01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, May 6, 2004

LET US SIP from the "Unbuilt Providence" exhibit at Brown University's Bell Gallery, in the List Art Center, on College Street. Decide for yourself whether the cup of Providence architecture is half full or half empty.

This is a parlor game for building buffs.

Walking into the List Center (1971), a modernist building of the Brutalist persuasion by Philip Johnson, you may wish another unbuilt building could be added to the exhibit -- but List, alas, was built. Too bad. A sip of regret. Your cup is half empty. You enter the Bell Gallery. There are 15 displays in the exhibit, and at each one your cup goes half full or half empty, depending on how it makes you feel.

The first unbuilt building is the Providence Merchants Exchange, designed in 1856 by Providence architect Thomas Tefft. A round structure of five stories, each encircled by Tefft's beloved arched windows. A 40-foot dome of glass and metal sits on top. Alas, unbuilt. So your cup is half empty.

But wait! You read that the Merchants Exchange was to be at the intersection of Westminster and Weybosset streets. Apologies to Thomas Tefft, but if the Exchange had been built, the Turk's Head Building (1913), which so ennobles our Financial District, might not exist. Your cup is now half full.

Next comes Tefft's entry in the 1874 design competition for City Hall. Nice, but it was a loser, so your cup is half empty. But the winning entry by Samuel Thayer was even nicer, so now your cup is half full -- until you read that Thayer's winning entry was never built -- at least not its formidable tower, which was cut by fiscal skinflints of the Victorian era. Your cup is now half empty.

Next is the Providence Courthouse on Exchange Place (Kennedy Plaza) proposed by Raymond Hood, in 1916: A mammoth Beaux Arts building with a 600-foot tower of courtrooms. Unbuilt! Your cup is half empty. But because Hood's extravaganza was not built on that block, the Industrial ("Superman") Bank was, in 1928. You feel a sense of relief, and your cup is now half full. But the Howard Building (1959), alas, does exist. Your cup is half empty again.

At this point, dizzy with (or drunk on) possibilities, you may be thinking that "Unbuilt Providence" is just too much. Don't despair! If your sense of taste is anything like mine, keep going. It gets easier, because the exhibit is chronological. As it advances (so to speak) into the modern era, many buildings by such modernists as Albert Harkness, Erich Mendelsohn, Paul Rudolph, Hugh Hardy and even I.M. Pei were not built, filling your cup of joy to overflowing. When I was through with the exhibit, my happiness was an inch deep on the gallery floor.

This is because two comprehensive urban plans are part of the unbuilt Providence: "Downtown Providence 1970" (1957-60) and the "College Hill Study" (1959). Had they been completed, Providence would have ceased to be a city of architectural interest, let alone of beauty. Its renaissance would have been inconceivable, and the two new proposals so unfitting for Capital Center (see below) would be unremarkable. And the parlor game you just played -- and the exhibit that made it possible, curated by Prof. Dietrich Neumann -- would have been completely unthinkable.

Enjoy the exhibit. When it ends on May 31, it is over, for no exhibit catalogue is planned. Sigh.

Capital Center update

The initial designs for both Parcel 2 and Parcel 9 of Capital Center, on either side of Waterplace Park, unveiled on April 27 and May 4 respectively, begin anew the suburbanization of Capital Center.

The first four buildings in the district, a mishmash of modern and postmodern built in the late 1980s and early '90s, were followed by the Westin Hotel (1994), Providence Place (1999) and the Marriott Courtyard (2000). This may be the most interesting set of recent buildings in America, unimaginable almost anywhere else in the country: three large buildings erected by three different owners in three different styles of traditional architecture that nevertheless fit together perfectly.

Designs by Intercontinental Development, on Parcel 2, and GTECH, on Parcel 9, should have continued that trend. Properly conceived, their proposals could have strengthened the historic character of downtown Providence, not just by dint of their own beauty but also by blocking views of the earlier, widely disliked, more suburban-style buildings.

Those hopes were dealt severe blows by both designs, which, if not radically amended, threaten to turn Capital Center into a pod of corporate glitz, a sort of in-town "edge city." The elegance of the public's $140 million investment in the waterfront, especially Waterplace Park, could be almost totally submerged. Next week, I plan an assessment of both designs -- designs to be included, I hope, in a future "Unbuilt Providence" exhibit.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board. His e-mail is: dbrussat [at] projo.com.