When Peter Green House was moved down Angell Street last summer, it was the first time many students had heard of Brown's preservation efforts. But the University and Providence have a rich tradition of historic preservation that spans the last 50 years.
"I've heard many people refer to Providence as the Charleston of the north," said Sara Emmenecker '04, director of preservation services at the Providence Preservation Society, referring to the historic South Carolina city.
"Providence is really at the forefront of the preservation movement," said Patrick Malone PhD'71, associate professor of American civilization and urban studies, as well a member of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.
"All you'd have to do is look at Benefit Street or the new, adaptive use of industrial buildings in Providence," he said.
The Providence Preservation Society was founded in 1956 in response to proposed demolitions on Benefit Street. The collection of colonial homes was considered "blighted" and the area was "more a slum," Emmenecker said. "In that day and age, the philosophy was to get rid of the blight by tearing it down," she said.
Nowadays, PPS and the state government are approaching the issue of preservation differently. The Providence Revolving Fund, established about 25 years ago by the PPS, extends low-interest loans to preservation projects in low-income historic neighborhoods, Emmenecker said.
Malone said the state of Rhode Island also provides several programs that create incentives to preserve historic buildings, including tax credit programs that are "essentially supportive of preservation," he said.
As part of these efforts, Providence is divided into a number of historic districts, including areas in College Hill and the Jewelry District. While the Jewelry District does not boast traditionally historical buildings, "what's historical is more the industrial history - it's the history of the area as a center of industry that gives it its value (more) than any particular building," said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president.
Providence contains both local historical districts and nationally registered ones that sometimes overlap, said Jason Martin, a preservation planner in the city planning department who also staffs the Historic District Commission. City districts are empowered by state law, while national designation does not impose as many restrictions on historic buildings, he said.
In 2002, Providence, with input from the PPS, created the Industrial and Commercial Buildings District, "the region's first non-continuous, thematic local historic district," according to the city's Department of Planning and Development's Web site. It consists of a number of 19th and 20th century buildings from around the city.
There are eight historic districts in Providence, according to the Web site, and buildings in the districts face certain restrictions regarding renovations, additions and demolition. "We do about 200-plus applications per year and staff handle about three quarters of those - when I say staff, I mean me," Martin said.
Brown's preservation efforts
"Essentially the whole campus is in one or another historic district," Spies said. Brown interacts with the PPS and the city planning department on a regular basis, especially with ongoing construction projects such as the Creative Arts Center and the Walk.
"We have advantages from being in a really rich and active community, (but) with advantages come some constraints and that's just a fact of life," Spies said.
Brown has come before the PPS and the Historic District Commission with their Strategic Framework for Physical Planning and is currently seeking advice from the PPS on construction and renovation projects such as the planned renovation of Faunce House. "They're working with us now with what to do with the houses on Angell Street which are in the footprint of the Mind Brain (Behavior) building," Emmenecker said.
In recent years, Brown has won PPS Annual Preservation Awards for "excellence in preservation projects" for the Maddock Alumni Center on Brown Street and the Cabinet Building on Waterman Street, Emmenecker said.
A number of Brown-owned buildings have also been recognized as having historic importance by the federal government. Six University buildings are listed with the United States Department of the Interior's National Register of Historic Places - University Hall, built in 1770; Nightingale-Brown House, in 1792; Gardner House, in 1806; Hoppin House, in 1855; Corliss-Brackett House, in 1882; and the Ladd Observatory, in 1891.
"It is something to be proud of," Spies said. "I'd like to think that we would have taken the same care of those buildings and seen them as historically and institutionally valuable even if they hadn't been designated," he said.
Brown studied the question of "the preservation of the campus and the community that we are a part of" a few years ago with a grant from the Getty Foundation, Spies said. The Getty Foundation awards grants to "strengthen the understanding and preservation of the visual arts," according to its Web site. With the grant, Brown attempted to develop a set of principles regarding preservation and to identify "monumental spaces" on campus, Spies said.
One of the study's outcomes that Spies calls "really important and smart," was "a set of ground rules for the maintenance of (historic buildings) so as part of the training program for the facilities staff ... you don't find a plumber or electrician come into Corliss-Brackett House and say we need to knock down this wall and run a raceway along this wall," he said.
The University spends a significant sum on preservation and renovation, "more money than if our only goal was to use the space," Spies said. Administrators often must decide which buildings are worth preserving and which aren't.
"It wasn't just about saving old things just because they were old and preventing change. It was about new developments enhancing the old and making good judgments about what to preserve," he said. Spies cited Antoinette Downing, the founder of the PPS, as someone who inspired Brown's attitude toward preservation.
Historical value factors into preservation decisions, Spies said. "There will be a day when Prince Lab will have outlived its usefulness and we should just tear it down without a moment's hesitation - it doesn't have any of that historic and aesthetic value," he said. "There isn't a hard-and-fast rule," he added.
Controversy in conservation
Though some University and city officials say they value historic preservation, both entities have made controversial decisions regarding old buildings. "Actions by the University really stimulated much of the preservation movement in Providence because we cleared or demolished parts of neighborhoods on the East Side to expand our campus in the 1950s," said Malone, the urban studies professor.
"The Rockefeller Library - where that stands there were some beautiful mansions that were knocked down ... and larger projects like Wriston Quad and Keeney Quad took out whole blocks of neighborhoods," Emmenecker said.
"Some of that I think we would not do again," Malone said.
The University has shown a commitment to preservation since then, Malone said. "That's the 1950s, let's not leave it there - Brown has done a wonderful job with key buildings on our campus and continues to pay attention to preservation when it does campus planning," he said.
"Because of some mistakes that might have been made in the past - I'm speaking 60 to 80 years ago - they have come to us almost as a consultant when they are planning projects," Emmenecker said.
A much more recent preservation controversy currently surrounds the Providence city government's and local developer Carpionato Properties' demolition of the Harris Avenue Food and Produce Terminal. Carpionato Propert
ies purchased the terminal building for $4.5 million from the Department of Transportation last year, and obtained a permit in January to demolish the 1929 building on the grounds that it was unsafe, according to a Jan. 27 Providence Journal article. Despite some outcry, the company has already started demolition, a move Malone calls "an outrageous action."
"Developers found a loophole in the city zoning ordinance that, under state law, if a building is declared a public safety hazard, the city officials can issue an emergency demolition order that bypasses regulations that have been set in place," Emmenecker said.
The original understanding was that the old building would be reused in future development projects and January's events created a bitter dispute between local preservationists, state officials and Carpionato Properties, the Journal reported.
According to a Jan. 31 Providence Journal article, the Department of Transportation has accused Carpionato Properties of "demolition by neglect." The firm struck back by pointing out that the most significant damage to the building happened under the DOT's ownership, the Journal also reported.
"Neither group made enough of an effort to secure the building," Emmenecker said.
"In preservation, unfortunately, most things are reactionary and it's a reactive type of thing instead of a proactive type of thing. A lot of people were upset about the produce market and so the mayor issued an executive order and formed a working group that looks at demolition policies in the city - demolition vs. demolition by neglect," Martin said. The group is exploring ways to be more proactive about preservation and how to increase regulations for nationally listed buildings that don't fall under local historic districts, he said.
It is always difficult to strike the right balance between historical preservation and change. "You can move something, you can demolish something, you can alter something for a new use and you have to decide which is in the best interests of the University and the community," Malone said.
"People shouldn't see preservation as an obstruction to progress - it really helps to create a satisfying urban environment when we can preserve the things that are significant and attractive," he said.
