Building Canyons in Providence – Architecture Critic Morgan

Building Canyons in Providence – Architecture Critic Morgan

 

It seems to happen overnight, like house-eating kudzu or an infectious rash. Delightful human-scaled streets on the East Side of Providence, lined with handsome older houses and mature shade trees, are suddenly transformed into walls of four-and five-story apartment boxes. Their dreariness lacks the urban qualities that make our town so appealing, and they unfortunately create canyons. This canyonification echoes the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication,” the 1999 song that condemned the greedy culture of Hollywood (“destruction leads to a very rough road”).

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Canyonifaction is the fallout from new construction across the East Side–the 195 apartments around Trader Joe’s and those dwarfing Our Lady of the Rosary, as well as Wayland Square. But the most egregious example of this destruction is found along the half-mile portion of Brook Street that parallels the commercial strip of Thayer Street. This malaise has also spread to the short blocks that link Brook to Brown Town, and will no doubt soon besmirch Angell Street opposite Wheeler School where three Victorian-era houses have just been wantonly demolished.

 

 

Density is usually to be welcomed in city planning, such as that found in the downtown canyon formed by buildings such as the Turk’s Head, the Industrial Trust, and the Rhode Island Hospital Trust (brilliantly converted by RISD into a residence hall). Those ventures are paragons of civic architecture meant to enrich the urbs. Alas, the rush to the create more apartments catering to wealthy students is not characterized by such nobility. Most of these boxes are just that, rental-square-footage with stick-a-brick facades and a few amenities, such as balconies and ground floor shops. Much of the damage could be ameliorated by height limits, as four and five stories tips the scale toward wall-making. By the employment of setbacks, passageways, interior courtyards, and the like, imaginative architects could actually create housing that would contribute rather than despoil.

 

 

 

 

 

Farther south on Brook, Brown has created a real canyon walls with two new dormitories on both sides of the street. As is often the case with Brown architectural patronage, the university hires notable designers who have done top-flight work for other schools, but who somehow fall short in Providence. The AIA Guide to Providence Architecture, for example, notes that the Watson Center for Information Technology, by the once adventurous architectural firm  Cambridge Seven, “icily presents a sheer wall to the world beyond the campus.” At first, one might assume that the dorms’ mill-like forms are a tribute to Rhode Island’s industrial heritage. TenBerke, however, the designer of the Chen Family and William & Ami Danoff residence halls, seems rather to have recycled bits of their residential college at Princeton for its Ivy League little sister.

 

 

So, what do we make of the canyonification of the East Side? There are plenty of neighborhoods in the city that could absorb more bland housing than College Hill and Fox Point. Everyone wants to revel in the ambience of one of the most attractive neighborhoods anywhere, but that ironically plants the seeds of its own destruction. (Who of a certain age can forget the Army Major in Viet Nam who spoke the prophetic line: “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”) What does canyon-making say about the soul-selling, short-sighted vision of our mayor, city planners, developers, and premier university? That they will gladly support under-designed housing that makes a mockery of Providence’s special character and identity.

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