IS PROVIDENCE still beautiful?

Yes, it is. Is its beauty in danger?

Yes, it is. Can we still save it?

Yes, we can!

The canary in the mineshaft of the uglification of the city, and downtown especially, may be the Teste Block, a curious little building at the intersection of Dorrance and Weybosset streets. One of the oldest buildings downtown, it was completed in 1860, but was placed last year by the Providence Preservation Society on its list of endangered properties.

If the Teste Block is demolished, then it’s a safe bet that downtown’s beauty is doomed.

The building has been vacant since 2003, when the Philip Wolfe men’s clothiers went out of business. City regulations let a property owner demolish a building that has stood empty for five years. Eventually, that could put the Teste Block at risk.

Today the building is owned by National Grid, which has voiced no plan to tear it down. The local office of the international energy conglomerate sits on Weybosset to the left of the Teste Block, in Narragansett Electric’s old headquarters, whose ogee-arched gable makes it one of the city’s most unique buildings. To the right of the Teste Block, on Dorrance, sits another National Grid building. Its postmodern design, though flat and cheesy, fits in well enough to avoid the sort of disruption that a modernist building would cause on purpose. Indeed, the building’s concave lobby window alludes smartly to the ogee gable of its partner around the corner.

“Italianate, four-story brick building with 12-bay storefront and a broad cornice above the first story; six-bay façade on upper stories defined by narrow paired sash windows with polychrome segmental arches over each pair, stone stringcourses between each story; broad frieze and wide eaves.” To translate the architecturese of the Teste Block’s description in the 1981 survey of downtown by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, readers may refer to the photo.

The photo shows the Teste Block on the southeast corner of its intersection. Not visible are the Case-Mead Building across Weybosset Street, another Italianate commercial building kitty-corner from the Teste Block, or the modernist Broadcast House across Dorrance, built in 1979, now the Johnson & Wales library. Because of the sinister sterility of the latter, which I call the East German Embassy, someone standing at the intersection has to look east up Weybosset or north up Dorrance to enjoy the sort of uninterrupted traditional streetscapes whose ubiquity accounts for the beauty of Providence. And yet, three out of four quadrants of largely intact beauty exceed what is typical of even the best intersections in the downtowns of most American cities.

Providence has done a fine job of saving beautiful streetscapes — whose allure rests not so much on the merits of its best buildings, which many other cities can match, but on the absence of modern architecture in so many of our urban vistas, often streetscape after streetscape, which is rare in a downtown. Providence has done a dreadful job, however, of ensuring that when attractive traditional buildings are demolished, they are replaced by new buildings that protect the streetscape’s beauty. This failure erodes our best cityscapes little by little every year.

In theory, modernism is not incapable of supplying the fine grain, human scale and syncopated pattern of the traditional streetscape. The succession of doorways and windows set off by pilasters that creates the movement essential to the rhythm of traditional streetscapes (and which is built into the elements of classical design) is not beyond the talent of modern architects. They could invent ornament that titillates the eye in an unconventional manner without relying on classical precedent. It’s not that they can’t but that they won’t: Fitting into the neighborhood isn’t high on the modernist agenda.

For all their good work, preservationists in Providence often fail to see that their most vital role is not just to save endangered buildings but entire stretches of urban fabric. Buildings that contribute to the city’s beauty and buildings that detract from it have been demolished of late. The energy spent by preservationists to save such dogs as the Fogarty Building and the Produce Warehouse, or to bemoan the loss of the circular City Gulf Station, has far exceeded that devoted to saving such fine buildings as the Providence National Bank or such decent background buildings as 143-149 Washington St. (At least they did try to save the Police and Fire Headquarters.) Nor do they appear to care that what’s built in their place may rip the fabric even more.

Yes, we can save the beauty of Providence. Preserving the Teste Block is vital, but letting an East German Embassy arise near every beautiful building we succeed at saving, or in every gap that’s left where we fail, would eventually leave our favorites standing as forlorn in Providence as they do in almost every other American city.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal’s editorial board ( dbrussat@projo.com).