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Providence Preservation Society, 24 Meeting Street, Providence, RI (2026)

09/30/2026

Brown University released scaled-back plans for a new economics building on Brook Street last week following months of pushback from area residents about the building’s size and the proposed removal of four 19th-century homes. The revised proposal did little to quell opposition at a tense Ward 1 community meeting Tuesday night, however.

The new proposal is 15 feet shorter, incorporates publicly accessible green space, and preserves two of the four historic homes initially slated for removal — 287 and 291 Brook Street, both built in 1886 by Black developer Alexander Gorham. The plan also commits the university to a “multi-million-dollar” project restoring the homes to their original condition, according to Russell Carey, the university’s executive vice president of planning and policy.

281-83 and 277 Brook Street still require removal under the revised plan, either via demolition or through sale to a buyer willing to relocate them. While Carey said the university will explore relocating the homes or salvaging their materials, he declined a challenge from City Councilor John Goncalves at the meeting to explore preserving all four.

Read the full story: https://ppsri.org/brown-shrinks-economics-building-proposal-neighbors-still-unhappy/

09/21/2026

A large Queen Anne multifamily home at 108-110 Waterman Street was demolished in late August to make way for modern apartments. The construction is a project by local developer Walter Bronhard, who owns dozens of properties on the city’s East Side.

The building proposed for the site will mirror another recently completed Bronhard project down the street: The Carlyle, a modern-looking, five-story apartment building. Construction of The Carlyle also resulted in the leveling of a historic home on the site.

The home at 108-110 Waterman — likely built around 1878, according to city records — is one of dozens of homes in a four-block portion of the federal College Hill Historic District that have been demolished in recent years, according to a 2022 analysis by ArtInRuins.

Though its proximity to Thayer Street ensured its regular service as Brown University student housing, the building saw a variety of characters in its nearly 150 years.

Read the full story: https://ppsri.org/150-year-old-home-on-waterman-street-demolished-apartments-to-come/

09/14/2026

When Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, federally funded highway and urban renewal projects were carving up cities across the country. Federal agencies like the Highway Administration were paving over burial grounds and reducing historic neighborhoods to rubble. The purpose of the act, often referred to as the NHPA, was simply to slow down and ask federal agencies to consider some of the consequences of progress.

“One of the goals of the NHPA preamble that I really love is … to provide ‘a sense of orientation to the American people,’ by preserving the places that help make us American and inform what it means to be American,” explained Christopher Cody, an associate general counsel at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

When the NHPA was implemented, it was accompanied by a federal governing body, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and a series of regulations colloquially referred to as Section 106. These regulations took the flowery, philosophical language found in the act and transformed it into an actionable consultation process for federal agencies and state historic preservation officers to follow when a project may affect historic places or resources. In the 1990s, amendments to the NHPA and Section 106 ensured tribal governments and tribal historic preservation officers also had a seat at the table.

This July, 60 years after the NHPA was first implemented, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation voted to gut Section 106 of the act, significantly limiting the rights of tribes, local governments, and the public to consult on federally funded or permitted projects.

“I don’t think any of us quite saw it coming,” said Erik Hein, the executive director of the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers. The board president at NCSHPO serves as an ex-officio member of the advisory council, though Hein has attended meetings as a designee when needed for over a decade.

Read the full story: https://ppsri.org/federal-preservation-regulations-on-the-chopping-block/

09/03/2026

Join us for five weeks of programs celebrating Providence’s history and architecture from the pre-colonial period to today. The Festival of Architecture & Design kicks off Sep 26 and ends Oct 30.

Highlights are hard to pick among the 20-odd events but here goes...tours on offer of Atlantic Mills with Big Nazo, the Wedding Cake House with Dirt Palace, Old Stone Bank with LLB Architects (now a private residence -- PPS members event), the Manchester Street Generating Station, North Burial Ground, Neutaconkanut Hill with the Tomaquag Museum, City Hall with DBVW Architects, the Beatrice Hotel with ZDS Architecture, and a South Providence bus tour with the Jacqueline Clements Park Collective.

The Festival also opens to the public more than 20 private homes spanning 1737 to 2025. The list includes homes built before the Revolutionary War as well as cutting-edge examples of sustainable design from the last few years, such as Providence’s first LEED-compliant home (2009) via Kite Architects, our first net zero home via ZeroEnergy Design, the first two homes in the city built using modern straw bale construction.

Events for modernism lovers include a field trip to Foster to see two amazing 1960s/70s gems, the October 3 open house featuring several Ira Rakatansky-designed homes, and a peek into one of Providence's best examples of postmodern architecture -- the 1988 lightning splitter condos on the West Side.

All your favorite architects are represented and so are all of the eras: this is a unique opportunity to soak in the story of Providence and its architecture over the last 300 years.

We know, it's a lot -- we went all out to mark PPS's 70th anniversary this year. We close out the Festival at the cocktail party benefit on Oct 29 hosted by realtor Derek Simpson at his fabulous Blackstone Blvd home -- join us to raise a glass as we cross the finish line!

Gratitude, as always, to the event's Premier Sponsor Providence Tourism Council! And Festival artwork/design by Ruchika Nambiar!

Learn more & register: https://ppsri.org/events/festival-of-architecture-and-design-september-26-october-5-2026/

08/20/2026

For a close-up view of the Democratic Party’s national identity crisis, look no further than the primary election for Providence mayor. The fight between Mayor Brett Smiley and challenger state Rep. David Morales is a local distillation of the questions being asked of establishment Democrats nationwide.

Providence residents have turned out to mayoral forums and debates in droves, but with minimal polling, no clear front-runner in the race has emerged. To understand the support behind each candidate, the Post turned to the proxy battle taking place in their bank accounts.

Every quarter, candidates for public office must file a summary of their campaign finances, including a list of each contribution and expense. In Rhode Island, a given candidate can accept no more than $2,000 in annual donations from individuals and political action committees, or PACs, private groups that pool money and donate to candidates they support.

While Smiley has raked in twice as much money as Morales this year, the challenger has more than twice as many individual donors and fewer overall PAC donations. The source of the donations, with Morales proudly proclaiming not to accept corporate funding, has become a campaign issue in its own right.

“This is a national-level story playing out in Providence,” said Raymond La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Read the full story: https://ppsri.org/a-national-level-story-playing-out-in-providence-what-can-campaign-contributions-tell-us-about-the-mayoral-race/

08/18/2026

A beady-eyed herring leapt onto the Exchange Street Bridge on a late July morning, landing on the concrete with a soft “clink.” Blue-striped, 6 inches long, and painted onto a ceramic tile by local artist David Allyn, the fish is one of the first pieces of a public art installation coming to downtown bridges this summer.

The project — conceptualized and carried out by local design and art production company Chroma Council — spans a half-mile of the city’s iconic Riverwalk and will bring work from 17 artists, primarily in tile, to five bridges near Waterplace Park by the end of the month.

Soon to appear among the sites are a flock of pigeon tiles, a panel inspired by Cambodian woven mats, abstract designs based on state maps and diagrams, and more.

In imagining the installation, Chroma Council co-founder Linsey Wallace said she hoped to stimulate passersby and help them interact “more thoughtfully” with their surroundings. She thought of the Providence of 20 or 30 years ago, a city with gritty art and music scenes and walls plastered with posters.

“It felt like this place was alive,” Wallace said. “We want to bring some of that texture back.”

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

08/11/2026

Providence is facing a serious housing crisis. The city’s average rent has been on the rise since at least 2016, according to the annual Housing Fact Books released by the research and policy organization HousingWorks RI. In 2016, the annual household income necessary to afford the average two-bedroom rent in Providence was $45,040; today, renters have to make more than double that amount, or $90,560.

It’s no secret that the Smiley administration is hoping the city can build its way out of skyrocketing rents. However, that strategy begs the question: Where can we build?

Smiley’s predecessor Jorge Elorza attempted to address this question during his last year in office by creating the Providence Neighborhood Land Bank. The program is administered by the Providence Redevelopment Agency, or PRA, a quasi-public authority with the broad goal of eliminating and preventing “blighted and substandard areas” in the city. The agency was originally established in 1947, at the start of the urban renewal era — a time when the federal government funded mass demolition and redevelopment projects in American cities.

The agency has seen a boost in new activity over the last five years thanks to another, more recent infusion of federal money. In the wake of the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of billions of dollars in American Rescue Plan Act funding, also called ARPA, was distributed to state and local governments across the country. Between 2021 and 2022, the City of Providence alone received a total of $166 million in ARPA funds.

In 2022, Elorza established the Providence Housing Trust Fund using both ARPA funding and municipal bond money. Since then, Elorza and Smiley invested more than $55 million total in the Housing Trust Fund.

The Providence Neighborhood Land Bank, also established under Elorza in 2022, is financed by the Housing Trust Fund. According to a planning document, the purpose of the land bank is to “acquire, hold, and transfer underused vacant land throughout the City, with the goal [of] generating new affordable housing and revitalizing Providence neighborhoods.”

Read the full story: https://ppsri.org/explainer-can-the-providence-neighborhood-land-bank-ease-the-housing-crisis/

08/07/2026

“TIRES,” proclaimed a 1936 advertisement for Broadway Tire Sales Company. “1000 used tires to pick from, $1 and up.”

Today, Tony Carlone laughs and shakes his head in disbelief. He knows the old shop well; his family spent decades running the business at 113 Broadway before closing the location in early 2023.

“I’d want them to count every one,” he said. “There’s no way you could put 1,000 tires — we could barely put 300.”

For more than a century, if something rolled through Federal Hill on tires, there was a good chance someone in the three-story wood-frame building — likely built before 1875 — could fix it. As Columbia Repair Shop, the storefront repaired bicycles and installed baby carriage tires before cars dominated Providence streets.

Later it became Broadway Tire Sales, then BTS Tire & Service, serving decades of drivers until the Carlone family consolidated the business into their Pawtucket location, where Carlone serves as the company president. The Broadway building was sold two years later, and now, after 115 years of commercial life, it’s heading for demolition.

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

08/06/2026

The Providence Historic District Commission, responsible for overseeing and protecting the character of the city’s historic districts, voted on several projects at its July 27 meeting.

The group approved the demolition of a deteriorating Broadway tire shop and provided preliminary approval for a new residence on Pratt Street, while a proposed adjacent addition got denied. It also gave the green light for a new garage and ADU on Hidden Street.

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

07/21/2026

On June 23, a coalition of residents, organizations, and city departments held an open house called “Envisioning Resilience: The Providence Waterfront” at the Save the Bay Center. The night was the culmination of a community engagement process that began in 2023. The goal of the project was to identify the ways in which the Port of Providence could be transformed into an asset to the area — as opposed to a burden on local health and wellness. It explored opportunities like constructing a pedestrian boardwalk along the bay and utilizing native wildlife to support the structure of the shoreline while filtering polluted water.

Posterboards in the open house offered the event’s nearly 100 visitors four different options: bio-retention, floating wetlands, marsh creation, and infrastructure reuse. The ideas are not mutually exclusive, though all of them would require some degree of cooperation from the current property owners of the parcels on the Port.

The schematics for nearly all of these ideas show a possible boardwalk along the shoreline. Such infrastructure is made possible by Rhode Island’s shoreline access law; the state constitution has long declared that all Rhode Islanders have the right to access the shore, but a law passed by the state legislature in 2023 clarified where exactly the public shoreline begins and ends.

Read the full story: https://ppsri.org/the-people-may-be-gaining-ground-in-the-port-of-providence/

Providence Preservation Society

09/30/2026

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09/14/2026

09/03/2026

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08/18/2026

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