USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > The civic and architectural development of Providence, 1636-1950 > Part 17
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Cranston, red and green, red and green lights.
Eddy Street to South Providence, green and red, straw lights.
Elmwood, red and white, red lights.
Governor Street to Olneyville by way of the Brook Street route from Wickenden Street westward, green and white, green lights.
North Main Street, red and white, red lights.
Pawtucket, straw, straw lights.
Plainfield Street to Johnston, green and white, green lights.
Prairie Avenue, straw, blue and white lights.
Smith's Hill and Chalkstone Avenue, red and white, red lights.
Additional routes to Camp Street and East Providence were opened about 1886.23
The last stage coach lines to operate out of the center of the city ran, respectively, from Turks Head to Centredale, from the Arcade to East Providence, and from Shattuck's
20. C.D. No. 8, 1895. Provision was made, in the interim (1890), whereby fire escapes were required on certain types of buildings.
21. King's Pocketbook, pp. 53-57.
22. The Brook Street and Governor Street lines were opened about 1876 in which year the former Hope Street line (page 133) was discontinued.
23. Sampson, Murdock and Co., Providence Directory, 1886, p. 672.
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Exchange on Washington Street to Brooklyn, Connecticut.24 From the horse car terminus at Olneyville stages made trips to Thornton and North Scituate, and from the end of the Governor Street line on Butler Avenue an omnibus ran to Swan Point Cemetery on summer afternoons.
The horse cars provided convenient transportation from the business center to practi- cally all residential areas of the city except the middle section of the Neck, where the natural topography necessitated a long and circuitous routing through the Fox Point district for the Brook Street line to Hope Reservoir and the Governor Street line to the corner of Butler and Irving avenues. In order to provide a means of direct approach Walter Richmond, president of the Richmond Manufacturing Company and a resident of Waterman Street, organized the Providence Cable Tramway Company which was granted a charter in 1884. A franchise was authorized by the City Council for laying out the line from Market Square
R.I.H.S.
Cable tramway, c. 1891, from photograph presented to the R. I. Histori- cal Society by Misses Mary B. and Jane L. Anthony.
to Red Bridge by way of College, Prospect, Angell, South Angell and East River streets, returning by Waterman, Prospect and College streets. Construction of the line was started in 1888 and the first cars were run early in 1890. A conduit extended the whole length of the line, a distance of about three miles, and on the road surface, between the rails, was a slot framed by two steel bars. Through the conduit ran an endless steel cable, operated at a speed of about seven miles per hour from a power house on South Angell Street. The cars were propelled by grip cars equipped with levers to clutch the cable.25 At the westerly terminus of the line at Market Square the grip cars were disengaged and the cars were pulled by horses over the rails of the Union Railroad Company to Olneyville.
An act of the General Assembly, passed March 3, 1883, provided for clearing the channel of Seekonk river at India Point and for constructing a bridge to replace India
24. Sampson, Murdock and Co., Providence Directory, 1886, p. 672.
25. Albert W. Claflin, "The Providence Cable Tramway," R. I. Hist., V, 41-53; VI, 11-28. See illustra- tion above.
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Bridge, erected in 1815 (pages 83, 143). Bridge commissioners were appointed under whose direction a wrought iron bridge, 1,245 feet long, designed by Theodore Cooper of New York, was constructed with a draw operated by a hydraulic pump, and was opened to traffic May 30, 1885. A year after its completion the bridge was tested by the city engineer and found defective in many respects, necessitating repairs and partial reconstruction. It was turned over to the city by the commissioners February 1, 1887, identified as Washington Bridge, and was continued in use until replaced by the present span of the same name in 1930.26
A quarter-century after the construction of the Cove basin and the railroad depot (page 115) a movement was instituted by the City Council for a general reorganization of the lands previously flowed by tidewater. There followed nearly two decades of planning and surveying, of proposals and counter-proposals, before the ultimate pattern was agreed upon. A board of commissioners of the cove lands, with Mayor Doyle as chairman, sub- mitted plans in 1873 for locating the passenger depot at a site west of the Cove Promenade and for establishing freight yards in Woonasquatucket valley.27 No action was taken and the board was discharged. In 1881, pursuant to a petition from the railroads for the purchase of additional lands the mayor was authorized to appoint two commissions, one to appraise the cove lands and arrange for sales to the railroads, and the other to develop a plan for increasing the terminal facilities. The commission on appraisals failed to come to terms with the railroads and the commission on terminal facilities, while agreed on filling the Cove basin, was divided in opinion with respect to the railroad layout, submitting, in 1883, both a majority and a minority report28 and presenting its final report in 1886 in which it recorded its inability to agree with the railroads on any general plan.29 Meanwhile, an act was passed by the General Assembly enabling the city of Providence to condemn certain lands within and adjoining the cove lands for public purposes.30
In 1883 the Public Park Association was organized under the sponsorship of 200 leading citizens with William G. Mowry as president. While its ultimate purpose was the institution of a park system in the metropolitan area of Providence the association entered into the cove lands controversy and issued a series of tracts with the purpose of focusing public opinion on broader aspects of their development than those of purely utilitarian consider- ation. It approved the plan reported by the commissioners in 1873; it favored the retention of the Cove basin for reasons of conservation, sanitation and recreation; and it opposed the use of the basin area for railroad purposes because it was too valuable property for such use.31
The City Council started afresh, in 1887, by the appointment of a joint special com- mittee on railroad terminal facilities and a commission of three expert engineers, consist- ing of Joseph W. Wilson, D. J. Whittemore and Alfred P. Boller. That commission presented a report in April, 1888, accompanied by maps, the features of which included the removal of the passenger depot and the rails looping around the Cove basin, the recti- fication of the main line tracks, the erection of a new depot on Gaspee Street near the old State Prison, the separation of freight and passenger interests, the filling of the Cove basin, and the reconversion of that area into a park which would provide an approach to the new
26. C.M., 1886, p. 29; C.E., reports, 1887, 1888. See page 237.
27. The tracks were to be relaid north of the Cove basin, replacing the loop around its south rim.
28. C.D. No. 25, 1883; C.D. No. 26, 1883.
30. P.L., 1884, chapter 422.
31. Public Park Association, Tract No. 6, 1886.
29. C.D. No. 33, 1886.
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Drawn by J.H. C. 1946 100' 800' 300'
Dorrance Hotel
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1880-1890
passenger depot from Exchange Place. This report was productive of action to the extent that the City Council, with legislative authority,32 ordered the filling of the Cove basin and the erection of retaining walls for Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck rivers. The other recommendations in the report, although approved in principle by the City Council, failed to satisfy the railroads involved.
A merger was effected by the leasing of the Providence and Worcester Railroad to the Boston and Providence which, in turn was consolidated in 1888 with the Old Colony Railroad, a company which had operated in southern Massachusetts since 1844. The Old Colony, in 1889, united with the New York, Providence and Boston and the Providence and Springfield railroads in submitting to the City Council a modified plan for terminal improvements,33 which provided a site for the passenger station about 500 feet northwest of the old depot, with the tracks, train shed and main floor of the station elevated above the streets. Numerous highway changes were proposed with three principal arteries, namely, Gaspee, Francis and Promenade streets, underpassing the tracks (see map, page 164).
This plan was opposed by the Public Park Association who objected to the designation of a large area of valuable land, west of Canal Street, for freight yards and the erection of a "Chinese wall" through the heart of the city which, it insisted, would form a barrier between the civic center and the lands to the north, connected only by long dark highway under- passes which it characterized as "rat holes."34 Unmindful of the association's objection, however, the City Council adopted the plan proposed by the railroads, under provisions of which the city obligated itself to construct the new highways and bridges and the railroads agreed to build the passenger station and its approaches.35
By act of the General Assembly, May 2, 1884, the city was authorized to take the land on Plain Street, known as the Proprietors' Burying Ground, for a public park. That ground, platted in 1792, was a unit in a group of independent cemeteries identified, collec- tively, as the West Burial Ground. Most of those cemeteries already had been vacated following the removal of interred remains to other burial places. The surviving grounds had become badly neglected and were subsequently vacated by action of the City Council under legislative authority granted in 1876.36 By 1889 the last remains had been removed from the Proprietors' Ground, in which year it was improved for park purposes. It was named Hayward Park in honor of Mayor William S. Hayward (1881-84) who donated a fountain placed in the center of the area.37 The park was extended southerly to Maple Street, in 1892, by purchase of a portion of the former Beneficent Burial Ground,38 providing a total area of about 212 acres.
In 1888 the General Assembly authorized the city to establish a public park in the portion of the Brook Street District (page 146) lying between Wickenden, East and India streets,39 including the Reform School site (page 123) and the Abbott lot (page 146). It was accepted by the city August 8, 1888, and named Tockwotton Park. After a time the building was demolished, walks laid out, trees planted, and a pavilion built.40 The city acquired additional land to the east in 1896, increasing the area of the park to about five acres.
32. P.L., 1888, chapter 722. 33. C.D. No. 20, 1889.
34. Public Park Association, Tract No. 11, 1897, pp. 77-78. The disadvantages of the plan to the city, as foretold by the Association, have been vividly demonstrated.
35. Report of Joint Special Committee on Railroad Terminal Facilities, November 18, 1899.
36. P.L., 1876, chapter 553. 37. Report of Committee on Parks, 1890.
38. Vacated about 1875. See page 60. 39. P.L., 1888, chapter 680.
40. The school building demolished was the former Tockwotton Hall (page 105). The park was abandoned and Fox Point Elementary School erected on the site in 1954.
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The police department, in 1886, was divided into six districts with stations located, respectively, on Canal Street (page 131), Chalkstone Avenue (1874), Wickenden Street (1875), Knight Street (1875), Plain Street (1886) and Chaffee Street, the latter acquired when a portion of North Providence was re-annexed in 1874 (page 149).41 Headquarters were established in City Hall upon completion of that building in 1878. A mounted squad was organized in 1879, its stables located adjacent to the Canal Street station. Another stable was built on Chalkstone Avenue in 1885.
The fire department, in 1886, was operating hose carts, hook-and-ladders, steamers and chemical engines, housed in 16 stations, all except seven (pages 134, 150) of which were of recent construction. These were located on Pallas Street (1872), Smith Street (1875), Wickenden Street (1875), Amherst Street (1878), Central Street (1875), Mill Street (1878), Burnside Street (1883), Public Street (1885), and Atwells Avenue (1886).42 About 140 fire alarm boxes were in operation, the majority set on poles at street intersections, opened by keys in custody of residents in the vicinity, and the others placed on public buildings and factories, all of which signaled the box numbers on bells in the fire station towers. The bells were used also for time signals at noon and 8:30 P.M. daily and for "no school" signals on stormy days. Horse stalls were located in the rear of the stations; their doors were opened automatically whenever the bell rang, and the well-trained horses trotted to their positions in front of the fire apparatus.
The fire department reported fire losses aggregating $750,000 during the year 1888, exceeding those of any previous year in Providence.43 Three fires, occurring within the period of one week, were responsible for the bulk of the loss. Shortly after midnight on February 15, during a northwest gale and sub-zero temperature, fire broke out in the Chase and Arnold Block which destroyed that building as well as the Aldrich House (a four-story brick hotel, erected about 1860), Billings Block, and several smaller buildings within the block bounded by Eddy, Washington, Union and Fountain streets. Three days later, February 18th, the Theatre Comique (page 154) was burned, and a fire on February 19 gutted the Daniels Building which had been erected on Custom House Street following the conflagration of September 27, 1877 (page 155).
The city erected 15 schoolhouses during the eighties, the most important of which was Vineyard Street Grammar School, a two-story brick building designed by William R. Walker and Son and dedicated October 8, 1883; an addition was made in 1913. That build- ing and the Tyler Parochial School, erected at the corner of Point and Plain streets in 1898 (James Murphy, architect), followed the design trend of the seventies in which considerable use was made of ornamental brickwork.
Three rather ornate buildings were erected on Westminster Street during this period. Dorrance Hotel (1880), extending north to Fulton Street and facing a gangway parallel to and west of Dorrance Street,44 was five stories high with brick walls, a French roof, a pyramidal central tower, corner pavilions and a corbeled cornice; two stories were later added above the cornice, eliminating the French roof and tower (illustration, page 167).
41. All of these stations were abandoned between 1934 and 1951, some converted to other uses.
42. The Mill Street station was extended easterly to Constitution Hill where a ward room was maintained. An open flight of stone steps, identified as Thurber's Steps, rises north of the building from Mill Street to the hill. This and the other stations listed were closed between 1928 and 1950.
43. C.M., 1899, Report of Fire Department.
44. The widening of Dorrance Street in 1855 (page 124) left a strip of land eight feet wide between that highway and the gangway, upon which a two-story building was put up for shops. This building and the hotel were razed about 1920 and on their site, including the gangway, the Woolworth Building was erected.
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The five-story Conrad Building (Stone, Carpenter and Willson, architects, c. 1885), still standing at the corner of Aborn Street, has brick walls except for iron and glass store fronts, and a round corner bay window crowned by a Moorish dome. The brick and stone building erected by the Providence Young Men's Christian Association at the corner of Jackson Street (Stone, Carpenter and Willson, architects) in 1889, reflected French Romanesque influence; its five stories included offices, dormitories, a gymnasium and an auditorium.45
Shepard and Company was established at 259 Westminster Street in 1880 and subsequently absorbed H. W. Ladd Company, located in the adjoining building. The store was enlarged and altered, from time to time, and extended to Washington Street. Heavy fire losses were suffered December 8, 1890 and March 8, 1923.
R.I.H.S.
Hotal Dorrance (1880-c. 1920), from photograph c. 1915 after upper stories had been altered. City Hall at right; row of narrow shops in foreground.
When the college was established at Providence in 1770 it occupied an isolated tract on the hilltop to which a lane from Benefit Street served as entrance. During the next century Prospect, Waterman, George, Brown, Thayer, and Manning streets were laid out and the college grounds were extended north to Waterman Street and south to George Street (as far east as Brown Street in each case), and east to Thayer Street. The earliest academic buildings, University Hall (page 44) and Hope College (page 87), were Colonial
45. The Y.M.C.A., originally the Young Men's Christian Union, was established in 1854 at 56 Weybosset Street. Later quarters were maintained at 19 Westminster Street (1855), 98 Weybosset Street (1861), and Music Hall (1882). The Jackson Street building was demolished in 1912, following the erection of the present Y.M.C.A. building on Broad Street (page 229), and the site is occupied by the Jackson Building.
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in design; the next pair, Manning Hall (page 107) and Rhode Island Hall (page 109), followed the Greek revival. Rogers Hall (1862) was designed in the Italian Gothic style by Alpheus C. Morse. The practice of following current revival trends continued in the seventies as exemplified by the Victorian-Gothic Library and the French-Romanesque Slater Hall. The Library (Walker and Gould, architects, 1878) was erected at the corner of Waterman and Prospect Streets, north of the campus, through the bequest of John Carter Brown and a gift of his widow. It is cruciform in plan with brick and brownstone walls, a pointed entrance, and an octagonal dome.46 Slater Hall (Stone and Carpenter, architects, 1879), given by Horatio N. Slater and built on the campus between University Hall and Rhode Island
Courtesy of the Browy Alumni Monthly Sayles Hall, 1881, Brown University
Hall, is a French-influenced four-story brick dormitory with brownstone and ornamental brick trimming. More imposing than either is Sayles Hall (Alpheus C. Morse, architect, illustration above), built on the middle campus, south of Rogers Hall, in 1881, the gift of William F. Sayles as a memorial to his son who died while an undergraduate. The building is Romanesque with walls of rockface granite and brownstone trimming, a tower rising above the central portal. The auditorium, used also as a chapel, has an open-timber ceiling and its walls, below the windows, are lined with portraits. In the gallery is an organ given by Lucian Sharpe, Jr. of the class of 1893.
46. The building was discontinued as the college library after the erection of John Hay Library in 1910 (page 206). It later became headquarters of the Department of Economics and its name was changed to Robinson Hall.
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William Foster (1840) and Earl P. Mason (c. 1888) houses, 19 and 23 Charles Field Street, sacrificed for Brown expansion program, 1956.
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William Gammell house, 1882, 170 Hope Street, now Saint Dunstan's School.
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House design during this period underwent a transition from complexity to simplicity. Many of the dwellings were built with first story walls of brick or stone and the upper stories of wood, covered with clapboards, shingles or slate. The gable-roofed Knapp house at 217 Hope Street is a combination of random ashlar and slate, and the gambrel-roofed Smith house at 165 Hope Street combines brick and clapboards and is featured by a Corinthian porch (both houses designed by Stone, Carpenter and Willson).47 The hip-roofed Sullivan house at 254 Wayland Avenue (William R. Walker, architect), is part brick and part shingles, with a bizarre arrangement of curved and octagonal surfaces. The Mason house at 23 Charles Field Street (Carl Pfeiffer of New York, architect) combined yellow brick walls over stone foundations, shingles, half-timbered work, bay windows, brackets and leaded glass (illustration, page 169). It was demolished in 1952.
Dr. George M. Carr house, c. 1885, 29 Waterman Street.
Among the last of the rococo dwellings in Providence were the works of Edwin I. Nickerson who made use of traditional forms in an original and unconventional manner. His exteriors were composed of many different kinds of materials and were highly orna- mental; the principal rooms usually were paneled with golden oak, with decorative stair- ways, beamed ceilings and tiled fireplaces. A noteworthy example is the Carr house at 29 Waterman Street (illustration above), now a dormitory of the School of Design, the walls of which are composed of coursed and random ashlar, brick, and wood, with half-timber work in the gables and round bay-windows faced with bronze; a round tower with a pointed copper dome gives emphasis to the corner.
47. Edmund R. Willson (1856-1906), architecte diplomé, Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, who was admitted to the firm of Stone and Carpenter in 1882 and became its chief designer, was a pioneer in the Classic and Colonial revival.
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In contrast with these complex dwellings is the Gammell house at 170 Hope Street, designed by Gould and Angell in 1882 and enlarged a few years later (illustration, page 169). The walls are yellow brick with granite and limestone trimmings; an arched entrance porch centers on the Hope Street facade and a wide bay window is placed near the north corner. The windows are very wide with single-lighted sashes, and the ornamentation is confined principally to the roof gables and chimneys. It became St. Dunstan's School in 1954.
The manufacturing industries of Providence had increased, by 1880, to become the most potent factor in the life of the community. In that year there were nearly 1200 manu- facturing establishments in the city with a capital of over $23,000,000, employing over 26,000 persons,48 constituting one-fourth the population of Providence. While the industrial development brought wealth, employment opportunities and population growth to the city its effect upon the physical welfare of the people was disturbing.
Even before the method of controlling civic development by zoning was devised, in the 20th century (page 233), a somewhat definite segregation of land areas for residential, business and industrial areas had been established in most cities. Business districts were developed in central locations where main thoroughfares converged; factories were built on low lands along harbors, rivers and railroads; and home neighborhoods were situated in more elevated or distant areas, away from the noise and smoke of industry, the congestion of business, and the heart of traffic.49 The industrial development of Providence had been too haphazard for any scheme of factory grouping; and while some of the larger plants were appropriately situated along the waterways and the railroad, large numbers of machine shops, textile works, iron foundries, rubber works, soap manufactories and jewelry establish- ments, filling the air with smoke, dust, offensive odors and noises, were erected throughout the city with little regard for neighborhood environment. As a result many residents of the areas unpleasantly affected by the industrial invasion were forced to remove to other environments and the vacated districts degenerated into slums.
The earliest manufacturing area grew up along Moshassuck valley. On Charles Street, a short distance west of the original grist mill (page 7), was the plant of the Fletcher Manufacturing Company (incorporated 1865), makers of laces, lamp wicks and small wares. Established in 1793 by Charles Fletcher and first located on South Main Street, the company built its first mill on the Charles Street site in 1844, to which subsequent additions were made. On Stevens Street, east of the river, was the plant of the American Screw Company, established 1860 by consolidation of the Eagle Screw Company and the New England Screw Company; the Eagle Mills (1840) were located on the south side of Stevens Street and the Bay State Mills (1873) on the north side. At Charles and Nichols streets, on the west bank of the river, were the works of the Franklin Machine Company (incorporated 1886), first established as the Franklin Foundry and Machine Company in 1836. Allen's Print Works (incorporated 1857), founded by Philip Allen (page III) in 1830, were located between the river and Branch Avenue, south of North Burial Ground. The Corliss Steam Engine Works, organized 1846 by George H. Corliss, inventor of the Corliss engine, were on a five-acre tract on Cross Street, extending northerly from the Charles Street railroad overpass. The Rhode Island Tool Company (incorporated 1883), successor to the Providence Tool Company, established 1844 on Wickenden Street, maintained a plant built by the Providence Forge and Nut Company in 1844 on West River Street, extending westerly to the railroad. At the corner of Admiral and Whipple streets, west of the railroad, was the
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