Franciscan Park, known to most as the Bell Street Dog Park, is a lively spot on a sunny day. Paths loop around the grassy expanse and dogs roam under shade trees or trot along a dirt track overlooking Route 6.

This parcel of land was once the opulent home of James Eddy, an engraver who built his fortune as an art dealer, and his wife Eliza Jackson Eddy. Their estate included multiple outbuildings, a large brick chapel for public worship, sprawling grounds, and curving walkways, all perched on a steep hill at the western edge of fashionable Broadway. Terraces cut into the hill and dramatic stairs descended to neighborhoods below. The house itself was palatial, with more than 20 rooms, numerous fireplaces, ornate woodwork in mahogany and walnut, and oak floors. A grand hall on the ground floor stretched the length of the house and opened up onto a round back veranda.

After James Eddy's death at the age of 82, his daughter Amy and her husband sold the three-story mansion and four-acre plot to the Catholic Diocese of Rhode Island, to be used as a convent, school, and nursery. Under the Franciscan nuns' direction, the complex became a lively place, with classes, recreation, and religious education, as well as one of the nation's first Montessori schools, all serving predominantly Italian immigrants from the neighborhood. During the Great Depression, the nuns distributed food and clothing to needy families, and handed out bagged meals to the homeless from a shed on the property every day at noon.

After years of declining enrollment, the Franciscans' nursery closed in 1972. The nuns moved out of the building in 1977, and the Diocese put the buildings and land up for sale. A developer eyed the site for a 120-unit apartment complex for the elderly, but his plan was denied by the city's zoning board. In March of 1979, the mansion was heavily damaged by a fire and was later torn down.

In 1995, then-mayor Buddy Cianci announced at a Providence Preservation Society meeting that the city would purchase the site and turn it into a park. Franciscan Park opened in 1999, named after the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and their influential stay there.

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In 2009, a group of volunteers stepped into the Woonasquatucket River at Donigian Park wearing waist-high heavy rubber boots and sturdy gloves to protect against the river’s pollution. Donigian Park in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence had once been a major destination for thousands of Providence residents who, in the 1880s, visited both Donigian and Merino Parks to enjoy a swim, a picnic, and the greenery. But by 2009, the park had become a defacto dump. On that single clean-up day, volunteers pulled out 150 shopping carts and two tons of automobile tires from the river.

Even in the 1880s the city should have warned residents against swimming in the Woonasquatucket. While mills, factories, and other industries used the Woonasquatucket River as a power source to engine their factories, they also used it to remove garbage and other waste from their buildings. Trace amounts of metals like zinc and cadmium, used to set dyes on fabrics, and pesticides containing mercury and arsenic, used to prevent insect damage to wool and cotton, made their way into the waters. But the biggest source of trace metals came from the production of the machinery used in these water-powered factories. Tin, iron, copper, and pewter used to make tools and parts regularly escaped into the air, soil, and water or were buried as a simplistic means of waste disposal. Most of these facilities used some type of volatile or semi-volatile organic compound to clean machinery and tools such as trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, known carcinogens. Many of these pollutants can still be found in river sediments today, more than 100 years after they were released.

Specific attempts to reduce the emission of at least some metals began in the 1950s and 1960s, but legislative requirements for industrial pretreatment of wastewaters did not come until the 1972 Clean Water Act. As more activist environmental movements took hold in the 1980s, concern for the status of the river and its importance to the city and the surrounding neighborhoods grew. In 1998, the federal government designated the Woonasquatucket River as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers, commemorating its role in the nation’s industrial history.

Shortly after, The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council formed to improve the environmental, recreational, and economic assets of the river and its watershed. Thanks to their efforts, Donigian Park is once again a beautiful urban refuge.

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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.

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Deborah Manchester gave Wheeler Ball Field to the town for “the children of Adamsville” in honor of her nephew, Philip Manchester Wheeler, and great-nephew, Stafford Manchester Wheeler who was killed in World War II. Miss Debbie worked for many years in Manchester’s Store. She had no children of her own, but for six months of every year she and her sister Lizzie and her brother Abraham raised their orphaned niece and nephew. The field has been a gathering spot for local kids for decades, first for informal pick-up games and today for the local Little League. In the 1940s and 1950s, local organizations often held bake sales on its stone walls.

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In early 1776, the residents of the Point neighborhood in Newport awoke to see the British frigate HMS Scarborough anchored just offshore. With the threat of war suddenly looming, the town hastily threw up a semi-circular earthwork fort at the northern end of the neighborhood on the pastureland of “Quaker Tom” Robinson.

When the British occupied Newport in December of 1776, they took possession of the earthwork and began to improve it. In December 1777, British officer Frederick Mackenzie noted in his diary that one corporal and six privates manned the fort. As the British prepared for imminent attack by combined French and American forces in 1778, they thickened the battery’s walls and installed guns. The North Battery became one of three British sea batteries designed to protect Newport from attack by water. During the aborted siege of Newport, the battery stood ready to defend its position with two 24-pound and three 12-pound cannons.

Before the British abandoned Newport and Aquidneck Island in 1779, they destroyed many of the earthworks and fortifications. When the Americans returned they went to work to repair the damage. Jeremiah Greenman, a young soldier from Rhode Island, reported in his diary entry of October 29-31, 1779: "Continuing in Newport fixing the North battery on the point which the enemy had layed almost level".

The North Battery was re-named Fort Greene in 1798 to honor Rhode Island’s General Nathanael Greene, one of George Washington’s most trusted officers. The fort was abandoned a few years later, after the construction of Fort Adams at the entry of the passage to the Atlantic Ocean. During the War of 1812, Fort Greene was again repaired, this time with a semi-circular brick wall facing the water. In 1814 – 1815, the Secretary of War granted responsibility of the fort to the Newport Artillery Company. In 1891, the Secretary of War approved use of the property as a park, and the City of Newport filled in remaining trenches and levelled the surface.

By 1905, the fort and its wall were in ruins. The semicircular brick wall was nearly destroyed and covered with water. In 1926, the War Department offered the property for sale, and former Newport mayor Frederick P. Garretson bought the site and gave it to the city. During World War II, the government purchased the site back from the city of Newport and used it for ship repair and storage, but in 1964 sold it back into private hands for commercial purposes. Local citizens banded together and raised funds to preserve the property, and in 1973 Fort Greene again became a city park, this time permanently.

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