Cathedral Square: Hideous Present, Glorious Future – Architecture Critic Morgan

Cathedral Square: Hideous Present, Glorious Future – Architecture Critic Morgan

Cathedral Square is one of the dreariest places in downtown Providence. An area that ought to be the heart of the city is instead an empty, forlorn, thoroughly unwelcoming, and hostile “civic” space. Half a century after an internationally famous architect and a nationally recognized landscape firm designed and fashioned it, Cathedral Square is an embarrassing urban disaster.

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We have lived here over two decades and only just went to Cathedral Square to scout out this story. Normally, visiting Patrick Keely’s Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, a monument by the most prominent Catholic architect of the 19th century, would have been a-not-to-be-missed destination. But the design of the area around the seat of the Diocese of Providence makes it difficult to visit. The square is not so much protected as barricaded from the city. As a car-free zone, the area in front of the cathedral is a hike from any parking. On a Sunday, the cathedral itself was locked, and there was only a couple of other people in the square.

The logical approach to the square, the main axis from Westminster Street, is something of a challenge for anyone less than an intrepid athlete. The grand axis was bluntly truncated–literally dead-ended–in the late 1960s by the Chancery Office and Auditorium (by E.F. Kennedy, an architect as untalented as he was connected). The pilgrimage to the central space is marred by shoddy maintenance. Bricks, tiles, and paving stones are missing, and there is trash everywhere. Even the homeless avoid this purgatory.

 

 

The 1960s was the heyday of urban renewal; in 1965, we even got a new cabinet department for Housing and Urban Development. The Kennedy administration encouraged the arts, while Jackie’s favorite architect was I.M.Pei, designer of the Kennedy Library, the pyramid at the Louvre Museum in Paris, and Cathedral Square in Providence. Under the aegis of John Nicholas Brown, Jr, Pei designed a handsome science complex at Brown, that was, alas, never built. Before Pei became one of the giants of Modern architecture, he was a noted city planner. And Pei’s partner at Cathedral Square was the leading landscape architecture firm of Zion & Breen. 

 

  

The scheme looked great on paper, and considering the talent that was involved, what happened? This column often argues for hiring the very best designers, but that is not enough itself to ensure success. As so often happens, Providence hires major designers and then does not seem to know how best to utilize them. Pei’s handsome concrete apartment blocks were realized in less expensive brick. While there is plenty of gathering and sitting space, the well-intentioned idea of having a totally auto-free plaza was too radical for Americans at the time.

Cathedral Square: outdoor sitting paces and a hillock that was once The Fountain of Life. Restoring the water feature would be an important first step in bringing people down here.

 

 

One of Cathedral Square’s most promising aspects that is it not really a square, but a somewhat amorphous rhomboid, with a variety of different entries–a classic piazza. This should have made this public space that much more dynamic. This plaza could have been the envy of many a European cathedral city, the kind that bustles with outdoor dining, vendors, produce and flea markets, festivals, pigeons, and tourists.

 

 

 

 

But several factors doomed Providence’s piazza, The subsequent construction of the city-dividing interstate highway nearby, which along with the axis-destroying Chancery, closed Westminster Street. Plus, there was the stigma  of low-cost housing. Perhaps the biggest contributor was the city’s failure to adequately fund the square’s development. And whatever happened to the Planning Department’s Cathedral Square Feasibility Study of 2007? This proposed a pre-urban renewal image, where the Bishop McVinney Auditorium would be demolished and Westminster Street would pass through. The then-estimated cost to revive the square was more than $10 million, but, even if doubled today, it would be a very worthwhile infrastructure expenditure.

 

 

 

An imaginative Refashioning of Cathedral Square would not be that hard to achieve. Perhaps we could start by relocating small businesses from the soon-to-tank Providence Place Mall. All the elements that architect Pei envisioned are still attainable, and as we ought to have learned by now, lively small scale urban spaces are key. Anchored by an impressive ecclesiastical landmark, Cathedral Square could be major catalyst for boosting downtown development.

 

 

Now, which mayoral candidate is willing to commit to the rescue and revitalization of Providence’s potentially magnificent cathedral piazza?

 

GoLocal architecture critic Morgan is the author of a number of books on American domestic design, including The Abrams Guide to American Houses Styles and A Simpler Way of Life: Old Farmhouses of New York and New England.