Rhode Tour

Market House

2017-05-10T17:54:54+00:00

From Colonial Providence to Now

Boston wasn’t the only place to throw a tea party! Here, on March 2, 1775, Providence residents protesting the Tea Act threw 300 pounds of British East India Company tea into the Providence River. Finding inspiration in Rhode Island’s founder Roger Williams, residents sent their tea into the river and their spirit of protest across the Atlantic Ocean to King George. The Market House changed that day and hasn’t stopped. Following the event, the Market House quartered French soldiers during the Revolutionary War, and by the middle of the 19th century, it served as Providence’s City Hall before overcrowding necessitated a larger space in present day downtown.

Over the years, the Market House also witnessed the largest natural disasters to hit Providence: the Great Gale of 1815 and the Great Hurricane of 1938. The Great Gale brought an eleven-foot storm surge, memorialized on the side of the Market House, that was unsurpassed until the Great Hurricane of 1938. The Great Hurricane of 1938 was the largest modern disaster to affect downtown Providence. On September 21, the hurricane hit high tide and a tidal wave flooded the business district seven feet above street level. The storm hit at rush hour and hundreds of people eager to make their journeys home did not know they were stepping into one of the deadliest modern storms to ever strike New England. In all, 311 Rhode Islanders died, and the storm is remembered through hurricane markers located around downtown today.

Today the Market House is owned by the Rhode Island School of Design. The building has been renovated to provide studio and classroom space, just one more iteration of the Market House being repurposed to suit “modern needs.”

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Market Square and the Market House

2017-05-07T19:48:41+00:00

Witnessing History

As you stroll the streets of the East Side, pay attention to the street signs: many of the streets you pass bear witness to some of the significant people and structures that have come and gone, making and remaking the city. Power Street, for example, runs the property line of 17th-century original resident Nicholas Power. Meeting Street, once known as Gaol Lane, was the site of Providence’s early jail. And Transit and Planet Streets commemorate perhaps the first worldwide scientific collaboration: the 1769 observation of the transit of Venus, organized by Joseph Brown, one of the four prominent Brown brothers of Providence, and an early astronomer and architect.

Among these other scientific pursuits, Joseph Brown designed the Market House (1775), which he intended as a magnificent landmark to the wealth of the colonial city at the heart of the bustling waterfront. The ground-level arcades originally provided open stalls for fishmongers, butchers, and produce vendors, while the upper floor housed government functions. A Masonic Hall occupied the third floor, added in 1797. During the 19th century, Market House served as City Hall during a 30-year debate (1845-75) over the construction of a new City Hall. It has housed classrooms for RISD since the 1950s. Market Square, always a site for news, gossip, and shopping, was the site of a colonial tax protest against the British on March 2, 1775 when the people of Providence burned tea. On September 7, 1897, Emma Goldman, a noted anarchist and feminist, was arrested for unlawful “open air speaking” and charged with attracting a crowd in Market Square. Nowadays you are more likely to encounter a RISD student’s art installation.

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