The steeple fashion of 1810?

Less than 5 miles east of the Cathedral of St John the Divine is the Newman Congregational Church, which features the same pinnacles on its  tower as the Cathedral.  It is described in the Federal Writers' Project publication, Rhode Island: A Guide to the Smallest State (1937), as follows:


"The square tower of the present structure...is surmounted by a set-back stage or belfry with shuttered windows.  Crowning the belfry are sharp corner pinnacles connected by a low paneled parapet.  A central pinnacle, higher than the rest is topped with a weather vane." (p 397)


Significantly, the Guide states, the church was built in 1810 - the same year as the Cathedral.  The Cathedral (see previous post)  lacked the central pinnacle of the Newman tower.  (Was the cathedral's central pinnacle felled by a storm - or  did the original plan call for only corner pinnacles?)  Was there a glut of these pinnacle-towers in Rhode Island 200 years ago?  Or were there only these two?


The Guide also notes that the 1810 building, situated at 100 Newman Avenue, is within 200 feet of the original church of 1643 (now that's old!), which was conducted by Rev Samuel Newman.  In 1643, this section of East Providence would have been a part of the town of Rehoboth, and later of Seekonk.  Samuel Newman himself was a native of Banbury, England and a 1620 graduate of Trinity College, Oxford.  Religious persecution drove Newman to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635.


On a side note, I wonder if Rev Newman ever visited Wroxton Abbey as a young man.  Wroxton is a Jacobean manor house built by the Pope family in the early 17th century, just 3 miles from Newman's home village of Banbury, and owned by Newman's alma mater of Trinity College, Oxford.  It is now Wroxton College, of which this steeplechaser is an alum.