Benefit Street, on Providence’s East Side

Journal archives

AS A PROPONENT of historic preservation and a former board member of the Providence Preservation Society (PPS), I would like to respond to The Journal’s March 13 editorial “PPS progress?” which questioned the recent effectiveness of the organization and asked where it is headed.

The editorial noted that “a measure of the society’s effectiveness is that no major historic downtown building was lost between 1978 and 2005. Since 2005, however, the city has lost four major downtown preservation battles with the bulldozer.” It went on to note that since 2005, PPS has had three directors, and posed the question: “What’s going on?” In fact, PPS has had two directors since 2005: Jack Gold, who held the post for three years, and George Born, whose tenure was shy of a year. Catherine Horsey stepped down as director of PPS in 2004 after a four-year tenure.

Historic preservation is embedded in the DNA of this city. So much of the character of Providence, what makes it a distinctive and attractive place, comes from its preserved built environment. Can you imagine Providence without Benefit Street or College Hill? It’s hard to believe today, but in the 1950s, this unique historic neighborhood was slated for demolition in the name of “urban renewal.” How fortunate we are that a few citizens who were passionate about preservation banded together in 1956 to form the Providence Preservation Society, and saved dozens of beautiful colonial and federal houses from the wrecking ball.

Over its 53 years so far, PPS and its allies have saved hundreds of historic buildings across Providence. It is not possible to win every battle with the bulldozer. And the longer an organization is in existence, the more battles it will engage in, and a greater number of losses will be racked up. But if we are keeping score, I would venture to say that about 95 percent of all buildings PPS has tried to save are with us today.

While it is certainly a tribute to PPS for the editors to note that no major historic downtown buildings were lost between 1978 and 2005, it is also somewhat unfair to make an unfavorable comparison with the downtown-preservation record of the last several years, because these two periods are very different in terms of downtown economic activity and real-estate development. For the majority of the time in the 1978-2005 given period, very little development took place in downtown Providence, so there were minimal threats to historic structures. Business and retail development was happening largely in the suburbs, while many historic buildings stood empty and shuttered in our urban centers. When development did pick up in downtown Providence in the 1990s, much of it had historic preservation and adaptive reuse at its core.

Over the past few years, there has been a development boom in downtown Providence, and so the challenges to preservation are different, and the threats to historic downtown buildings are greater. Yes, PPS was unable to prevent four historic downtown buildings from being torn down in the last four years, but it fought hard to save each one right up to the last moment. During this same period, the society has succeeded in preserving other historic buildings in Providence, as well as leading important efforts on preservation education and advocacy.

The purview of PPS goes beyond downtown; it works to protect and retain historic buildings and the urban fabric citywide. There have been recent notable preservation victories in the neighborhoods — for instance, the Nathan Bishop Middle School, on the East Side, which, thanks to PPS and community support, is undergoing an extensive renovation that preserves the historic façade and will open next fall as a state-of-the-art middle school. The tear-down and new-construction option was gaining popularity before PPS stepped in.

The society also commissioned a schools-reuse study of the historic Mount Pleasant High School and West Broadway Elementary School buildings. This study showed that the cost of renovating these historic buildings would be less than or equal to the cost of new construction, without the environmental impact of demolition, in keeping with the fact that the greenest building is the one that’s already built. The study also showed that 21st Century learning environments can be effectively created inside buildings that went up in the 19th and 20th centuries.

PPS, together with neighborhood organizations across the city, has led a recent effort to change National Grid’s practice of installing gas meters on the front of historic residential buildings, thus supporting the rights of property owners to help preserve the historic character of our city’s great neighborhoods.

Very important, yet unmentioned in your editorial, is PPS’s recent advocacy work to create the economic means by which historic buildings can be restored and rehabilitated, removing the incentive to demolish in the first place, and instead providing developers with the financial motivation to preserve. I am talking, of course, about the historic-preservation tax credit, which PPS played a lead role in crafting and passing into law, and which has single-handedly been responsible for the preservation and adaptive reuse of dozens and dozens of historic buildings in Providence and across Rhode Island.

Examples are many mill buildings, including the American Locomotive building, in Providence, and Hope Artiste Village, in Pawtucket, the Masonic Temple (now the Renaissance Providence Hotel), the Old Stone Bank on Empire Street (now the Pell-Chafee Center), the Peerless Department Store (now Peerless Lofts) and other fine historic commercial buildings on Westminster Street, and the Dreyfus Hotel on Washington Street (now a restaurant called Local 121 and an AS220-run art gallery and affordable studios where artists can live and work), to name just a few.

Also worthy of note is the critical work of the Providence Revolving Fund, a now independent organization originated by the PPS. The Providence Revolving Fund has provided the economic means, advocacy and technical assistance to developers, community organizations and home owners to restore dozens of architectural treasures downtown and in the neighborhoods of Providence. To see this impressive list of restored buildings for yourself, go to http://www.ppsrf.org/recentprojects.php.

Looking to the future, PPS is playing a key role working with the City of Providence and others in determining the best and highest use for the newfound land that is opening up in the downtown Jewelry District and Old Harbor District as a result of the Route 195 relocation.

The preservation movement in Providence preceded the Smart Growth and Sustainability or Green movements by a generation. The principles behind the preservation of our historic properties, however, are identical to the Smart Growth and Sustainability. If we stick by them, and embed these principles in our policies going forward, we will be better off economically, as well as continue to retain the character of our great city.

Arnold B. Chace Jr. is a Providence real-estate developer.