Like many parts of Providence, the athletic fields beside Hope High School are built on fill, but unlike buildings along the old waterfront or over marshy ponds, these fields are built over a former man-made reservoir that served an important role in the city's water system.
When European colonists first began settling in Providence, their primary source of drinking water was wells dug deep in private yards, but the city's booming population in the 19th century began to both tax and pollute the city's well water supply. A report from the 1853 Committee on the Proposed Water Works maintained that a new water source was necessary as "into the sand, underlying the city, are deposited quantities of excrementitious matter, which, were it not susceptible of demonstration, would appear almost incredible. With our present population there is deposited on this sand about one hundred tons of excrementitious matter every twenty-four hours."
This argument was presumably compelling, for a municipal water system was introduced in 1872. It drew water from the Pawtuxet River and delivered it as-is into businesses and homes. (A sand-based filtration system was introduced in 1906.) In order to distribute water to neighborhoods at higher elevations, the system employed a series of holding reservoirs and high-powered pumping stations.
The pumping house at the Hope Reservoir, built in 1873, had two Corliss pumping engines, marble floors, walnut woodwork, and a dramatic tower with a cupola. The adjoining reservoir held 76,000,000 gallons of water on 15.6 acres of land; at 162.5 feet above sea level, it was well-positioned to deliver water to residents at higher elevations.
During Providence's rapid population growth in the early 20th century, water supply from the Pawtuxet River became inadequate, with water being drawn from backup storage tanks and other supplies during droughts. In the mid-1920s, construction began on the Scituate Reservoir, a massive reservoir that is still in use today.
The Hope Reservoir sat unused for some years; city officials decided in 1928 to use it for a school, with much-needed athletic fields, and drained it the next year, but the site remained vacant. (A 1931 news article described wayward East Side youth clambering down the reservoir's steep walls to skate and play hockey on the smooth ice at the bottom.) In 1936, Hope High School was finally constructed; its playing fields stretch across the former reservoir's footprint.
]]>At 43 Camp Street, passers-by see a school playground, shaded by a stand of pine trees and surrounded by a chain link fence. During recess, children's excited shouts reach the sidewalk. The adjoining playing field is flat and grassy, belying the fact that, in decades past, the block was filled with houses, one of which contained a shop with a steady stream of customers: fashionable women with gloves and handbags seeking the renowned hair styling services of one Mrs. Beulah Boyd Jackson.
Beulah Boyd's Camp Street beauty parlor was situated in the front of her house in the predominantly African-American Mount Hope neighborhood. It was one of the first beauty parlors in the state to serve an African-American clientele, with customers traveling from the farthest reaches of Rhode Island to have "Miss Boyd" style and set their hair. (Over the years, she also operated the same shop from locations on Lippitt Street, Prospect Street, North Main Street, and another location further down Camp Street.) Former customers described Beulah's fine sense of humor and reminisced about eating and talking while waiting for hair appointments.
The beauty parlor was a family affair: Beulah ran it with her sister, Margaret Boyd Mayo, while their sons often played in the adjoining house. Beulah and Margaret were born on a Virginia farm, two of six children. After their mother's early death they were sent to live with relatives; Beulah came to live with an older married brother in Providence, and Margaret later joined her. The two lived with or nearby each other for their entire lives. Beulah's husband Raymond Jackson was a machinist at the time of their marriage in the 1930s; after the factory where he worked closed, he trained as a hairdresser as well, joining Beulah and Margaret in their beauty parlor where he styled hair until his death in 1951.
From 1940 until 1955, Beulah Boyd's beauty parlor was listed in the Negro Travelers' Green Book, an annual publication designed to guide African-American road trippers to safe and friendly establishments during the Jim Crow era. The beauty parlor was one of the only listings in Providence, alongside a few tourist homes (similar to modern Air BnBs), a tavern, and a tire shop in Silver Lake.
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