Providence’s tightly-knit community of artists and collectors created the Providence Art Club to congregate, create, and display art. It is the second oldest art club in the country after the Salmagundi Club in New York City. The westernmost of the club’s four buildings is the Fleur-de-Lys Studio (1885), built by Sydney Burleigh as workspace for himself and fellow club artists. Designated a National Historic Landmark, the studio is a masterpiece of Arts and Crafts architecture with finely rendered detail. On the street level corner is inscribed the phrase “Fair among the Fairest.” Not everybody appreciated this building; H.P. Lovecraft found it so revolting that he set his horror story “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) there.

Among the founders of the Providence Art Club was Edward Mitchell Bannister, a celebrated African American landscape painter. Bannister’s work Under The Oaks earned him first prize at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, although he had to overcome prevalent racist attitudes. Bannister discovered from a newspaper that he had won the prize, and when he arrived at the gallery to claim it, the clerk demanded to know “what it was to [him].” Bannister later wrote: “In an instant, my blood was up: the looks that passed between him and others in the room were unmistakable. I was not an artist to them, simply an inquisitive colored man; controlling myself, I said deliberately, ‘I am interested in the report that Under The Oaks has received; I painted the picture.’ An explosion could not have made a more marked impression. Without hesitation he apologized, and soon everyone in the room was bowing and scraping to me.”

Bannister’s wife, Christiana Bannister, is historically significant in her own right. An entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “hair doctress,” Bannister ran successful hair salons in Boston and downtown Providence which allowed her husband to pursue his art career.

For more (including 3 images) view the original article

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