In May of 2018, Berry-Jean Murray started a new business with the vision of creating an intentional community gathering space. This business was an opportunity to create a sense of community that had been lost–as a Lesbian, she still longed for and sought the comradery of Lesbian gatherings (bars, concerts, meetings, activism, etc.) of the past.

Berry-Jean had a history of creating such spaces; after arriving in Providence in 1976, she had found it difficult to connect with other women and Lesbians of color in Rhode Island. As a young feminist, an African-American man (whom she admired) once challenged her to decide if she was going to be Black or a woman. For a few minutes she thought she had to prioritize aspects of her identity, only to finally claim, “I’m both of those – AND a Lesbian!” With her best friend Carol Monteiro, Berry-Jean founded Providence Gay Women, which started as a consciousness-raising group (an important community organizing tool at the time).

With this new business, Berry-Jean wanted to create a comfortable space with interesting happenings where individuals could find each other and feel a sense of connection and community. Groups could offer meetings, or musicians could perform, or artists could show their work – a place for everybody, but run by Lesbians, who know how to make that space.

Berry-Jean had attended art shows, poetry readings, and other events at the Brooklyn Tea House (sometimes referred to as “The Brooklyn”) a community space in the Hennessey-McHale Block at 209 Douglas Avenue in Providence’s Smith Hill neighborhood. Anthony Demings, an artist who liked to create paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge, owned the building, but it was at risk of sale and demolition. Built in 1873, 209 Douglas Avenue had previously served the Irish community as a grocery store, then operated for 57 years as the Armenian American Civic Club and the home of the first Armenian newspaper in the US.

To preserve the building’s history and realize her vision, Berry-Jean decided to buy The Brooklyn, renaming it The Brooklyn Coffee Tea and Guesthouse to honor its most recent life. She created the tea and coffeehouse of her vision, and also moved her office to the building and offered some short-term living spaces.

And then...COVID hit. Fortunately, Berry-Jean didn’t have a mortgage to support – but she did have to try to keep the place operating. She used the time to expand the kitchen and add an outdoor dining space. But eventually, due to renovations, licensing, and other challenges, she realized the space she wanted to create was not going to happen. Berry-Jean sold the building in Spring 2024.

The following owners renamed the space The Brooklyn House, and retained a similar mission: bringing community together through art, music, entertainment and events. Today it’s an Italian restaurant. Berry-Jean also continues the work of community-building, and is proud to have been a Lesbian Feminist all these years. In the end, Berry-Jean likes all of herself – and is surviving and thriving. As she says, “I’m a political statement just by living!”

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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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In 1904, ten women gathered together, led by former school teacher Julia Lippitt Mauran, to form a club in Providence devoted to “the promotion of interest in all kinds of handicraft and to provide a place where such work could be done.” This was, in part, a response to the growing interest in hand crafted design sweeping the country in the later decades of the 19th century, which saw the establishment of the first American arts and crafts society, founded in Boston in 1897.

In a report on the arts and crafts convention held in Boston in 1907, Mary Parsons, president of the Handicraft Club from 1904 – 1909, emphasized the crucial role of the Club in creating a center of activity for those interested in arts and crafts in Providence. Thus, the Club’s embattled search for a permanent home in the first ten years of its existence caused a great deal of alarm amongst its officers and members alike. Between 1904 and 1925 the Club had to move premises four times. This begun with informal meetings at the Froebal School, where Julia Mauran had been a teacher, and a brief period at Maxcy House at 7 Cushing Street, to a twelve year stint at the Truman Beckwith House, 42 College Street, from 1907 to 1919. They were forced to move again when the House was rented to another party, at which point they established what they thought would be their permanent home in Mitchell House, 227 Benefit Street, only to return to Beckwith House for good in 1925.

With the purchase of Beckwith House, the Club also took on the responsibility of preserving the historic building, designed by the architect John Holden Greene, and completed in 1826. Renovations included extensive redecoration, and the installation of a bow window in the south wall of the carriage house, the first floor of which was occupied by the workshop and showroom for the miniature furniture company, Tynietoy, established by Club members Marion Perkins and Amey Vernon in 1917.

Through providing the equipment required for crafts such as metalwork and book binding, among many others, and in encouraging the entrepreneurial activities of its members, the Club brought such endeavors out of the home and into a more public arena, endowing these women with a sense of pride and accomplishment in the skills they gained and the crafts they produced. In addition to offering classes and lectures by external practitioners from a wide range of geographic and disciplinary backgrounds, the Club served as a site in which women could exchange ideas and draw inspiration and knowledge from one another. The Club also staged exhibitions of members’ work, which were open to the public, and thus encouraged an interest in and support for handicrafts within the local community. During both first and second World Wars the Club devoted much energy to the war effort, knitting socks and scarves for the Red Cross and raising money for their Red Cross Unit by selling craft items.

The Club remains active in the community to this day, maintaining a strong sense of its heritage. In an effort to preserve the work of Perkins and Vernon, the Club acquired a Tynietoy dollhouse in 2013, and is still in the process of furnishing the Colonial style mansion with Tynietoy furniture. Thus, the Club continues its dual mission of promoting an interest in handicraft and historic preservation.

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Charles Dowler was born in Birmingham, England in 1841, and came to America in 1863 to make munitions for the Union effort during the Civil War. After the war ended, Dowler embraced the “American Dream,” deciding to abandon his profession as a gunsmith and pursue a career as an artist. He had a successful career working in numerous mediums including sculpture, woodcarving, plaster, and jewelry making. His notable public, local works include the John Sparks Monument in Bristol and the Collyer Monument in Pawtucket. Additionally, his smaller wooden carvings are highly regarded in the Folk Art community and are sought after by collectors. Dowler built his home in Smith Hill around 1872 in the cottage ornee style, a highly detailed, decorative style of the time -- perfect for a working artist. The mansard roof dwelling is typical of the 1870s form and few of these homes remain in Providence today in such a well preserved state. The National Registry did an assessment of the home in 1984, thoroughly documenting details of the property. This assessment provides an in-depth look at the exterior and interior of the home, showing what is still intact from the original construction. The exterior is reminiscent of a modern day appearance. The roof has fish scale slate shingling, an oculus window over the entrance, and a narrow front porch with Corinthian columns, prominent bay windows, and dormer windows with incised details. By all accounts, the exterior is has remained intact to its appearance from the late 1800s. Upon entering the home, it is slightly altered with principal front rooms remaining intact, the four-panel, double-leaf entrance with etched glass accesses the central stair hall, and the curving staircase has a massive newel post that rises to the second floor. The two parlors provide detailed architecture work to give decoration to the home. The southeast parlor has a wooden mantel centered on the north wall, a molded plaster cornice is on the floriated-relief ceiling and, in the center, a framed tapestry of cherubs finish the decoration. The southwest parlor has similar but more elaborate designs. In particular, the ceiling’s decorations are simple in design yet elegant. It has a wide plaster cornice ornamented with floral motifs and high-relief busts of cherubs’ heads and in the center is a large, multi-foil, gilt panel with bucolic scenes painted in each of the foils. A private residence when first lived in by Dowler, it remains so to this day. Walking past the property now, it would seem like an ordinary house used as a private residence but behind those walls, it was a home for a local artist who had an impressive career in Rhode Island’s art community. Dowler’s sculptures remain intact in other parts of Rhode Island, and his home is a surviving example of architecture that remains well-preserved in Smith Hill’s community.

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Imagine this building as the central location for industry and modernity in 19th-century Providence. Picture a tangle of railroad tracks and constant motion, with engineers and manufacturers working hard to support (arguably) the most important place downtown––the railroad station. In the late 19th century Union Station was the hub of southeastern New England’s transportation network. Goods came and went through this terminal supporting the machinery, textile, and jewelry industries that fueled the growth and future of Providence.

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Though the area around it has changed over the years, Providence City Hall remains a constant in downtown Providence. Constructed in the 1870s, the cast iron and masonry structure witnessed the evolution of Exchange Place into Kennedy Plaza, two hurricanes, and multiple cycles of economic depression and growth. Initially, Providence’s municipal government was located in the crowded Market House, across the Providence river. Needing a bigger space, alderman were split on where to put a new city hall. Half of the council lived on the east side of the river, and half on the west, causing a thirty-year struggle over where to put the new government building. Eventually, the west side won and the cornerstone was laid on June 24, 1875. In the 1950s the city’s downtown master plan called for the demolition of City Hall, but it was saved and restored, reflecting the city’s pride in its historic roots.

Just outside of City Hall is a home for America’s oldest food cart: Haven Brothers Diner.  Despite the misleading name, no brothers were involved in the founding of the Haven Brothers. Indeed it was founded in 1893 by Anne Haven, an immigrant widow who used her husband’s life insurance policy to purchase the horse drawn wagon that became the legendary lunch cart. Assisted by her daughter, Catherine Gannon, the cart grew into a legendary Providence food establishment. The Haven family sold their food cart in 1953 to the Mollicone family; the cart is still open for business every day at 5:00pm. Truly a Rhode Island institution, it has only left once since opening for operation. In 2009, the cart traveled to visit Today Show hosts Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira in New York City. Both Lauer and Vieira frequented Haven Brothers while working for Channel 10 Providence.

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It is said that every Rhode Islander visits the Biltmore Hotel at least once. Opened in June of 1922, the Biltmore immediately became a significant hub for social activity in downtown Providence, a legacy that continues today. Its elegant halls have hosted whist clubs, holiday parties, and debutante balls. In its early days the Biltmore also sought creative ways to bring fresh produce and dairy to its tables in the middle of a bustling city. A rooftop garden where fresh flowers and vegetables were grown was just the trick! Wanting more, the first manager of the Biltmore, L.D. Wallick, took it further and demanded fauna as well. Pens for chickens and ducks were constructed on the roof. Distraught, the ducks flew south in 1927 and never returned.

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Rhode Island had one of the earliest public education systems in the country, housed in this building beginning in 1800. The structure today is home to the Providence Preservation Society, formed in 1956. PPS leased the old schoolhouse from the city for its headquarters in 1960 and undertook its restoration.

The Providence Preservation Society grew out of the urgent need to rescue eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings in the College Hill area of Providence’s East Side from demolition. The College Hill Study of 1959, sponsored by PPS, the City of Providence, and the Housing and Home Finance Agency, was an early example of urban revitalization using preservation and rehabilitation rather than demolition and redevelopment. PPS has saved the historic character of whole neighborhoods and has grown into a citywide advocate for preservation.

Since 1958, PPS has offered the Festival of Historic Houses, which gives the public a behind-the-scenes look at the interiors of some of the city’s most architecturally and culturally interesting residences and buildings. PPS also publishes the annual Most Endangered Properties List to raise public awareness of the threat to the city’s architectural heritage. One success story is that of the Fox Point Bath House on Wickenden Street. The Bath House was constructed in 1926 in a move to provide bathing facilities to areas of the city without indoor plumbing. The bathhouse was used as a library in the 1950s and 60s, but fell into disuse in the 1970s. Facing vandalism, infestation, and other signs of decay, the building made PPS’s Most Endangered Buildings List in 1998, 1999, 2002, and 2003. Thanks to efforts by community preservationists and city officials, the Bath House was restored and is now used as an elementary school library.

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Repurposing older structures is a tenet of historic preservation. Here the West Broadway Neighborhood Association practices what it preaches. Since 1983, the WBNA has been one of the strongest and most active neighborhood associations in the city. This 1930s Art Moderne Texaco station is a classic Walter Dorwin Teague prefab design, but instead of pumping gas, this service station has become a fueling place for community. Don’t miss the gas pump out front. Once a grand avenue of wealthy mansions to rival Broadway, Westminster Street became a part of the Route 6 transcontinental highway, running from Provincetown, Massachusetts across the country to Long Beach, California. When the Interstate network was built, traffic was rerouted, and gas stations like this one had to look for a new purpose. Kari Lang has led the WBNA for twenty years and made the organization a model of engagement and community. Neighbors come here to find out about solar panel installation, home composting, community, politics, safety, and neighborhood events.

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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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Pardon Gray Preserve has about 160 acres of mixed hardwoods that, when added to the adjacent Weetamoo Woods and Pocasset Ridge, is a highly valuable continuous canopy forest region. Within this forest are significant stands of a rare “coastal oak–holly” forest type, sometimes referred to as maritime oak holly.

While native holly is widespread in the southeastern United States, it only grows in southern New England along coastal areas. In scattered areas of this region a combination of climate, soils, and maritime conditions result in a particular mix of holly and oaks that is globally rare. The American holly tree (Ilex opaca) is the signature species of this natural community. It is the only native broadleaf evergreen tree in New England, and graces our otherwise drab winter forests with its glossy green foliage and red berries.

When the Pilgrims landed the week before Christmas in 1620 on the coast of what is now Massachusetts, the evergreen prickly leaves and red berries of the American holly reminded them of the English holly (Ilex aquifolium), a symbol of Christmas for centuries in England and Europe. Wild holly was widely gathered as a Christmas green, though in recent times it has been replaced by nursery grown horticultural varieties.

Oak–holly forests are oak-dominated with a prominent sub-canopy of American holly. Because of its slow growth and relatively short stature, holly is seldom dominant. It is rather an understory component, blending between the shrub layer and the sub-canopy. Oak–holly typically mixes with other forest types, often at the upper edge of forested wetlands such as red maple swamps. Upslope it often grades into oak–heath forest, which is precisely the situation at Pardon Gray Preserve. It is found along the corridor of forested wetland adjacent to the stone wall that borders the open field, and then fades into the drier, oak–heath forest found on drier soils higher up, east of the Ridge Trail.

Other trees typical to oak–holly forests include red, black, scarlet, and white oaks; black and yellow birch; sassafras; black cherry; American beech; tupelo; American hornbeam; and eastern hophornbeam. The understory includes a diverse shrub layer of sweet pepperbush, high bush and low bush blueberries, black huckleberry, wild red raspberry, sheep laurel, bayberry, and arrowwood viburnum. There is also a great diversity of woodland wildflowers and ferns to be found in the herbaceous layer on the forest floor.

Pardon Gray Preserve was protected primarily because of its assemblage of natural communities, as well as the ecological importance of the large regional forest of which it is part. All the forests of the Pocassetlands region are secondary growth, meaning they have been cut multiple times since European settlement. While some patches were suitable for small farm plots, rocky, glacial soils resulted in pasturing and wood lots for most of this area. The 1938 hurricane leveled essentially all large trees in this region, so the oldest trees in the Sakonnet forests are in the 100-125 year range.

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Until the early 19th century, it was common for farms to include a family cemetery. Later, as industrialization took over and people moved into towns and cities, family cemeteries were supplanted by larger, centralized municipal cemeteries. The Pardon Gray cemetery, which dates to the 18th century, is an excellent example of a local family burying ground.

The cemetery was located behind the Gray family farmhouse, which disappeared long ago. Like many of Tiverton’s early cemeteries, the Pardon Gray cemetery is surrounded by fieldstone walls. Most of the graves include a headstone and a footstone, and they follow the common practice of laying graves east to west, with the footstone on the east and the headstone on the west. The older headstones are black slate, while later ones, from about 1820, are white marble.

The exact number of graves within these walls is unknown, since there may have been early, unmarked burials, and some stones may have toppled and been buried beneath soil and overgrowth. The earliest existing grave marker is for Tillinghast Gray, daughter of Pardon and Mary, who died in 1794 at the age of seven months. Nearby is Claracy Cook, the 15-month old daughter of Hannah Gray and Captain George Cook. Colonel Pardon Gray’s grave is in the southwest corner; his wife, Mary, lies beside him. Colonel Gray’s headstone is a modern replacement provided by the Division of Veterans Affairs.

A notable headstone (actually two headstones), marks the grave of Deacon Philip Gray who died in 1806. His original headstone is likely the black slate grave marker now leaning against the stone wall. The headstone that currently marks his grave is a later white marble replacement. Research by the Tiverton Land Trust indicates that Philip Gray’s stone was replaced to match his wife Susanna’s headstone. Susanna died much later than Philip, in 1839, and styles had changed.

The Pardon Gray cemetery looked very different at the time of acquisition of the property by the Tiverton Land Trust in 2000. It had been ignored for a very long time, and it was extremely overgrown and covered with brambles. The fieldstone walls were in serious disrepair. With support from the Tiverton Historical Cemeteries Commission and private donations, the overgrowth was cleared and the stone walls repaired.

In 2012, donations from descendants of Colonel Pardon Gray made it possible to restore the headstones and foot stones into their current configuration. One headstone, which was broken into two pieces, was “glued” together and placed in its proper location. Other headstones that had been buried were uncovered and placed upright in their proper location.

The Pardon Gray Cemetery was designated Tiverton Historical Cemetery #4 by the State of Rhode Island Division of Veterans Affairs during a project to locate and identify historical cemeteries throughout the state. A database of these cemeteries is available through the Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Commission.

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The Chace-Cory House, built around 1730 by Benjamin or Abner Chace, witnessed the passing of many Tiverton generations by its front door. Once a lonely house, it has seen nearly 300 years of change at Four Corners. Its floorboards are well-worn by the pacing of more than 100 years of anxious wives, widowed by the sea, if only temporarily.

In 1816, Andrew Cory and his school teacher wife, Jane Gray Seabury, bought the house. Jane had lived here with her parents as a young woman, running a school in the “old chamber,” which extends intact over the kitchen pantry. Andrew Cory lived a life at sea, eventually taking command of the New Bedford Whaler Isaac Howland in 1845 at the age of fifty-five. Despite his time at sea, Andrew and Jane managed to have nine children, although only seven survived childhood.

Andrew and Jane’s eldest child, Edward, followed in his father’s wake. He shipped from New Bedford on whalers that took him as far as Australia where, in 1842, he met Mary Ann Bamford, an orphaned 19-year-old woman sent from England as a child upon the death of her parents. The two wed in Australia, shipping back to Tiverton where they raised a large family of their own. Edward inherited the house from his father in 1866.

Late in his career as a whaler, Edward Cory went missing during a planned two-year voyage. Three years passed with no word of him, then four and five. The orphaned Mary must have passed many anguished hours wondering about Edward’s fate, finally preparing for life as a widow.

But six years after sailing from New Bedford, Edward returned. While pursuing a whale, it dealt him a near-fatal injury, and Edward spent three years convalescing in China before regaining enough strength for the long voyage home.

Edward and Mary Ann’s eldest son, Edward Joseph Cory, inherited the house, and he too tried his hand at whaling, until the industry died out in the early twentieth-century. He turned to fishing the local waters, shipping his fresh catch from Newport to New York aboard the Fall River Line steamships.

In 1962, Edward Joseph Cory, Jr., sold the old house to another man of the sea, J. William Middendorf. A veteran of the United States Navy, Middendorf served as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1973 and Secretary of the Navy from 1974 to 1977. In 1964, Middendorf donated the house to the Tiverton Historical Society, which moved here from its original headquarters at Whitridge Hall.

Carlton Brownell, a Little Compton resident and history teacher in the Tiverton Public Schools, led the restoration effort. The grounds of the Chase-Cory House contain an unusual 19th-century washhouse, a corncrib reassembled here in 1976, original stonewalls, and a privy. Brownell, who dedicated his long life to the preservation of local history, died at age 95 in February 2013.

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Step through the doors of the Modern Diner, slide into a window booth or snag a stool at the counter, and order two eggs, toast, and a side of hash browns. Order up!

In 1940, the Modern Diner opened on Dexter Street in downtown Pawtucket. Patrons could choose a booth along the diner’s windows or perch on one of the stainless steel stools that lined the narrow countertop separating the diners from the small galley kitchen. The Modern Diner quickly became a bustling breakfast hub serving up large plates of eggs, bacon, pancakes, and daily specials including the Rhode Island favorite, the “Cabinet,” a coffee flavored drink akin to frappes or milkshakes.

Small prefabricated eateries began to appear in American cities in the early twentieth century, replacing traditional food wagons as a source of casual cuisine. By the 1920s, the term “diner” had entered popular lexicon. Diners reflected popular styles, and by the 1930s, many diners featured aerodynamic shapes, curving silhouettes, and bright chrome accents – all hallmarks of the “Streamline Moderne” style of the Art Deco movement. Inspired by the sleek trains that crisscrossed the country, particularly the elegant new “Zephyr” trains of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, designer Roland Stickney created the “Sterling Streamliner Diner.”

From 1939 until 1942, Sterling Streamliner diners were fabricated by the J.B. Judkins Coach Company, of Merrimac, Massachusetts, a company primarily known for its custom car bodies. Sales of diners offered an alternative market for companies affected by the decline of automobile sales during the Great Depression. Selling at around $15,000, Judkins’ Sterling Streamliners were the ultimate diner, with porcelain-clad exteriors and interiors accented with mahogany trim. They were built in four-foot modules that could be easily shipped and assembled at their final destination. Advertisements even marketed this feature with the claim that additional sections could be added as patronage increased. Unfortunately, only seventeen Sterling Streamliners diners were produced before the United States’ entry into World War II curtailed most civilian industries.

Today, the Modern Diner is one of only two Sterling Streamliners still in operation. It gained widespread recognition in 1978, becoming the first diner added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Modern Diner also gained notoriety after attracting the attention of Disney. In the early 1990s, Walt Disney Company sold thousands of shirts featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse standing before the Modern Diner and its iconic neon sign. While attempting to tap into the origins of Americana, the company overlooked copyright laws and soon after, the owners of the Modern Diner filed suit against Walt Disney Company and won.

At first glance, the Modern Diner retains its historic 1940s appearance. After it was moved to East Avenue in the 1980s, however, an additional structure – containing modern amenities like an expanded kitchen and restrooms – was attached to the rear of the diner. Although the diner’s menu has expanded over the years to meet the tastes of new clientele, the traditional diner fare of breakfast is still their specialty.

Ready for breakfast?

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Rhode Island has a long history of industrial manufacturing. Slater Mill, on the banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is considered  the “birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.” By the early 1800s, that fervor for manufacturing had spread, and companies, like the Gorham Manufacturing Company, appeared throughout the state. Known for its world-class products in bronze and silver, Gorham left behind a toxic legacy at the site where its Mashapaug Pond factory operated for nearly 100 years.

Today, the Gorham Manufacturing Company is infamous in the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood for polluting the water, soil, and air of the community. For all of the nineteenth century, and most of the twentieth century, there were few restrictions on companies’ use of potentially harmful materials.  At Gorham, workers regularly used cleaners with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), solvents, heavy metals such as lead, and other contaminants. With little thought to the environmental impact, these pollutants leached into the surrounding soil and water.

By the 1960s, industrial manufacturing had largely left Rhode Island and other states, and Americans were left to deal with the waste that factories had produced. The Environmental  Protection Agency (EPA), established in 1970, set guidelines to control industrial dumping and provided ways to force polluters to clean up contaminated sites. Two years later, the Clean Water Act of 1972, set water quality standards and prohibited the dumping industrial waste directly into waterways.

Textron, Inc., bought Gorham’s assets shortly before the passage of the Clean Water Act. In doing so they became responsible for the cleanup of the Gorham site, including Mashapaug Cove and the ground water. With help from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Textron has funded the effort to make the Gorham site safe for human use. It is a long process that is taking many years. Thus far, Textron has completed the ground remediation of the area that is now home to Alvarez High School and the Mashapaug Commons shopping center. Air filtration systems have also been added to both the school, shopping center, and nearby homes on Adelaide Avenue, ensuring the safety of local residents.

Further cleanup work includes covering contaminated soil with clean infill, dredging the Gorham “cove” of Mashapaug Pond to remove toxic sediment, and undertaking groundwater remediation throughout the area. Although it has been a slow process, this parcel will soon be safe for human recreational use. Eventually, the polluted land will hold a new neighborhood park and athletic fields for Alvarez High School.

Today, high levels of heavy metals, VOCs, PAHs, and dioxin are still found in the sediment of Mashapaug Cove. Carp, bass, and perch swim valiantly through the water, collecting chemical contaminants in their tissues. None of the fish in the pond are safe for human consumption. It is impossible to know whether these toxins are due solely to Gorham or if they have continually accumulated through storm-water runoff. Despite the extensive remediation work, Mashapaug Pond and the fish within it will remain contaminated, a legacy of the state’s industrial heritage.

Discussion Questions