Picture yourself entering a room. You hang your coat on the hanger to the right and sink into the cozy pillows and blankets spread on the couch. A white antique loveseat sits beside the couch and a low coffee table with a small TV is in front of you. A large brown rug feels warm under your feet and framed artwork decorates the walls.
Though you might not find anything extraordinary about the room, this 750-square foot space - located above an unused storage room in the Providence Place Mall's parking garage - was the perfect hideout for eight Providence artists for four years. That is, until one of them was charged with misdemeanor trespassing and arrested by mall security earlier this month.
Local artist Michael Townsend was showing the "apartment" to an artist visiting from Hong Kong when he heard "a walkie-talkie outside."
"I could've disappeared without being seen," Townsend told The Herald. "But in that moment it was like, if they'd figured it out, the gig was done."
The security officials, who Townsend said were "professional" but "not amused," let the visiting artist go. Townsend ended up in a holding cell for the night and is now on a six-month probation.
Townsend said he used to run past the mall every other day during its construction from 1997 to 1999. That's when he noticed the space, which workers were using as a platform to raise construction material to higher levels. Townsend said he wanted to experience the mall as a resident, not just as an "ad hoc visitor."
So he, his wife, Adriana Yoto, and six other Providence artists decided to furnish the space and make it into "the most real home," said Townsend, who creates murals out of tape for a living and is a Rhode Island School of Design graduate.
"I could assess that that space would serve no purpose in the future (when the mall was completed)," he said.
In October 2003, Townsend and his friends decided to spend a week at the mall, living in the same space that Townsend had noticed a few years earlier.
"It was a lighthearted way of getting to know your neighbor," said Townsend, who lives near the mall in the city's Promenade district.
Townsend said the moment he and his friends entered the space through a dark passage they knew that "no one had set foot there."
"I felt very happy (there), very present, very sort of enthused and full of life," he said. Living at the mall for a week in that space was the best vacation he has ever had, he added, like being at a beach in Jamaica.
Soon, Townsend and the other artists decided to "microdevelop" the space into a home and to think of the mall as its own city.
"I wanted to spend a lot of time (at the mall)," he said. "I wanted to understand the people going there, the architecture, the environment, the attitude ... the gravitational pull that is the mall."
The artists bought over two tons of construction material to build a cinderblock wall. They installed a door to make the space into a room. By 2004, they had begun moving pieces of furniture into the space, noticed but unquestioned by mall security and mall-goers, Townsend said.
The unheated "apartment" lacked running water and its four bulbs were lit with the help of an 80-foot long extension chord that ran to nearby unused sockets. But the apartment did have a PlayStation for the artists' entertainment.
The artists had purchased a hardwood floor and planned to build a second room and a bathroom, Townsend said.
Colin Bliss, another tape artist who spent many nights at the apartment with Townsend, said though he often felt cold in the room, he had the "thrill of the whole thing to keep (him) warm."
James Mercer, one of the artists who helped construct the apartment, said he was "sorry" that they were discovered before their plans came to fruition. Mercer said he now misses decorating a dingy storage area with very sophisticated furniture.
"Like bringing a really nice china hutch into a parking garage," he said, referring to a piece of furniture the artists had moved into the room.
Townsend admitted that he had wanted to furnish the "apartment" better, as it began annoying him to wake up in a room where the "furniture didn't match."
He said he and Yoto would never experiment with decorating their actual home in a converted mill in the Promenade district in the way they experimented with their mall home.
At the apartment, for example, he would have seriously considered a "cloth runner, maybe with Ukrainian stitches, down the middle of the dining table," Townsend said.
"At home? Hell no!" he said.
Townsend said the project was "definitely cut (off) at the beginning of its prime." Bliss said he and Townsend were planning to make the room their permanent home for an entire year. "We were trying to make it liveable ... so we wouldn't have to go home to anywhere," Bliss said.
Since his arrest, Townsend said he has received hundreds of e-mails from people thanking him for making them laugh and helping them realize that "behind this door there's a secret, crazy world I don't know about." Many told him they were reminded of the thrill of pretending to have their own secret spaces as children.
"It's fascinating," Townsend said. "It can't be age-specific that you feel the thrill of having a fort."
Townsend said he knows what he did was illegal, but he thinks mall owners could have used the discovery of the "apartment" as a publicity stunt to attract more customers to the mall.
"They could've said, 'You can't live here, but we appreciate your enthusiasm and we'd like to capitalize on your efforts,' " Townsend said.
Townsend has been barred from entering the mall's premises, but said he wants to go back. "I need to buy a pair of pants," he said. "I'm going to send an e-mail to Nordstrom, Filene's, maybe Banana Republic saying, 'I'm sorry I'm banned (from coming to your store) but you're on top of my list.' They should know they've lost a loyal patron."
