IN 2007, DR. DOWNTOWN doled out only roses to save for the bumper crop of raspberries the doctor had expected for 2008. His fears were not unfounded: 2008 was a very, very bad year. But by backdating a rose or two to be awarded in 2009, a rosier scenario may be painted for the year that just passed. Surely such creative accounting may be forgiven in an effort to lift the prevailing gloom.

• Almost the whole crop of raspberries goes to the Rhode Island School of Design for the ugly new wing of its Museum of Art. The new building joins Old Stone Square (1984) in degrading the skyline of College Hill, one of America’s loveliest. In addition, it shreds the fabric of the city’s oldest thoroughfare, North Main, once known as the Towne Street.

But the doctor bestows raspberries on RISD not simply because its building is ugly but because the intention underlying its design is ugly.

The decision to spray what amounts to architectural graffiti on an old streetscape was deliberate. In the art world of today, flipping the bird at tradition is hardly shocking. It is totally predictable. But the city and the state gave the school a free waterfront campus in the 1990s, and RISD might have displayed its gratitude in this decade by adding to that waterfront in a more congenial style. RISD’s institutional rudeness to its host city staggers the imagination.

RISD had gone 131 years without doing anything this bad. The doctor looks forward to many years of measuring RISD’s mea culpa in roses.

• With that unpleasantness behind us, Dr. Downtown takes joy in bestowing a rose on the Hampton Inn, on Weybosset Street, developed by Granoff Associates and First Bristol Corp. The 110-room hotel project is renovating the Old Colony Bank Building (1927), which for 13 years was a chapel for the Franciscan order. Originally expected to open in December, the hotel is now slated to open in early 2009. This delay robbed 2008 of a rose — which the doctor hereby steals back on behalf of that needy year.

The traditional design of the project’s addition to the original bank building further strengthens the already strong appeal of Weybosset Street. An elegant brick archway into the hotel’s porte-cochère serves as the base of the addition. The archway reinforces the curvature of Weybosset as it bends toward Westminster Street in the Financial District. Visual pleasure for decades to come will be the result.

Thus may a hotel chain be said to teach a design school an important lesson in civic art.

Let the assistant professors of RISD hoot all they want at that statement. It is true, not only from the standpoint of passersby but of basic aesthetic principles, too. Hampton Inn’s developers understood this. May RISD’s new president, John Maeda, have the suppleness of mind to understand it also.

• A rose to the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission for its restraint in administering state historical-preservation tax credits for the Hampton Inn project (without which the project was unlikely). The addition’s tan brick and the green glass dividing it from the red brick of the original were not necessary to denote the old from the new, but neither are they especially offensive.

Many professional preservationists would have insisted upon something genuinely ugly, such as the RISD addition or the proposed glass-box addition that almost resulted in the demolition of the Masonic Temple. Sage Hospitality rescued the temple, using preservation tax credits to save enough money that an addition was no longer necessary. The Providence Renaissance Hotel got a rose for 2007.

• A raspberry to Granoff Associates (despite its hotel work) for closing the Arcade, evicting 13 shops and seeking a single tenant to lease it. Perhaps the raspberry should go to the economy for putting the proposed $8 million renovation on hold. Or maybe the scarcity of nearby parking should be blamed for making it difficult to run the Arcade at a profit. Or blame the flight to suburbia that sapped downtown of workers and shoppers. Or Uncle Sam for failing to solve the problems of the cities. Maybe a way to blame President Bush can be found. Whatever. Certainly it could not have been poor management!

On second thought, the doctor retracts the raspberry, at least until Providence actually loses what may be its most notable landmark: With only one tenant, the Arcade would no longer be the nation’s oldest shopping mall.

• A rose to the Providence Preservation Society for working to show Mayor Cicilline that the Messer and West Broadway elementary schools needn’t be razed as part of an absurd $700 million plan to build more schools as school enrollment declines.

• A rose to Brown University for deciding not to demolish part of the Dexter Wall, on Hope Street, and for proposing to build inside the wall two athletic buildings designed by Robert A.M. Stern.

• But a raspberry (retractable) to Brown for proposing to demolish up to nine old buildings while erecting at least two hideous modernist buildings.

• And, finally, a rose in perpetuity to anyone who can resurrect the most powerful jobs program and economic-stimulus package in Rhode Island history — that is, the historic-preservation tax credits.

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