the 1930s the Newth Rubber Company was built beside the railroad tracks, and residents remembered the strong smell of rubber that lingered until the factory closed in the 1970s. Construction of the Barrington Shopping Center began next to the factory in 1948.

Barrington, Rhode Island · United States