It was 1905, and five orthodox Jewish men from Pawtucket signed incorporation papers for a synagogue to be called The Congregation Ohawe Shalom. The only problem was that they had no money for a building, so they were forced to worship in a variety of buildings in the city. By 1918 they had raised $80,000 to buy land on which to build a synagogue. The congregation had grown to more than 350 families, most living in Central Falls and Pawtucket. The land for the new synagogue, at the corner of High and Jackson Streets, was less than a block from the border with Central Falls.

However, before construction could begin, an old theater on the site was razed, and a three-story tenement house was moved to the back of the property. It became the venue for the congregation’s social events. The Ohawe Shalom Synagogue was dedicated in 1921, and for decades, it was the only one in the two cities. The two buildings became the lodestar for the immigrant Jewish families in the neighborhood, many of whom had arrived in this country from Eastern Europe and Russia, with no money, few skills, and little education.

The synagogue is still there, but the building behind it is gone. As the Jews migrated to the suburbs, membership sharply declined. The synagogue finally closed in the late 1970s, and today it houses the Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church.

A few blocks from the synagogue, along Central Street in Central Falls, were small stores--delis, grocery stores, even junk shops--owned by the Jewish immigrants in the neighborhood. Drive down this narrow street to see a few remaining shops, although they are no longer owned by Jews. Or you could have walked the half a mile to downtown Pawtucket to shop at Shartenberg’s, the largest department store, which was at the corner of Main Street and Park Place. The business was founded by Jacob Shartenberg, a German Jew, in the late 1800’s as The New Idea Store.

Soon after the turn of the century, it became Shartenberg’s, and for decades it remained one of the most popular and prosperous businesses downtown.

By the end of the 20th century, the building had been demolished and replaced by a parking garage. But for more than a century, Mr. Shartenberg and other Jews who emigrated from Germany in the mid-to-late 1800’s played an important role in the business life of downtown Pawtucket.

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The founders of the Sons of Jacob, an Orthodox synagogue, had a vision: a soaring edifice in the North End of Providence that would be a symbol of their prosperity and place in the new world.

Having fled the pogroms in Russia and Poland and unrest in Austria in the late 1800s, they were determined to prosper in Providence. Their first synagogue was begun in 1896 when a small group of men met on an upper floor of a house on Shawmut Street and Chalkstone Avenue, right in the middle of a dense Jewish population. Those founders then purchased land on the corner of Douglas and Orms Street, and in 1906 finished construction on the first floor. At a cost of $50,000, they now had a home!

In 1906 Sons of Jacob was not the only synagogue in the neighborhood. The surrounding blocks were filled with Jewish families and businesses, and there were over two dozen houses of worship chartered in the neighborhood, then called the North End and now Smith Hill. However, as the demographics changed, the smaller congregations gave their scrolls to Sons of Jacob and joined themselves to this, more substantial, group.

In 1922, the upper floors were added to accommodate the worshippers; the second floor was for the men, and the third floor for the women, as is the custom for separate seating for men and women in Orthodox congregations. The finished building, designed by Harry Marshak, a local architect, was modeled on a building erected in 1836 in Kassel, West Germany, thus giving another tie to the founders’ former lives. With a substantial building, Rabbi Isaac Blik became the first full-time spiritual leader.

Examine the first floor with its murals around the Ark. Look at the names inscribed on the windows and walls. How proud they were of their new-found success! Go upstairs and marvel at the ceiling medallions depicting the zodiac. The pictures over the front bimah, or speaker’s platform, describe Perkei Avot (teachings of the fathers). The huge chandelier, with its massive weight and brilliant light, adds gravity and grace to the structure. These incredible illustrations, as well as the Zodiac scherenschnitte (cut paper work), were done by Sam Shore, the first president of the synagogue after it moved to Douglas Avenue.

As time went on, the area changed. One factor was the construction of Routes 146 and I-95, when a huge swath of buildings was destroyed and people were forced to move. Another factor was the increasing wealth of the residents, and their desire to live in more up-scale areas. Some went to the suburbs of Cranston and Warwick, and others to the East Side of Providence.

While the people moved, the building remained. The vibrant community was no more. Even while a minyan, the gathering of 10 Jewish men over the age of 13 to have public prayer, continued to be held most mornings, the building gradually deteriorated. Without a thriving community willing to do repairs, problems with the roof and buttresses arose.

The Rhode Island Jewish Museum was founded in an attempt to save the building as an artifact of great cultural importance. It is the last surviving and active synagogue of that era in Providence. When repurposed as a Museum, its legacy will be saved for future generations.

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Jews can have religious services any place, but you need hallowed ground for a burial. Although the Newport cemetery was established in 1677, Touro Synagogue was consecrated in 1763.

Touro is the oldest Jewish cemetery in Rhode Island, established by the Sephardic Jewish immigrants originally from Spain and Portugal, who, fleeing the Inquisition, had next gone to Amsterdam and London, then to Brazil and finally Barbados. Arriving in Newport, they set up businesses dealing with shipping and commerce. Finally settled, they needed to buy land for a cemetery. While their congregation, Nephuse Israel (Scattered of Israel), did not have a building, they are considered the second oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Land was bought by Mordechai Campanal and Moses Pacheco at the corner of what is now Kay and Touro Streets.

Who is buried in the cemetery? Almost all of those early settlers had Hispanic names: Alvares, Levy, Lopez, Rivera, Rodriguez, Seixas, Touro, and, interestingly enough, Hayes (see Longfellow’s poem below). Some of them died at a young age: Jacob Lopez (1755 - 1764), while others far exceeded the life expectancy of their era: Mrs. Judith Levy (1700 - 1788). In total, there are 44 burials, with the most recent being Edwin Rosenstein (1866). As a specifically Jewish cemetery, only Jews were buried there.

A fence was put around the plot, for which Judah Touro, Abraham’s brother, donated $11,000 in 1842. However, by 1850 the cemetery was rarely being used, as the Jewish population of Newport had fallen. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the site and wrote a melancholy poem, The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, about how deserted it was;

The very names recorded here are strange,

Of foreign accent, and of different climes;

Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

And the dead nations never rise again.

In contrast to this view, Emma Lazarus, the famous Jewish poet who wrote the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, wrote a rebuttal of Longfellow, In the Jewish Cemetery at Newport, with a feeling of hope at the end:

For youth and happiness have followed age,

And green grass lieth gently over all.

Nathless the sacred shrine is holy yet,

With its lone floors where reverent feet once trod.

Take off your shoes as by the burning bush,

Before the mystery of death and God.

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Solomon Treital is believed to be the first Jew to settle in Woonsocket. This scholarly and deeply religious man arrived in 1866, and soon established himself as a clothier in the downtown Market Square.

Treital’s brother, Max, arrived two years later, and a few more Jews followed, but it wasn’t until the big migration of Europeans to American shores in the 1880s that a Jewish community began to take shape in Woonsocket.

By 1894, the city directory recorded 28 Jewish names, and by 1900, there were at least 65 Jews living among the 28,204 people in the growing textile-mill city.

According to the “History of Congregation B’nai Israel,” the first Jewish congregation organized in 1883 as Congregation of the Lovers of Peace. Most of the congregants were laborers, craftsmen, peddlers and merchants, and Solomon Treital was their first president.

Although they were devout, the Lovers of Peace were not wealthy, and they could not afford their own synagogue. They first worshipped in a loft over a store near Market Square, and then in a building on Main Street, and then went “from loft to loft, from meeting hall to meeting hall for one and half decades.”

At the start of the 20th century, the young congregation had grown enough in numbers and solvency for Treital to declare that the time had come to found their own house of worship.

The “History of Congregation B’nai Israel” reports that “through tremendous self-sacrifice on the part of each congregant,” the congregation in 1904 was able to purchase a vacant Presbyterian church at 200 Greene Street, giving Woonsocket’s Jewish community its first home.

The squat Queen Anne at the corner of Greene and Bernon streets had, among its selling points, a cavernous room suitable for a sanctuary and just enough room on its tiny lot to build a sukkah, or hut, for the holiday of Sukkot.

The Jewish community, newly renamed Congregation B’nai Israel, mustered its meager resources and set about remodeling the old church into a synagogue. And so it was fitting, when consecration ceremonies were held on July 31, 1904, that “citizens of all faiths were in attendance.”

By 1913, the congregation had grown to 85 members, and by 1914, the city had a very active YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association) and YWHA (Young Women’s Hebrew Association). By 1917, CBI was able to hire its first ordained rabbi.

The congregation continued to grow, albeit slowly, over the following decades, and the Greene Street synagogue thrived. The building wasn’t big enough to host all the events that the Jewish community held, so halls and homes were frequently used for social activities, but the temple was the focal point.

“It was a vibrant Jewish congregation,” said Irwin Shorr, who was among the last boys to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah in the building, on Oct. 21, 1961. “I think at the height of its existence, there were at least 200 Jewish families in Woonsocket.”

Shorr, who now lives in Olney, Maryland, said services were held in the sanctuary on the main floor, while the downstairs held a kitchen and rooms that were used for junior congregation, parties, holiday events and receptions.

Life for Woonsocket’s Jews “revolved around Jewish life when I was a kid,” Shorr said. “My Bar Mitzvah was the most important event of my life. Period.”

In 1962, Woonsocket’s Jewish community proudly dedicated its magnificent and architecturally important synagogue on Prospect Street. This new building had more than enough space to consolidate Jewish life under one roof, with room for everything from a Hebrew School to a Judaica museum.

As for the old Queen Anne, for the next 40 years or so, it was sometimes vacant and sometimes the home of religious groups, until a theater company took it over. And then, around 2000, Pastor Mike Kropman purchased the building for $30,000 for his Church of the Acts.

Kropman describes his church as non denominational. Which is why the Star of David carved into the wall above the bimah, the plaque honoring members of the 1904 “Committee on Building,” and the frame of a sturdy sukkah still stand as testament to Woonsocket’s first synagogue.

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Equality was the vision driving Elizabeth Carter Brooks’ (1867-1951) work as an educator, social activist, and architect. She wove these seemingly separate paths into a long life of advocacy for African Americans of New Bedford and beyond in a time when African Americans faced many obstacles and overt racism in both the South and the North in the United States.

In 1901, Elizabeth became the first African American woman hired as a public-school teacher in New Bedford. She taught at the William H. Taylor School for over 25 years. When she retired the New Bedford’s Superintendent of Schools noted that “her work was characterized by a sympathetic understanding of children...Thousands of children in New Bedford will remember Miss Carter and her kindly influence over them for many years to come.”

As a social activist, Elizabeth organized local, regional, and national groups that supported African American achievement. In 1896, nearly 200 clubs across the country combined to establish the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC). Elizabeth was elected vice president of NACWC in 1906 and served as the group’s fourth president from 1908-1912. During her administration, Elizabeth set up a scholarship, started a newspaper, and strengthened the NACWC. She was the first Association president to travel across the country meeting with local and regional organizations. African American women’s clubs like the NACWC, and the local chapter of the Martha Briggs Educational Club, are rooted in a long history of activism against racism and sexism including anti-lynching and voting rights campaigns. They promoted education and training as the means to lift up and advance women of color. The NACWC and its affiliated clubs continue the work set out in their original mission.

Elizabeth joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) soon after it was formed and later headed the NAACP’s regional and local New Bedford branches. Elizabeth used her educational expertise and activism to organize the Elizabeth Carter Brooks Jr. Girls Club. Meeting on Friday afternoons, the young women studied African American history, explored current events and advocacy, worked with senior community members, and promoted kindness and good deeds.

As a child, Elizabeth enjoyed cheering up elderly people. She noted how they “all seem to feel that I understand them.” Yet she saw a lack of loving care for the city’s elders. With the endorsement of the Women's Loyal Union, she raised enough money and support in 1897 to create New Bedford's first organized home serving elderly women of color. Eleven years later, she designed the Home for the Aged’s permanent location at 396 Middle Street. A stately establishment, the Home provided a comfortable life for the city’s aged residents until the 1990s.

Through her educational, architectural, and organizing skills, Elizabeth Carter Brooks’ activism enriched the lives of New Bedford’s students, elderly, and people of color. To honor her legacy, the New Bedford Public Schools dedicated a school building in her name. Elizabeth’s activism and accomplishments are still remembered in the city and the country. Her work lives on in the women still fighting for equality today.

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The Handy House is not the home of a famous person—Washington did not sleep here! Yet the story of the people who lived here provides an extraordinary window into a world of ordinary lives that is otherwise lost to history. As you walk through this house you will travel through 300 years of history and encounter some of the individuals who lived in its rooms. You will discover how they shaped the house and also, how they were shaped by the world around them. Perhaps what makes the Cadman-White-Handy house so interesting is that it is not simply a well-preserved old house, but rather three remarkable houses that correspond with the first three significant trends to occur in this nation’s architectural history. Each campaign—from the original early eighteenth century house, to the mid eighteenth century improvements in the Georgian manner, to the Federal style addition—speaks volumes about the people, place, and period they represent. The original structure consisted of the east third of the house that exists today. It was built in c. 1713 for Elizabeth Cadman White and William White. It had a simple floor plan, consisting of one or two large multipurpose rooms on each floor. There was no privacy at all as the members of this family of thirteen shared these spaces for daily activities such as eating, sleeping, chores, and storage. Today, the Handy House is owned by the Westport Historical Society, and is open to the public July - October. Far from being an overly restored historic house frozen in time, the Handy House provides the visitor with an experience of discovery. The public will not encounter rooms full of rare and valuable antiques, but instead experience ever-changing “windows” into the town’s past through changing exhibitions and educational programs. The Handy House has been left mostly unfurnished so that visitors can view the walls, floors, windows, doors, hinges, moldings, plaster, and other parts of its structure. Visitors who are curious to know what lies behind the shingles, beneath the plaster, under the floorboards, can view “windows” in the walls and floors that contain the keys to evolution of the house.

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The Bell School was built in 1841 as a school for District No. 14, on the west side of the river. There was evidently some jealousy aroused in the other school districts when the residents of the Head of Westport decided to build so magnificent a building to be used as a mere schoolhouse. The Bell School was one of nineteen one-room schools that once dotted the Westport landscape in the nineteenth century. However, these once-admired buildings became the focus of a decades-long debate about education and an unsustainable district system. By 1900, the Westport School Committee described the overall conditions of Westport schools as “Deplorable! Unhealthful! Worn out! Dismal! Repulsive!” Nothing illustrates the plight of children in the 1800s more dramatically than the daily hardships that they faced at school. Although each one-room school differed somewhat from the exterior, they were all equally primitive inside and presented the students with some serious challenges to their wellbeing. In the winter, children risked being sprayed with hot soot from malfunctioning woodstoves. They risked contracting life-threatening diseases through the prevalent use of the common drinking cup and appallingly unkempt outhouses. They faced serious bullying and class disruption as anywhere from fifteen to fifty pupils ranging in age from five to twenty years crowded into a single room. Many children were sentenced to a life of impaired eyesight from the lack of adequate lighting in the schools. It is astounding that within these difficult conditions, children managed to read the literary classics, learn complex bookkeeping skills, take in the practical arts (music, drawing, agriculture), and learn how to plant gardens. Despite the poor conditions inside the buildings, the one-room schoolhouse has left a lasting architectural legacy, such as the Greek Revival Bell School and the temple-like Wolf Pit School. Many of the buildings that were once one-room schools still survive, but have been significantly altered. The struggle to provide an effective public education system is ongoing and many of the concerns voiced in the nineteenth century are still relevant today. In 1972, the Westport Library Association gave the Bell School to the Westport Historical Society, and so the building continues to dispense knowledge—even if in a different manner.

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Have you ever imagined yourself juggling six children’s needs, housework, and professional career? It may sound like a bit of a challenge; yet, these two women, Sarah (“Sally”) Harkness, a mother of seven, and Jean B. Fletcher, a mother of six, were able to manage their professional lives while fulfilling their duties as mothers and wives. They both were graduates of Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture for Women, originally affiliated with Harvard University and Smith College after 1942. In 1945, the two talented women teamed up with six other architect friends and founded The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a leading architecture firm based in Boston, MA.

Thanks to the “permissive attitude of the office,” Sally and Jean did not have to work full-time. Instead, they worked in shifts--one in the morning and the other in the afternoon--and shared the same babysitter. Yet, their professional and domestic lives inevitably overlapped. Sally said she “learn(ed) [an] awful lot of things from domestic life” especially when she thought about her kids and envisioned an environment surrounding them, a school. The application of their real-life experience to architectural practice must have contributed to TAC’s projects for numerous school buildings including Classical and Central High Schools.

Classical and Central Education Center was the first project to which TAC applied the design of “a really urban school.” In 1963, TAC in collaboration with the local Providence architectural firm Harkness & Geddes won the first prize for the new design. However, it was not until 1970 that the buildings took the shape as we see today. Apart from the main building of Central School, everything that exists today was developed in the 1950s under “The Master Plan for Public School Sites.” The original Classical School building was proudly built in a mixed Italianate and Colonial style in 1878 as the first public high school at the City of Providence. It was a three-storied, massive structure with a basement with a high ceiling. TAC made a radical change to the design of the original masonry Italianate style by introducing raw, grey, concrete Brutalism. In addition, they changed the school's interiors by introducing novel concepts like multifunctional classrooms with movable walls which might have reflected the philosophy of TAC and experience of Sally and Jean's domestic lives.

This drastic alteration is probably the main reason why Classical High School is still subject to frequent negative comments about its appearance. Even the well-known architectural historian William McKenzie Woodward made harsh comments on the buildings in his book PPS/AIAri Guide to Providence Architecture: “The Modernist vision here, intended to challenge, now merely defeats. It’s no wonder Modernism has gotten such a bad reputation in Rhode Island.” Though not everyone agreed with its aesthetic, the majority of the public praised the working ethos and concept. John Ware Lincoln, chairman of the Division of Design at RISD recognized the new building as “exemplary of the new concept of the architect as an environmental planner, working with social and civic sciences, demography, transportation engineering, building technologies, and, in this case, education philosophy.” Both school buildings are celebrated as the first of their kind in Providence but they should also be understood as a rare vestige of the work of pioneering female architects.

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If you walk into the woods of East Greenwich, you would hear the shouts and laughter of children from the forest. Where is the sound coming from? A few more steps later, you would encounter not Hansel and Gretel's House, but surprisingly, a raw-looking concrete, modern building which would not be out of place in an urban setting. Its “straight-forward geometry, executed in warm, red-brown brick framed by textured ‘form board’ concrete” projects a peculiar impression of veiled modernism in nature.

The building is East Greenwich High School. The school was originally Kent Academy but later became East Greenwich Academy--a private Methodist boarding school. The building was transformed into a public school in 1942-1943 when its stockholders handed it over to the town of East Greenwich because of plummeting enrollment in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II. It was moved to the current location in 1967 from 100 Cedar Avenue in the course of a major transformation by The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a leading architecture firm at the time based in Boston, MA. Most if not all of the original buildings at the site were demolished in the 1960s for the construction of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.

TAC, as its name indicates, consisted of eight talented architects including Walter Gropius--a founder of the famous Bauhaus school of architecture in Germany. In addition to having Gropius on staff, the firm had the unique privilege of having two women architects as founding members, Sarah (“Sally”) P. Harkness and Jean B. Fletcher. Neither female architects nor architectural collaboratives are unusual these days. However, TAC's team-based approach was distinctively progressive considering the fact that individualism was the prevailing ideology in the profession at the time. Its inclusion of women and the fact that they were part of the leadership attest to the firm's forward-looking nature.

Despite East Greenwich High school's manufactured materials such as concrete and brick, the building “complements the landscape’s carefully preserved random quality” and successfully achieved an ideal integration of natural and manmade form. After a series of renovations in 1967, 2004, 2010, and 2012, the building is finally filled with the energy and dynamism of children again.

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In 1893, the talented and ambitious young Frances Evelyn Henley, refused to make a career in teaching, as suggested by her parents. Instead she chose to enroll at the Rhode Island School of Design, not in the decorative art department as one might have expected of a woman but in architecture. She did not know what kind of life this profession entailed. All she knew was that she enjoyed mathematics, geometry, philosophy and the art of drawing.

Being a pioneer of her gender in the field of architecture, Henley encountered the general societal preconceptions that architecture was a field of practice more suitable for a man and that a woman working with men “would disrupt their organization.” With the help of Eliza G. Metcalf Radeke, the director of RISD at that time, she was employed as a draftsman by Howard Hilton (1867-1907), a member of the American Institute of Architects. After a couple of years working for Hilton, Henley had to abandon her position due to health problems. When recovered, she embarked on a free-lance style activity in 1904.

Most of Henley’s professional life was bound to Wilcox Building. Other prominent architects of Providence linked with Henley’s career conducted their architectural businesses in this building. Franklin J. Sawtelle (1846-1911) had his office in room # 34 for many years. Henley moved her business there in 1910, right next to Sawtelle’s office, in room # 33. Following Sawtelle’s unexpected death, she took over the Wheeler School project that she co-authored. Two years later she began to work with Arthur L. Almy, in Grosvenor building, found on the same street. Henley (and Almy) moved back into Wilcox Building in 1915. After Almy’s death in 1924, she inherited his business with the condition that she would remain unmarried. Henley continued to work in her office up until 1936, when she decided to move to Cranston, with her partner, Nellie Evelyn Livermore. Livermore worked for Henley as a stenographer/assistant and they lived together up until 1952 when they decided to split due to health problems.

Built in 1875 by Edwin O. Howland in Victorian Gothic style, the construction served as an office building. It was one of the city’s most expensive commercial buildings erected at the end of the 19th century using polychromatic stones at the upper floors and superb cast iron store fronts. The interior of the building suffered great changes after a fire in 1975, but the exterior is preserved as much as in the original condition. It is enough memory preserved in this building to tell the story of the first female architect in Providence, about her ambition and her achievements in being fully recognized professionally by the society.

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The house was named for Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), the French General who fought alongside George Washington in several critical endeavors—including the siege of Yorktown and the Battle of the Chesapeake—in the American Revolutionary War.

De Vimeur landed in Newport, Rhode Island in 1780, and had under his command several thousand French troops with whom he was to assist the Continental Army, under General George Washington. The French chateau that now stands at 84 Prospect Street was dubbed the Rochambeau House in honor of de Vimeur’s outstanding achievements during the war, and it is rumoured that at times, he was in command of more men than Washington, himself. The Comte, however, never actually resided in the house, as it was not constructed until 1929, more than a century after his death.

Nowhere inside the house is there any mention of the Comte's legacy, though there is a marble plaque in the building’s main foyer commemorating the life of another remarkable individual: Mary Elizabeth Evans Sharpe, of Providence, Rhode Island. Sharpe was the wife of a Providence-based industrialist, Henry Dexter Sharpe Sr., who later became the twelfth Chancellor of Brown University. The Sharpes commissioned the Boston-based architectural firm of Parker, Thomas, and Rice to design their dream home, and after its completion in 1929, Mary Sharpe lived there until her death in 1985 (Mr. Sharpe having passed away in 1954). After her passing, her only son, Henry D. Sharpe Jr., donated the house to Brown University in his mother’s honor, knowing how she and his father had for so many years worked with and loved the University community, and how she wanted to see her home remain in the care of the family's alma mater.

Mrs. Sharpe was an avid gardener and self-taught landscape architect, and over the decades during which she lived at 84 Prospect St., ensured that the house was always surrounded by beautifully-tended gardens and greenery; in the spirit of her love for garden and landscape design, the University still maintains the gardens on the grounds, today. Just outside the front door, on each side of the entrance to her home, stand two beautiful examples of Mrs. Sharpe's favorite tree: the Japanese cherry blossom, whose delicate boughs still embrace visitors and welcome her guests into the house today.

The house was given the name "Rochambeau" as a commemoration of the Comte's stay in Providence during the Revolutionary War, where he and his troops were actually sheltered at Brown (then known as The College in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations) before a march through Connecticut to connect with General Washington. De Vimeur remained in the newly-born United States for only a few years after the war, and upon his return to France, he became a key supporter of the French Revolution. That it, while his stay here in our humble Rhode Island was a brief one, his legacies have left an indelible mark upon our community and our history.

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What should an architect’s new house look like in a historic neighborhood? This is the question that Margaret B. Kelly and J. Peter Geddes had to address when designing 29 Manning Street in the 1930s. The small, two-story brick house was modern in many ways, but it was also cleverly designed to fit in with its much older architectural neighbors. Many of the historic homes in Providence are noted for their elaborately carved architectural details, but Geddes & Kelly did not include moldings around the windows and doors in order to create a simplified, more modern facade. The windows on the Manning Street front are arranged in a traditional, symmetrical way, but the windows themselves are casement windows (they swing out), unlike the windows of most of the neighborhood’s earlier homes. The interior had innovative features that made use of the limited space, like a custom-designed kitchen table that could unfold to add workspace and built-in benches with storage. Service areas like the kitchen were in the front of the house, and the main living areas were in the rear, where a wall of large windows and a door connected the living room to a patio and walled back yard.

The house is significant not only as an early example of domestic modernism in Providence, but also for being designed by Margaret B. Kelly (1907–1995), one of the few women architects working in Rhode Island in the first half of the twentieth century. Kelly’s family moved to Providence when she was a teenager and she attended the Wheeler School and Vassar College before receiving her degree in architecture from MIT in 1933. This Manning Street house by Geddes & Kelly was built in 1939 and was featured in the March 1941 issue of Architectural Forum, an important architectural publication. Margaret Kelly married Peter Geddes in 1942 and lived in the house from then until her death in 1995. Margaret Geddes was very active in the community and her Manning Street home served as a meeting place for the League of Women Voters of Providence and the Rhode Island Vassar Alumnae Association.

Margaret Geddes gave the house to Brown University and it served as the headquarters of the Urban Studies Program for over 20 years. The university chose to demolish this structure to make way for a new Engineering Research Center designed by the award-winning architecture firm KieranTimberlake and completed in October 2017. Before the house was demolished, Dietrich Neumann, director of the Urban Studies Program, and Stefano Bloch, a postdoctoral fellow, organized a public art “Paint Out” of the facade with local artist Gregory Pennisten (see video). Another house designed by Geddes & Kelly, also built in 1939, survives nearby at 47 Manning Street. Though much larger, this private residence shares many features with the demolished building like a minimally-adorned brick facade, low hip roof, casement windows, and an attached garage.

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The structure, six stories of Second Empire architecture, was the largest private building in the area when it was built at 55 Exchange Place in 1872, which had by 1893 had changed to 123 Westminster. (The Superman Building, which currently occupies the plot of land, is officially addressed as 111 Westminster.)

In 1911, sister dressmakers Anna and Laura Tirocchi moved their new business into room 438. Their only competition in the building was Henry R. Domenico, Ladies’ Tailor and Furrier, who worked out of room 448. An Edwardian society lady could promenade through the building and come out with a full new wardrobe and makeover, as the Butler Exchange also hosted a milliner, a purse manufacturer, a manicurist, a masseuse, two hairdressers, and seven shoemakers. She could even leave her children with one of its two dozen music teachers and take an hour or two at the Providence Ladies’ Gymnasium, founded and popularized by author Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1881. The building was also the first home of the Providence Public Library before it moved in 1900.

The Tirocchi’s design business hosted by the Butler Exchange fit in well with their neighbors; dressmaking businesses flourished in the Arcade, as well as out of ladies’ apartments in the Lederer and Conrad buildings several blocks away. (The Conrad Building, at 139 Mathewson, is now the Hotel Providence.) These small shopfronts and office spaces enabled women to publicly make their own money within the profession, when the most common style of business in sewing was piecework within the home. Over 800 women were listed as dressmakers in the 1911 city directory, but only about a dozen of them had separate shops or workplaces of their own. The downtown area around Westminster street facilitated this independence and placed their businesses in the public sphere, where new costumers could more easily find them, instead of having to rely on neighborhood word-of-mouth.

The Butler Exchange’s closest neighbor was Providence’s first rail station, and its proximity to the station along with its prime position in the east side of the downtown area made it a heavily trafficked location. It would likely still be in place today were it not for a devastating 1925 fire, which destroyed most of the building.

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The urban landscape of southern New England displays an iconic form of domestic architecture seldom found elsewhere: stacked three-unit apartment house commonly called a “triple decker.” Thousands of such structures were built between 1880 and 1930, principally to house an ever-growing and largely immigrant working population. Although the social and economic forces that created the style have long since vanished, a surprising number of triple deckers have survived, thanks due to their basic livability and potential for adaptive re-use.   Although constructed by a myriad of small-time designer-builders, most triple-deckers share a common set of design characteristics, determined largely by maximizing practicality while minimizing less-desirable aspects of urban tenements. Three features in particular are predominate. First, generally there is one apartment per floor, with adequate roominess (1000-1200 square feet), numerous windows on all sides, and generous porches on the front and often on the rear. Second, the room arrangement is typical of middle-class single-family homes,  typically including a parlor, dining area, kitchen, bath and two bedrooms. Third, architectural integrity provided visual interest: while not professionally designed, most copied popular Queen Anne Style features such as strong vertical lines (stacked columned porches and window bays), visual interest (contrasting siding textures and colors), and decorative details such as art-glass windows. Triple deckers were marketed to a specific type of buyer: successful new home-owner. Within the building, one unit could be the homeowner’s residence, while the other units either provided rental income or could house members of an extended family. Thus, this sort of home ownership not only provided a taste of middle-class respectability, but also offered an entry to middle-class economic security. However, society at large did not share this vision in the long run, principally due to anti-immigrant bias.  Passage of strict building codes coupled with immigration restriction brought an end to new construction by the later 1920s. Oakland Avenue, the western edge of the Smith Hill neighborhood, features a fine display of surviving triple-deckers, a streetscape little changed for nearly a century. Most of these were built during the 1920s, when clearly this was a middle-class neighborhood.  Although urban decay previously left its mark, many of the structures have been rehabilitated, finding use as housing for students at nearby Providence College.  In most cases, original details have been lost, but the overall impression is intact.  Well-kept examples abound, an image of what much of Providence once was.

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The Smith Hill Library was built in 1932 as part of a Providence Public Library campaign beginning in the mid-1920s to create branch libraries throughout the city. Designer Albert Harkness was a renowned Providence architect of the time who also did the Providence Music Mansion (88 Meeting Street) and the East Side Friends’ Meeting House (99 Morris Avenue), all in the Colonial Revival style.

This building has typical hallmarks of its period: Harkness designed this building to follow to the floor plan specified at the time for all Providence library branches, and the Colonial Revival style of this one-and-a-half-storied building is typical of 1930s institutional design. But the library has many exterior decorative elements that make it interesting: the corner bricks form Colonial-style quoins; mortared stone was chosen rather than concrete for the foundation; and the pattern of the brickwork is a complex and striking version of “monk bond.” Upon entering the building, the projecting central entrance pavilion lends grandeur while a modern curved double stairway, with elegant aluminum rails leads visitors to the main library level with shelves, window seats, and paneling of mahogany woodwork.

In 2008, financial hardship forced the Providence Public Library to announce intended closures for many branch libraries. In response, library patrons citywide came together to form a new organization, the Providence Community Library (PCL), to support the branch libraries. On July 1, 2009, all nine branch libraries became property of the City of Providence and leased to the PCL.

The Smith Hill Library has its long history of community outreach, responding to the needs of its users. It held well-attended citizenship classes in the late 1920s, even before moving to its current location. Today, a century later, it continues this tradition: a typical day’s schedule includes children’s drawing and art classes, financial and business workshops, homework help with local college students, reading groups, and GED courses. The Smith Hill Library describes itself as a “safe and lively meeting place and learning center for people of all ages.”

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Popularly known as the “Superman Building,” because of its resemblance to the iconic Daily Planet building in the television series, the Industrial Trust Building remains the tallest in Providence at 428 feet. Completed in 1927, it is a reminder of downtown’s interwar building boom. The financial industry took off in Providence and several banks and architectural gems were born during this period; though, the Industrial Trust Building is the most unique in the city’s skyline. At the time of its completion, it was the third tallest building in all of New England. The Industrial Trust Building was advertised as, “A Business Building for Building Business.”

The Art Deco exterior features frieze work depicting labor and culture and Gorham bronze doors guard both the Kennedy Plaza and Westminster Street entrances. A notable design element is the stepped massing, which derived from a New York City law that required tall buildings to be set back on themselves to allow light to pass to sidewalks below. This element is a prominent feature in other Art Deco skyscrapers like the Chrysler Building and The Empire State Building. The Industrial Trust Building predates both! When constructed, the interior was a site of grandeur and prosperity; the lobby maintained extravagant fresh flower arrangements daily. Throughout its history, the Industrial Trust Building was home to a series of financial institutions, most recently Bank of America. Today it serves as a reminder for the potential of growth in the energized downtown.

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A symbol of the long history of business downtown, the Custom House was completed in 1857. Originally built as the first Providence Federal Building, the Custom House was home to the Federal District Court, the Post Office, and U.S. Customs. This Italianate style building is also an entryway to the commercial district of downtown. Walk down Custom Street to Weybosset Street and you will find the heart of the financial neighborhood that fostered 20th-century Providence’s prosperity. Weybosset Street and Westminster Street are home to the architectural remnants of this booming art deco era. Commercial buildings like the Hospital Trust at 15 Westminster Street, embodied the architectural flair of the early 20th century. It was home to the Hospital Trust, the first Trust Company in New England. Over the years it remained a fixture of the banking industry downtown but eventually, was donated to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Today it serves as RISD’s Fleet Library.

Walk to the intersection of Westminster and Weybosset Street and look up at the landmark Turks Head Building. Built in 1913, the building has continuously housed insurance agencies, advertising firms, professional offices and banks, making it a constant in the ever-changing downtown. The Turks Head was originally a wooden figurehead from the prow of a ship, used as a sign for Jacob Whitman’s 18th century shop. The original version is said to have washed away in the Great Gale of 1815. A century later, a new building included the current high relief sculpture of a Turk’s head in the frieze above the third story. The Turk’s Head is just one example of downtown’s enduring pride in its past.

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Imagine people hustling and bustling in search for the finest goods this 19th-century neighborhood had to offer. Now picture the Parthenon atop the Acropolis in Greece. Together the two images create the landmark “temple of trade” known as The Providence Arcade, the nation’s oldest existing indoor shopping mall. It’s been a hallmark of business in downtown Providence since 1828.

Until the early 19th century, Providence’s commercial district lay primarily on the East Side. After a fire in 1801 destroyed nearly forty buildings along South Water Street, many businesses moved to the west side of the river; a new commercial center of Providence was born. Initially business was slow in the newly opened Arcade, but when a fashionable hat shop opened nearby, people began to frequent the shops between Westminster and Weybosset Streets. Designed by Russell Warren and James Bucklin, the architecture is notable due to two slightly different facades. Travel to the Weybosset side, and you’ll find Warren’s design: six granite Ionic columns rooted underneath a parapet. Venture to the Westminster side, and you’ll find six ionic columns connected to a pediment, designed by Bucklin.

A beacon of business into the 20th century, the Arcade closed for repairs and reopened in 2013 with modern updates and additions, including some of the nation’s first microlofts located on the upper levels. Today the skylight-lit interior is home to several shops and restaurants that make the Arcade a shopping destination for downtown Providence.

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A fixture of the capital city, the Providence Public Library (PPL) has continuously served the downtown community for over a century. Founded in 1875, the PPL opened at its present Washington Street location in 1900. It added the Empire Street expansion in 1954. While its original Italian Renaissance-inspired design evokes comparisons to Boston’s Public Library, visitors congratulated the architects for valuing function over form. The first librarian, William Foster, stressed the Library’s important community service role by establishing community “contacts” to best serve the city. A revolutionary concept at the time, the result has been a tradition still in practice as the PPL continues to foster partnerships (or “contacts”) with a myriad of community groups on innovative initiatives.

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If the walls of University Hall could talk, they might tell you about the time they met George Washington (although don’t believe them if they tell you he slept here). The first building constructed on Brown’s campus, University Hall, has played host to wounded soldiers during the Revolutionary War as well as our nation’s first president, during his visit to Rhode Island in 1790. The Providence Gazette reported that despite Washington’s habit of not going out in the evening, he made his way from his lodging at the Golden Ball Inn to University Hall to accept the invitation of Brown University undergraduates. In a patriotic display, students outfitted each of the Hall’s windows with candles aglow.

Renowned for “The Brown Curriculum,” an innovative approach to undergraduate education instituted in 1970, Brown University’s philosophy states that students, who are free to design their own curriculum, are “the architects of their own course of study.” Founded in 1764 by Baptists as the College of Rhode Island, the school moved to Providence in 1770. The institution changed its name to “Brown University” in 1804 after a generous donation by Nicholas Brown, prominent Providence businessman and alumnus of the school.

With over 250 years of history under its belt, Brown University understandably boasts many styles of architecture. One of the most noticeable structures on campus is the Carrie Tower (1904). Paul Bajnotti commissioned the tower to honor the memory of his wife, Caroline Mathilde Brown, grandaughter of Nicholas Brown, Brown University’s namesake.

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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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As the population of the East Side grew in the 18th century, residences sprang up quickly along Benefit Street. Intended for “the common benefit of all,” Benefit Street encouraged the construction of homes higher on the ridge of modern-day College Hill while still remaining within existing property limits. This was possible because of the very narrow, but long, plots that Roger Williams designated for the new community of Providence in 1636. These plots began at the edge of the Great Salt River and Cove, and extended up the hill. Colonists typically used the higher land to plant fruit orchards and graze livestock. Unlike many other New England towns, the Providence settlement faced the waterway, rather than surrounding a meeting house. The emphasis on religious liberty explains this choice: since colonial authorities in Rhode Island could not force men and women to worship, the Church did not serve as the center of the community, literally or figuratively.

This unique orientation of the settlement did not mean, however, that Providence townspeople did not worship. Most did so, and they first used private homes before a meeting house was constructed to better serve the religious needs of the community. Roger Williams founded the first Baptist congregation in the U.S. in 1638. In 1775, while Providence enjoyed economic success, the Baptists made a new and bold move in erecting this magnificent building, the First Baptist Church. The largest surviving wooden structure from Colonial America, it combines the simple hall of a traditional New England meeting house with the most fashionable English architectural features, such as the steeple, modeled after a version of the one at St. Martin in the Fields (1724), on Trafalgar Square in London, by architect James Gibbs. Brown University, founded as a Baptist college, has held its annual commencement in the church every year since 1776.

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In 1888, William Kissam Vanderbilt gave his wife Alva Marble House as a 39th birthday gift. The railroad magnate spared no expense on his wife’s summer home, which used 500,000 cubic feet of various marbles, gathered from across the globe, and is estimated to have cost $11 million at the time of construction. Francophile Alva Vanderbilt appreciated the work of architect Richard Morris Hunt, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Hunt built Marble House in the shape of a perfect cube, drawing inspiration from King Louis XV’s Petit Trianon château in on the grounds of Versailles.  Marble House was featured in the 2008 film 27 Dresses, as the location of a decadent wedding. The film centers on Jane, played by Katherine Heigl, who wrestles with her decision to coordinate a wedding between her sister and a man who Jane secretly loves. Although the film presents Marble House in a flattering light, Alva Vanderbilt might have found irony in her home being used as the backdrop for a film that revolves around themes of marriage and women’s dependence on men.  Alva and William Vanderbilt shocked high society in March 1895 when they announced their divorce. In addition to a $10 million dollar settlement, Alva walked away from the divorce with Marble House and several estates. Alva was particularly enamored by Marble House, and chose to construct an elaborate Chinese teahouse behind the residence, inviting workers from China to complete the project.

Alva Vanderbilt became involved in the Suffrage movement, and in 1914 a meeting of woman activists inaugurated the teahouse. Marble House became a haven for women’s rights activists, and when Alva died in 1933, her funeral was conducted entirely by women. Today, the Preservation Society of Newport maintains Marble House. The property’s ornate appearance makes it an ideal location for grand events, and for movies that feature them.

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This extravagantly embellished house is still called the Wedding Cake House in spite of its current desperate search for rehabilitation. The first owner John Kendrick was an inventor whose American Supply Company dominated the global market in loom and reed harnesses, a crucial element of textile mill power looms. The c. 1867 mansion attributed to Broadway architect Perez Mason reflects the euphoric froth of new money. For a while owned by railway and button-fastener tycoon George Prentice, in 1915, the house was purchased by Italian immigrant dressmaker Anna Tirocchi. In the elegant salons of the Wedding Cake House, Anna and her sister Laura fitted Providence’s elite in their couture creations that echoed Paris fashions. At Anna’s death in 1947, everything was wrapped in tissue paper and put away. Some forty years later, RISD Museum curators were stunned as if entering a fashion time capsule when Laura’s son invited them into the house to catalog and preserve the collection.

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Completed in 1892 to serve the wealthy Episcopalians of Broadway, and home for ten years to the African-American Church of the Savior, this Alpheus C. Morse-designed Romanesque Revival church has been Sts. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church since 1940. Armenians found refuge in the United States after being driven from their homeland by the Ottoman Turkish brutal pogroms in the 1890s and Armenian Genocide of 1915. The immigrant arrivals called their new home in Providence the “Citadel” (mitchnapert) for the community’s strength and activism. The congregation donated their labor to build new altars, a new baptismal font, new pews, and to replace floors. The rich, timber-trussed hammerbeam ceiling over the nave resembles a protective ark. The commitment to faith and service remains as strong today as when they first arrived, representative of their history as the first nation to accept Christianity as its national religion in 301AD. This community gives aid and support to those in need at home, as well as to Armenians across the globe facing conflict and persecution.

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This extravagant pile was designed in two phases (1875 and 1888) by renowned Providence architects Stone, Carpenter & Willson, but tradition states that the emphatic personality of its owner determined the eclectic mix of shapes and styles. Jerothmul B. Barnaby was a king of Providence retail with a massive department store downtown. He was known to race his four-in-hand recklessly down Broadway and left a tightly entailed estate to his daughters that was contested by his wife Josephine Barnaby at his death in 1889. Josephine was thought to be easily manipulated, and indeed she fell under the spell of her physician Dr. Thomas Thatcher Graves. While on a visit to Denver in 1891, she received a gift of poisoned whiskey by mail and quickly died. Graves’ trial was a national sensation. He was convicted of America's first murder-by-mail and committed suicide in prison in 1893 while awaiting an appeal. The house today is undergoing a painstaking renovation to recapture its original splendor. Don't forget to peek down Sutton Street to see the fabulous Moorish Revival carriage house where the wedding reception for Barnaby’s daughter Mabel was held. The carriage lift, still functional, was used to lower the banquet down to the elite crowd.

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Built in 1905, the Spite Tower’s history is clouded by legend. Dr. John Hathaway and his second wife, Claudia Church, built this unique structure for reasons that have been debated for decades.

Late in the eighteenth century, the Church brothers—Samuel, Ebenezer, and Nathaniel—came to Adamsville to open a store and saltworks. The brothers became successful pillars of the community, and their children carried on the Church name.

In 1905, Thaddeus Church bequeathed Samuel’s eighteenth century home to his great-niece, Claudia, and her husband, Dr. Hathaway. This new edition of an old Adamsville family, made comfortable though personal and inherited success, moved into the Church house and built what is now called the Spite Tower.

In perhaps the most common version of the story, John Hathaway and his good friend Abraham Manchester became embroiled in an unknown dispute. Abraham, as a responsible proprietor, chose to sleep in his store as he had since youth. His sisters, Deborah and Lizzie, placed in a window of their home a white cloth or napkin whose fluttering signaled to Abraham that meals were ready. Legend says that Hathaway built the tower in the line of sight between the Manchester store and home to “spite” his former friend and spoil his dinner.

In another version of the story, Dr. Hathaway and Abraham Manchester fought over money. In his will, Thaddeus Church gave $25,000 to Deborah Manchester, which led to rumors of unrequited love between Thaddeus and Deborah. However, Dr. Hathaway had little reason to feel that his wife was slighted by Thaddeus, since she received the family home.

Perhaps the most we can say of these legends is that they make good stories.

The final version of the story of the Spite Tower is the simplest and most likely: John Hathaway chose this location for his tower because that’s where the well was. This is supported by the building itself, which is in fact a water tower. It has three stories, from top to bottom: the well house, a water tank, and living quarters for the Hathaways’ chauffeur.

As a recent owner of the Spite Tower explained, it was “nothing more than a problem of hydraulics. The well was deep and they had to make the tower tall in order to get the water out.”

Some people might be disappointed to learn that the tower was not built for love, money, or spite. But this elaborate well tower retains its name, in spite of history.

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Before discount department stores became popular, New Bedford had Mars Bargainland. In the 1960s and 70s, the enormous high-ceilinged space contained a treasure trove of cut-price clothes, toys, and household items. A bit further inside the massive building shoppers found Food Mart, where workers boxed their groceries and slid them down rollers to be collected outside at street level. For many New Bedford residents, the memory of Mars Bargainland is still vivid, but few people remember this building’s original purpose. Designed by architects Charles Makepeace of Providence and Benjamin Smith of New Bedford and built between 1896 and 1917, Whitman Mills contained the highest density of looms in the region. The endless floors were relieved by tall windows, and spire-like chimney stacks exhausted plumes of smoke from the coal-fired boilers that powered the mills’ steam engines. The complex included an engine house, pipe house, pump house, machine shed, and office building, visually unified by Romanesque Revival details. Behind the mills loading docks extended into the Acushnet River, and across Riverside Avenue stood a large weave shed. The 1917 issue of the Official American Textile Directory gave a sense of the output of the Whitman Mills at their peak. $2 million of cloth were produced per year. Adjusted for inflation, this would equal more than $48 million in 2016. Whitman’s primary products included “Plain and Fancy Cotton and Silk Goods and Cotton Yarns,” produced on 138,128 ring spindles, 36,960 mule spindles, and 4,932 looms powered by steam and electric power. William Whitman, who built the mill, was a leader in New England’s textile industry for more than four decades. Whitman headed one of the world’s largest cotton textile manufacturing organizations and served as president of the Association of Wool Manufacturers. He also developed tariff policy related to the textile industry and advised Congress on trade matters. Despite Whitman’s business expertise, the mills he developed were not immune to economic pressures, and this one was no exception. Although the mill closed in 1932, the complex housed a variety of businesses including a cannery, in addition to Mars Bargainland, but they filled a small fraction of the space and employed a total of only about 500 people, less than a third of the Whitman Mills’ peak of 1,750 employees. Today, where once thousands of machines created continuous deafening noise, more than one-hundred elderly residents live in cozy studios and apartments. Named Whaler Place with unintentional irony, the development references the city’s more illustrious past rather than the textile industry that sustained the city long after the end of whaling. The floors once covered with a layer of cotton fiber now gleam with refinished wood and plush carpeting. The 18-foot ceilings are perhaps the only reminder of the buildings’ former use.

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As patrons poured into the Orpheum Theater on opening night, April 15, 1912, the celebration may have been muted by news of the sinking of the Titanic early that morning. However, these were good times for New Bedford. The city’s economy thrived on its foundation of textile production and immigrant labor, and a performance by the Five Musical Durands was soon to inaugurate a spectacular new theater in a prime location between shops and restaurants on busy Water Street in the South End.

Although known today as the Orpheum Theater, the French Sharpshooter’s Club of New Bedford—Le Club des Francs-Tireurs—constructed this building to serve as its headquarters. Formed by French-Canadian immigrants, the Sharpshooters Club was a social and paternal organization focused on competitive shooting, military-style drill teams, and marching bands.  The club hired Fall River architect and French-Canadian immigrant Louis Destremps to design the building. Destremps was familiar with the city, having worked on Saint Anthony of Padua Church (1912) in the North End and the New Bedford Car Barn (1910). Sharpshooters Hall featured a shooting range, grand ballroom, gymnasium, retail storefront at street level, and a 1,500-seat Vaudeville theater.  Destremps created a masterpiece of French Renaissance design. Enormous carved heads, representing the Greek Muses of arts and sciences, adorned the façade, along with complex bas relief detail cast in porcelain over a terra cotta base, the same technique that Destremps later used on the Star Store (1916) on Union Street in New Bedford. Above the four lower muses were ornate copper torches, which have since disappeared. Construction began in 1910 and was completed in 1912 at a cost of $110,000, about $2.7 million in 2016. The Sharpshooters didn’t operate the theater in their building, but leased it to the Orpheum chain, a booking agency that provided acts to theaters around the country. Sharpshooters Hall is the second oldest Orpheum Theater, after the Palace Theater in Los Angeles. Orpheum acts included Harry Houdini, actress Lily Langtry, and the Marx Brothers, along with jugglers, dancers, and other Vaudeville-style entertainers. With the advent of motion pictures, Sharpshooters Hall installed a projection system and treated its patrons to films like King Kong and Citizen Kane. During the Second World War, the shooting range was used to train soldiers, while the theater kept patrons distracted and informed with movies, short cartoons, and news reels. The theater itself was part of the show. The vast auditorium contained 1,500 seats and a wrap-around balcony. It was decorated with complex moldings, painted scenes on the ceiling, and intricate murals on the walls. The theater continued to operate sporadically throughout the 1950s, but closed in 1962 when the French Sharpshooter’s Club sold the entire building. A tobacco company used the building as a warehouse, and a market operated out of the back for a number of years. The theater was abandoned to face the ravages of time and neglect. Today, Sharpshooters Hall and the Orpheum are privately owned, and the building remains in disrepair. 

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Listen closely and you might hear the footsteps of hundreds of mill workers who lived in tenements on the block bounded by Rivet, Potomska, Second, and First Streets. Only two remain, but there once existed a complex of ten six-tenement buildings erected by the Potomska Mills for its workers.

Built in 1871 on South Water Street, Potomska Mills produced shades, umbrellas, jeans, and print cloth, rather than the sheets and shirts produced at Wamsutta. Potomska was the first textile manufactory established after the Wamsutta Mills more than twenty years earlier, but the two companies were not in competition. They produced different goods and shared the same president. Potomska also shared Wamsutta’s need to attract workers by providing suitable rental housing.  Potomska worker housing took cues from the design of Wamsutta tenements on Hazard, State, and Austin Streets. Potomska constructed six “four-tenements” with four-room apartments stacked on two sides of the building and additional sleeping rooms on a smaller third floor. The buildings featured flanking entries surmounted by doorway hoods and modest Italianate-style brackets at the rooflines. As Potomska Mills expanded, its owners added four additional four-tenements to the original six, forming a quadrangle surrounding an unpaved laundry yard. Diagonally adjacent to the four-tenements, Potomska constructed six three-deckers, with single apartments on each floor and perhaps stacked front porches, which later defined this building form. Built in 1871, these may have been the first corporate-owned three-deckers in New Bedford. Potomska likely reserved them for the families of skilled workers, while unskilled workers lived in the ten four-tenements across the street, and in an additional sixteen Potomska four-tenements scattered throughout the area.  Despite this tenement building-boom, by the 1890s the housing demand from the influx of immigrant mill workers outstripped available supply, and families often took in boarders to earn extra income. Potomska failed to adequately maintain the buildings, and in 1894, the New Bedford Daily Mercury referred to the “squalor” of the Potomska tenements. In 1898, the New York Evening Journal claimed they were "more filthy than any New York tenement." The Potomska Mills were demolished in 1935, and the area they occupied between Potomska and Blackmer Streets is now largely vacant. The three-deckers built by Potomska for their skilled workers were moved in 1900 to make way for a new public school to serve the children of this largely immigrant neighborhood. The whereabouts of these buildings is unknown. Out of the group of ten four-tenements, only two survive, in differing states of repair. Once surrounded by a dense residential neighborhood, they are now accompanied only by a behavioral health center, parking lots, and a silent vestige of their former courtyard. 

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