The Tirocchis began their dressmaking business downtown, and in only four years amassed enough elite clientele to move shop.The building they had been working in was beautiful, but it was also surrounded by the hustle and bustle of traffic, competing shops, and downtown life. When Laura married Dr. Louis Cella in 1915, they set their eyes on moving to the fashionable West Side of Providence – specifically, to Broadway Street, home to the wealthy and fabulous. 514 Broadway had been built in 1867 by prominent local architect Perez Mason and had housed two impressive businessmen: John Kendrick from 1867-1880, and George W. Prentice from 1881-1915. It was set up and furnished to present the appearance of wealth, and the Tirocchis capitalized on the space and effect. Surely both the family and their upper-class clients appreciated the display of affluence that the house created, inside and out. Its Italianate and Second Empire architecture – featuring sunburst gables and a mansard roof, capped with a three and a half story tower – stands out, even among the other beautiful homes of Broadway.

The large house became the perfect mix of public and private for the Tirocchi-Cella family; Dr. Cella took space on the first floor – eventually, they renovated and created an addition to the house that he relocated his practice to - and the public dressmaking business occupied the opulent second floor, while the sewing (and living!) took place on the third.

A. & L. Tirocchi Gowns flourished in the teens and twenties, despite the increasingly difficult economic situation for dressmakers. Ready-to-wear clothing at department stores had become more popular since it was introduced in the decades beforehand – the sisters’ saving grace was their elite clientele and their Italian training.

Anna Tirocchi’s beautiful gowns made waves in the Providence community and changed enough with the times that she was still a relevant designer more than thirty years after her debut. She and her sister made business connections in New York, Rome, and Paris that they visited with some regularity, bringing back brochures of the newest fabrics and fashions. Anna also invested smartly and bought several properties to rent, as well as a beach house on the Narragansett Bay. This relative affluence enabled her to support her workers and community in more ways than simple employment: shop girls were invited along on vacation, given housing when necessary, and had their wedding dresses made for free. In one instance, Anna wrote to a judge with familiarity, begging for leniency on the part of a community boy who had once worked for her when he was brought to court. The workers at A. & L. Tirocchi gowns functioned as apprentices; they were given rounded, practical instruction for years as they worked, and after a period of time they were able to strike out on their own as dressmakers in their own right.

The business ended in 1947 with Anna’s death, and its archives and collections were donated to RISD and URI in 1989. The house has undergone a few restoration efforts in the years since, most recently by the Dirt Palace collaborative, which plans to turn it into artist residences.

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“While there is life, let us act. Let not the damning sin of his murder rest upon us . . . Rhode Islanders, Americans! Have you thought of this? Are you prepared for this? Will you permit this?”

This rallying cry graced the windows of a bookstore adjacent to a coffee shop in Providence’s Market Square, thanks to a fierce Dorr supporter and bookstore owner, Abraham Herman Stillwell. A boyhood friend of Dorr’s, Stilwell was a descendant of the first English families to settle Providence and, like Dorr, a member of the elite class. From 1831 to 1867, Stillwell operated his shop, and during the Dorr Rebellion, he promoted his friend’s cause by pasting handbills in the store windows. As his granddaughter, Margaret Bingham Stillwell, later describes, “Businessmen walking down College Hill to their offices were startled to see that the southern facade of the bookshop had been turned into a bulletin board. They hurried to see what it meant. At times, they stood almost shoulder to shoulder as they read the handbills pasted on the windowpanes. Grandfather studied their faces, as for the first time they read a statement by Thomas Wilson Dorr that had not been distorted or deliberately garbled by the charter-controlled press. He had forced leading citizens to face facts.” For supporting Dorr, Stillwell apparently lost many customers but did not recant. His appeal to the authorities to release Dorr from prison in 1844 demonstrates the fervor that propelled the People’s Party:

“I appeal to you, in the name of a heart-bleeding father! -- in the name of a heart-broken mother! -- in the name of a crushed and suffering people! -- in the name of him who surrendered his liberty that others might be free! --in the name of Justice! -- and in the name of God! -- Pause not, faint not, rest not, until right is established. Undo the work of darkness. Break the bonds of Tyranny. Open the prison doors. You may do this without other than the force of Truth, without other than the force of Right, Without other than the force of Law! -- If we cannot do this, we are SLAVES.”

Later in life, when posing for a portrait, Stillwell’s likeness could not be captured in a pleasing way until the artist made mention of the Dorr War. At this reference, the painter’s “subject’s blood pressure went up, his face suffused with color, a new look of determination came into his eyes. Noticing this personality change, [the artist] kept [Stillwell] discussing politics all through the sittings, with the result that in the portrait he appears as rosy and rugged as an English country squire."

This location at 17 Canal Walk is the former location of Stillwell's bookstore.

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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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Johnson & Wales University is a world renowned leader in experiential education, with degree programs in arts and sciences, business, culinary arts, education, hospitality, engineering and design, and more. Fittingly, the Providence campus is located in the heart of the 19th and 20th century retail hub of downtown. Though Johnson & Wales has over 16,000 students and several campuses around the country today, the school had very humble beginnings in Providence.

“Stop at the sign of the lemon!” declares the Del’s soft frozen lemonade slogan. The Del’s symbol, a frost-covered lemon, can be seen everywhere during summer in the Ocean State. Made from crushed ice, lemons, and sugar, Del’s sells their signature product at their franchises, trucks, stands, and at the grocery store. The company dates its production back to 1840 in Naples, Italy, when its founder’s great grandfather made a mixture of sugar, lemon juice, and snow, which he sold at the local market. The founder’s grandfather, Franco DeLucia, brought the recipe to the United States at the turn of the century. After developing a machine to produce the frozen lemonade, Angelo DeLucia created Del’s Frozen Lemonade in 1948. He first opened a small stand in Cranston and later began serving his product from mobile carts, or Del’s Trucks, which spread his business throughout the state. A sign of summer, Del’s carts begin cropping up across the state as the months get warmer. An iconic Rhode Island beverage, Del’s unfortunately lost the competition to become the official state beverage to coffee milk, but their shared southern Italian origins and continued popularity signal an abiding influence of Italian foodways in Rhode Island.

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In the 1920s, when southern Italian immigrants brought their tradition of heavily sweetened coffee to Rhode Island, coffee milk was born. The beverage is so popular in Rhode Island that on March 30, 1993, the Rhode Island State Legislature designated coffee milk as the official state drink. Between 1898 and 1932, nearly 55,000 Italian immigrants arrived at the Port of Providence, in spite of limitations imposed by federal laws which discriminated against immigrants from outside northern Europe. Many Italian immigrants worked in the textile mills at low wages while introducing the state to their culinary traditions. As soda fountains and diners developed across the state, coffee milk moved from immigrant kitchens to diner menus. A soda fountain operator developed a coffee syrup by sweetening leftover coffee grounds with milk and sugar to create a molasses-like extract that, when mixed with milk, became coffee milk.

People also made coffee milk at home by mixing milk with the coffee syrup themselves. Coffee milk should not be confused with a cabinet, a drink made from milk, ice cream, and flavored syrup blended together. The blender used to make them was stored in a cabinet, giving the drink its name. If you ask for a milkshake in Rhode Island, you will receive milk shaken with flavoring, either powder or syrup, but no ice cream.

Two companies, Autocrat and Eclipse, quickly began producing the popular coffee syrup used to make coffee milk at home and in restaurants. Autocrat and Eclipse maintained a decades-long rivalry as each other’s primary source of competition. Founded in 1914, Eclipse began producing syrup in the 1920s and started selling it to consumers in 1938 when retailers, in addition to restaurants, began selling their syrup. Based in Warwick, Eclipse popularized their product with the slogan “You smack your lips if it’s Eclipse.” In the 1940s, Autocrat, based in Lincoln since 1895, countered with their own marketing campaign: “A swallow will tell you.” Although they acquired Eclipse in 1991, Autocrat continues to manufacture and market both brands. Newer local brands like Dave’s Coffee and Morning Glory offer syrups with no artificial colors, sweeteners, or high fructose corn syrup and show that contemporary Rhode Islanders still crave the long popular state drink, coffee milk.

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In the village of Usquepaugh, on the banks of the Queen’s River, Kenyon’s Grist Mill has ground whole berries of grain and whole kernels of corn into meal or flour continuously since 1696.

Kenyon’s still uses the 1886 mill built by John Tarbox and the name of former owner C.D. Kenyon, who purchased the mill in 1909. At first, farmers brought their own corn or grist to be ground, and later Kenyon sold the ground meal in branded sacks with the Kenyon name, available for everyone to purchase. Rhode Islanders make one of their favorite traditional foods, johnnycakes, with Kenyon’s stone ground cornmeal. Mix cornmeal with salt and hot water or milk; sometimes sweeten with sugar or honey; then fry on a flat surface and serve thick or thin, depending on regional preference. South County johnnycakes are thicker and traditionally served with butter only, but Newport residents slather theirs in butter and maple syrup. American Southerners call a similar dish a hoe cake, named after the gardening tool on which they were originally cooked. While recipes and stories about the name and origin vary, Indigenous Peoples prepared the pancake-like cornmeal patties for generations before European colonialization. Some claim that the name derives from “journey cake,” referring to the food’s durability and portability during long trips. The term may also have indigenous or African origins. Benjamin Franklin called johnnycakes “better than a Yorkshire muffin.” Between 1973 and 2014, Kenyon’s hosted Johnny Cake Festivals. The events drew thousands of people and featured local vendors, live music, mill tours, and food—including, of course, johnnycakes.

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On November 18, 1949, at 56 Randall Street, in the mostly poor, mostly black, Randall Square neighborhood, local African Americans crowded into the new Celebrity Club bar. It wasn’t quite finished, but the crowd didn’t pay much attention to the details of interior decoration as it took in, according to historian Jason McGill, “the sounds of the first of innumerable jam sessions featuring some of Providence’s finest jazz talent.” White jazz lovers also came in to sit at the bar, enjoy the beer, and hear the best music in Providence.

The Celebrity Club was founded by Paul Filippi, an Italian American who loved jazz, and was eager to make a difference in a segregated city. It was the first interracial club in New England, welcoming black and white musicians and audiences. Before it opened, African Americans in Providence who wanted to listen to live jazz, or even just go out for dinner, had to cram into narrow, crowded black neighborhood clubs or travel to other cities.

The club was an immediate success. It tripled in size to accommodate over 300 guests. In its heyday, from 1949 to 1960, famous black and white jazz artists played the club, including Duke Ellington, Cootie Williams, and Erroll Garner. It attracted African American community members and Providence’s white elite. The local black newspaper wrote about Nat King Cole’s 1951 appearance:

"People from all over New England have poured this way into this Randall street house of big name bands. … Judge Dooley and a party of six complimented Paul Filippi on his ability to bring nationally known entertainment to Providence. Other community leaders in the business and professional field are phoning in for reservations."

In addition to providing blacks and whites a chance to enjoy the best jazz music in Providence, the Celebrity Club worked for racial equality. It maintained, notes historian McGill, “a solid stance of openness and equality,” by providing its performers what one of them called “a musician’s paradise” and paying its African American employees top union wages.

But not everyone was happy to see a successful interracial club. The Providence police raided it regularly, harassing black club-goers. Filippi sold the Celebrity Club in 1958, and it closed in 1960. A commemorative plaque was erected in 2013 and can be viewed on the east side of the Marriott Hotel where Charles and Ashburton Streets merge.

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