Rhode Island is perhaps inordinately proud of its superlatives and firsts: first to establish religious freedom, first to rebel against the British crown, longest hold-out before ratifying the newly minted Constitution.  And, in the 20th century, Rhode Island grabbed the title of longest workers’ strike in the US. Brown and Sharpe, once headquartered here, holds that dubious honor. The strike began in 1981 and lasted through the late 1990s. The strike is only one of many significant moments in the storied history of Brown and Sharpe, which began operations in 1833 on South Main Street in Providence.

Joseph Brown, clockmaker and mechanical designer joined forces with savvy businessman Lucian Sharpe, and the wildly successful Brown and Sharpe company took off, revolutionizing the machine-tool industry. Manufacturing everything from the Wilcox and Gibbs game-changing sewing machine to the machine that produced Shredded Wheat cereal to the universal grinding machine that created an effortless spin of a car’s wheels, Brown and Sharpe had an immeasurable impact on the daily lives of Americans for two centuries.

Gorham Manufacturing Company, which also formerly operated in this area, had an equally transformative influence on Rhode Island and beyond. A behemoth in the world of silver manufacturing, Gorham produced high-quality goods, including flatware, dishware, decorative objects, and statues in both silver and bronze, beginning in 1831 and continuing to today.

In addition to Brown and Sharpe and Gorham Manufacturing Company, the buildings along Steeple Street are the former homes to other sites of industry and innovation: a jewelry factory and the restaurant Al Forno, which invented wood-grilled pizza.

These buildings are testaments to Providence as an early powerhouse of American industry. They preserve the scale and density of buildings in this commercial area before 20th century demolitions created the open spaces of the surrounding parking lots.

For more (including 3 images) view the original article

This nine-acre park was a gift from one of the greatest philanthropists in Providence’s history, a man whose charitable giving still has an impact on city life. Ebenezer Knight Dexter (1773-1824) descended from land-rich colonial Rhode Islanders. In addition to this park, dedicated in Dexter’s will to military purposes, a forty-acre tract on the East Side was donated for the support of the poor and indigent. This public space played an important role in the Dorr War and was a mustering and encampment site during the Civil War and World War I. The 14^th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (Colored), the first African-American company from Rhode Island to serve in the Civil War, was raised in Providence and bivouacked here. Historic reenactors can still be found leading an encampment now and then. The park on a summer day is as diverse as the neighborhood. Strollers walk the long sycamore allées and watch soccer or kickball games; children fill the playground. Dexter himself watches over it all, cast in bronze by Gorham Manufacturing in 1893.

For more (including 3 images) view the original article

He looks surprised to see her but who can blame him? Goddesses do not often descend from the heavens and communicate with humans. The goddess Liberty hands a spear to a young farmer, still holding his plow. Leave your work in the fields! Take up arms and fight for freedom! History, the future, demands it!

William Granville Hastings (1868 – 1902), an extraordinary young sculptor, designed this classical Civil War memorial, Liberty Arming the Patriot. Gorham Company of Providence cast the memorial in bronze, and it was installed in Park Place in 1897.

Below Liberty and the farmer there is a Union artillery battery, men in the heat of battle, led by Rhode Island’s General Ambrose Burnside at Antietam Bridge. And on either side, two female figures: the Scribe of History, writing on a tablet; and Eternity, identifiable by her fern.

Rhode Island would see over 25,000 men go to battle during the course of the Civil War. Moved by the troops’ service, the Rhode Island Ladies’ Soldiers’ Memorial Association worked for eleven years to raise money to build the memorial, “conducting donations, public subscriptions, and entertainments.”

Many Ladies’ Soldiers’ Memorial Associations developed during and after the Civil War to support the troops, sending clothing, nursing the wounded, raising money for “the cause”, locating the bodies of the dead, and commemorating the fallen troops. Col. Elliott F. Shepard once claimed, “They were the ladies who, if they had been men, would have been soldiers.”

William Granville Hastings was born in Surrey, England, three years after the American Civil War ended. He won awards in art school for his renaissance-style vases, and he moved to Paris, France, to apprentice with artist Jules Dalou, who was known for producing realistic figures. At the age of twenty-three, Hastings immigrated to the United States to work as a designer and sculptor for the Gorham Manufacturing Company in New York. He received the commission for Liberty Arming the Patriot five years later, in 1896.

For more (including 4 images) view the original article