Antiques Roadshow

(WGBH, 1997—) antiques appraisal show

On August 21, 1999, WGBH's beloved Antiques Roadshow chose the Rhode Island Convention Center in downtown Providence as a stop on its nationwide tour. The two one-hour shows that resulted premiered on February 21 and 28, 2000, and featured visits to the Nightingale-Brown House on College Hill and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, respectively. The biggest find of the day turned out to belong to a woman from Chepachet, whose jeweled jade-and-gold box, made at the Edward Farmer Studio in New York, was valued at $80,000 to $120,000.

AR returned to the Rhode Island Convention Center on June 18, 2005. Rhode Island was chosen as one of only five stops for AR's tenth season, and the only stop in the Northeast. Local profiles featured Rose Island Lighthouse, the Culinary Archives and Museum, and the Providence Jewelry Museum. The collected footage aired in three parts on Boston's Channel 2 on May 8, 15, and 22, 2006.

A September 19, 2017 visit to the grounds of Newport's Rosecliff mansion was set to be the show's first all-outdoor shoot, but passing remnants of Hurricane Jose forced a change to an outdoor/indoor event. Aired over three episodes (S22E17, 18, and 19) on May 14, 21, and 28, 2018, the shows featured "segments narrated off-camera by Mark Wahlberg about [Rosecliff's] construction, history, and features, as well as those of neighboring mansions." The coolest appraised item in our opinion was the wooden paroramic viewer box, containing two thirty-foot rolls illustrated with "Excursion Views of Narragansett Bay and Block Island," circa 1878. The appraiser valued the object at $6,000-$8,000.

Digitized copies of similar rolls, courtesy of Paolo and Larry DePetrillo, can be found here (East Bay) and here (West Bay).