Providence: Historic Walking Tour, Part 1

(My history, that is…)

On my 41st birthday (4/22/22), I was staying in Rhode Island. I usually do a birthday hike, but I’m so spoiled by the Western Mass peaks and not that there aren’t any nice hiking trails in Rhode Island because there are, lovely ones, but I figured while I was there, maybe I ought to do something different. I decided that a walk around a real city, which we do lack in Western Mass, would be different. And Providence! My city!

And what would make a walk around Providence especially special on my birthday would be revisiting all my old haunts—hence, an historic walking tour.

My plan was to walk and stop and take pictures and write and repeat. But I only got a two-hour parking spot, so I didn’t have time to stop and write, only walk and take pictures.

The thing about Rhode Island is that I kept leaving and coming back, so my history in Providence is broken up into chunks.

• childhood: I mostly didn’t grow up in the city proper, so my childhood memories of Providence consist mostly of my dad taking me on the bus to Kennedy Plaza (where all the buses went) and Burnside Park. (I did live in Federal Hill as a small child, but so small I don’t remember much, though it’s probably why I apparently speak Italian with a Sicilian-American accent.) Then, as a young teen, hanging out on Thayer Street was the be-all end-all.
• ages 17-18 (1998-1999): I interned at Trinity Rep Theatre.
• age 18 (early 2000): I moved into an apartment off North Main Street across from the North Burial Ground. I worked at coffeeshops and video stores, downtown and on the East Side (and in the train station).
• age 19 (2000): I moved to Douglas Ave (ick).
• ages 19–21 (2000-2002): I moved back to East Providence but then back to Providence again and worked at City Year downtown. The end of this period was the beginning of going to the Irish bar Ri Ra every Sunday for the trad session which I started doing exactly one week after I turned 21.
• ages 25–27 (2006–2008): After college, back to Providence. I returned to both Trinity Rep and City Year. Ri Ra every Sunday.
• ages 30–35 (2011–2016): After a couple years in Yellow Springs, I got knocked up and moved in with my mom who was in Cranston at the time (in my favorite childhood neighborhood and also the one our ancestors founded but that’s a story for another day). I worked downtown again for a few years at Konnessi. Ri Ra regularly until they got shut down (Irish bastards).

So, then, the photographic walking tour, part 1 (because I didn’t get to cover the entire area of my history within 2 hours):

I started my tour right between Burnside Park and Kennedy Plaza, the epicenter of this bustling metropolis. Kennedy Plaza is where all the buses start and stop, so unless you have a car—and sometimes, even if you do—you spend a lot of time here. There’s City Hall right there, and the Biltmore hotel to the right. I used to work behind City Hall, which is the much less attractive side, architecturally-speaking. The Biltmore at one time was known for its glass elevator, which I remember riding once as a kid. Unfortunately it’s been out of commission for many years now.

City Hall again, for reference, and Washington Street. Washington Street was the first street I really got to know in Providence. When I was 17 I started working on the far end of Washington, at Trinity Rep (which you’ll see soon). This street is also home to my sort-of first bar, which I frequented with fellow Trinity people when I was very much underage. The library is also on this street, plus an awesome bookstore (Cellar Stories) is off a side street.

Also on Washington Street is the oddly narrow George C. Arnold building. This Arnold was my grandfather’s grandfather, so I’ve always felt mostly baselessly proprietorially about it (we are not the branch of the family that ended up with anything because apparently my great-grandfather—this George C. Arnold’s son—splurged it all away).

This is Trinity Rep, the theater where I worked in ’98-’99 and again in ’06-’07 ish. It has always been my favorite building, both for its architecture and its energy. Its ornate detail and spacious spaces slay me and I want to live in it.

This is the Providence Public Library, where I spent a lot of time every time I lived in Providence. On the left is its original entrance, which is gorgeous and gothic and made it my second favorite building. I loved entering the the library this way. Unfortunately, they shut down that entrance—first temporarily, then permanently—and on the right you can see its current entrance, the wing unceremoniously added in the 50s.

Empire Street, home of AS220 and formerly of Finnegan’s Wake. AS220 was also home to that amazing taqueria, in which I spent many a drinking lunch with coworkers in the late 2000s. I performed once at AS220, with a group of friends during a fair, a performance art piece that was a sort of living Rube Goldberg machine to make the best glass of orange juice, and after the show we were sticky with orange juice and ate many, many oysters from my friend Perry from the Matunuck Oyster Farm who was a fair vendor.

The grounds of Cathedral Square were a tranquil space I often had lunch when I worked downtown. I’m really drawn to Catholic spaces for some reason, despite not being Catholic and really kind of not digging the whole Christian thing in general. When I was a teenager in Lincoln, we lived near a Catholic church and the congregants made me very uncomfortable but I loved going in there when it was empty and just vibing as the kids say.

A nice view of the downtown from the slight hill on Empire Street.

Beneficent Church. When I was at City Year 2000-2002, we held a lot of meetings in this church. We were here when we first learned 9/11 had happened, and we all crowded around a small radio to listen to the news.

The old Axelrod sign is still there! It’s likely 70 years old and apparently considered an historic landmark. Axelrod shut down in 2004 and while I’m not a musician and never really knew it, my mother has fond high-school-band memories there.

Weybosset Street. So much of this city has changed drastically since I was a kid. That structure in the island in the middle of the road is one of the last holdouts of the old post-industrial, pre-gentrification Providence.

Westminster Street. The narrow one. When I was a kid, most of the streets downtown were one-way, but wide enough so that when I was a young adult they were all eventually reconstructed to be two-way streets. That will never happen with Westminster Street! Early memories of Westminster include going to Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel as a teenager. It was a seedy club when it was here, but got an upgrade and moved to Washington Street where I think it still stands. As an adult I worked in an office right off a side street, far down on the left in this picture. The side streets between here and Washington Street still retain a lot of the old Providence—including an ancient department store pedestrian bridge which I’m disappointed in myself for not getting a picture of.

That first doorway on the left was the entrance to my office at City Year when I worked there 2006-2008. That second floor window on the left was where my cubicle eventually was. Across the street from that was where the catering truck for the “Brotherhood” shoot was—the TV show—and they often cooked delicious-smelling BBQ that wafted into my window and told me it was time for lunch.

Ahh, the corner of Dorrance Street… I can’t imagine how many hours I’ve accumulated waiting for this light to cross.

The Arcade! The oldest still-running mall in the country. Antero’s Diner across from the Greek restaurant on the ground floor—and that adorable Chinese clothing-and-trinket store on the second floor—that was many, many years ago. Antero’s was the site of my first photography show! And the guy from the Greek restaurant once asked me if I wanted a secret boyfriend! The Arcade got shut down around ’06 when the boom happened because they were going to build a high-rise condo right next to it, but when the ’08 crash happened, they nixed that project and eventually the Arcade reopened but it is very different now.

The old cobblestone of the financial district—I never had any reason to be in this area, but often walked it anyway because it was weirdly pretty.

The Turk’s Head Building… It never occurred to any of us that that would be be problematic for a long time. My Turkish cousin was slightly amused but ultimately did not approve.

The Providence River. This was a lovely area I used to walk a LOT, for obvious reasons and also because it was the border to the East Side. The structures in the water on the left are the set up for WaterFire.

The space beneath that now-empty black awning home to the Cable Car Cinema, a lovely place that from the front just looked like a cafe with movie posters. It had amazing coffee and sandwiches, chairs that had directors’ names printed on the back, and the coziest movie theater—most of the seating was couches and easy chairs.

One of the iconic hills running down from College Hill to downtown.

The bus tunnel which starts at the bottom of College Hill and goes up to Thayer Street. I’ve been in busses in this tunnel many, and was never tempted to challenge its “busses only” policy until I was with intrepid housemates on bikes on Thayer Street and we biked down it… It was dark and eerie and cold and steep and we yelled the whole way down.

Roger Williams National Memorial: the smallest National “Park” in the country! Site of the original Roger Williams homestead in Providence. This was part of my walk home when I lived on Doyle Ave and it was lovely. I have fond memories lounging and soaking up the early spring sun here.

Just across the street from the park is Star Street, which runs up from North Main Street to Benefit Street. I discovered this street one day and was really drawn to it. The whole area is pretty compelling to me, but this street in particular… Years later, I found out that this was the approximate site of the land parcel that was my ancestor’s, in the original Providence settlement with Roger Williams. 🤯

On the other side of the park the Moshassuck River, which in a little while merges with the Woonasquatucket to becomes the Providence River. I love the juxtaposition of the newer high-rise condos right next to more remnants of the old Providence.

This was Ri Ra and it’s nuts to see it in this state. My memories here overwhelm my mind. I came here for the first time the week after I turned 21 (2002), because I’d heard there was a great Irish trad session. There was. I immediately became a regular, coming almost every Sunday. Then I went to college and came back and resumed this tradition. Then I moved away again and returned again and resumed the tradition again, this time with my kid. Over these many years, I became friends with several generations of bartenders, the trad sesh band, other regulars, and made regulars of my friends. It closed very suddenly in 2014. It became something else for a while, something I never went to, and now it looks like this.

Not far from Ri Ra is this tunnel entrance to Waterplace Park, where I spent probably equal amounts of time lounging and walking peacefully and stumbling there roaring drunk from the bar.

And this brings us to our final leg of the tour: the view from the other end of Waterplace Park. This was on my walk home when I lived on Smith Hill, and was always a favorite. The picture on the left is how it pretty much always looked from the time I was a teenager; the picture on the right includes the high rises that went up more recently and changed the skyline entirely. By “recent” I mean like 15 years, but still.

“New” and “old” is all relative when you’re discussing a colonial city, and when the person discussing it has only been around since the 80s. When I go to Providence, I am usually full of nostalgia, flooded with memories—which is not terribly common for someone who’s moved around so much. But as I get older, rather than the sort of sad feeling of saudade that would accompany these memories, I experience them with more serenity, more contentment, more richness.