Random Stories
Artistic Freedom: Edward M. Bannister & Bannister Gallery
Since 1978, contemporary artists and art enthusiasts have enjoyed the use of the Bannister Gallery, located within Roberts Hall at Rhode Island College. The space is named for famed African-American landscape artist, and Rhode Island resident,…
Providence Armory
The yellow-brick, copper-crenellated Providence Armory, one of the most monumental structures in the city, anchors this historic neighborhood of wood-frame buildings and tree-lined streets. Owned by the State of Rhode Island and partially occupied…
From Silver Spoons to Shell Casings
In 1873, an economic depression gripped the country and threatened the future of the Gorham Manufacturing Company. The company’s skilled metalworkers and innovative designers had a reputation for creating quality goods, but none of these things…
“4 or 5 Active Lads to Serve in Cotton Factory”
On January 3, 1791, Ann Arnold walked into the newly founded Slater Mill and onto the pages of history as one of the first nine employees hired by the mill. She was probably about ten years old.As the industrial revolution swept across the western…
Geology and Topography of Mashapaug Pond
What did Mashapaug Pond look like five years ago? Fifty years ago? Five hundred years ago? Five hundred million years ago? How was that terrain different from today? The physical appearance of the pond today has slowly evolved through the dual…
Bicycle Racing at the Pawtucket Cotton Centenary
Despite the rain, a troupe of bicyclists and mustached men costumed as knights, clowns, pages, and a prince paraded through the streets of Pawtucket. Thousands of people from Rhode Island and the adjoining states thronged the streets. For a week,…
Take a Tour
Jewish Rhode Island
6 Locations ~ Curated by Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association (Cynthia Benjamin, Ruth Breindel, Geraldine Foster, Kate-Lynne Laroche, and Linda Lotridge Levin)Mashapaug Pond
15 Locations ~ Curated by Brown University students in "Oral History and Community Memory," Spring 2014Organizing New Bedford: Women Who Mobilized Change
6 Locations ~ Curated by Tom Begley for Lighting the Way: Historic Women of the SouthCoastFirst Peoples of Rhode Island
10 Locations ~ Curated by Katharine Kirakosian, PhD and Tomaquag MuseumStories from Pawtucket
7 Locations ~ Curated by Brown University students in "Methods in Public Humanities," Spring 2014Featured Stories
Wamsutta Mills
The building was five stories tall, of rough-hewn local granite, and about as long as the distance between streets in the older whaling center of town. A steam engine designed and built by Providence’s George H. Corliss powered ten thousand…
Butts Hill Fort, Portsmouth
Butts Hill Fort is the largest remaining Revolutionary War fortification in southeastern New England. In 1776, when the Americans built a small battery there, the area was also known as Windmill Hill after a succession of mills, beginning in 1668,…
Arkwright Mill
From cotton and bookcloth to fuel cells, films and printing media these two 150 year old mills are state-of-the-art!
The Arkwright Company of Coventry, R.I. began in 1810 as a textile mill owned by James DeWolf. Two mill buildings were constructed,…
Rhode Tour
A project by the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, the Rhode Island Historical Society and the Rhode Island Council for the HumanitiesRhode Tour is a statewide mobile historical smartphone application. Captivating places, intriguing people, and exciting events fill Rhode Island's history. Rhode Tour offers a new way to interact with these untold tales of the state's past. Using stories, sounds, and images, history comes alive on Rhode Tour.
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