01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, September 30, 2004

A QUARTER OF A CENTURY has passed since a major historic building was purposely demolished in downtown Providence. The Hoppin Homestead Building, erected in 1875, was the first home of the Rhode Island School of Design and the second home of what is now Bryant University. In 1979, it was demolished by the Paolino real-estate interests, which put up a parking lot.

History could soon repeat itself. Applications have been filed to tear down three buildings, including the Providence National Bank Building. Erected in 1929 and extended in 1950, it stands next to the Turk's Head Building (1913). The ornate Colonial Revival facade on Westminster Street ranks among downtown's best; for delicacy and sweetness, its closest competitor may be the Atlantic Bank Building (1866), a petite Elizabethan Revival just west of the Arcade on Weybosset. Just east of the Arcade on Westminster sits the second building at risk of demolition, a former savings-and-loan uglified in 1960, the home until lately of Buck-A-Book.

The third building at risk is the George C. Arnold Building (1923), on Washington Street. Three stories tall but only 12 1/2 feet deep, it houses Kevin's Corner Smoke Shop, a health shop, a tattoo parlor, a defunct coffee shop, a liquor store and Honorbilt Fashions, whose mannequins seem trapped in the 1970s. The block harks back to downtown's retail profusion.

These old buildings are suddenly candidates for demolition because the city failed to cross its t's when it created the Downcity District, in the 1990s. The Paolinos demolished a gas station without a permit, were fined, and sued in return. A judge agreed that the city had violated the district ordinance, and that the district itself was therefore moot. But the real villain is a lack of vision on parking: Do not tear down old buildings for parking lots. Build garages edged with retail on existing lots. Grow parking spaces and urban fabric at the same time.

After all, beautiful cityscapes that tickle the imagination are why tourists visit Providence and why suburbanites may someday return in numbers large enough to recapture its historic vitality and create taxable wealth. Providence has block after block of old buildings largely unsullied by parking lots or modern architecture. Many cities have beautiful old residential districts; few have beautiful old commercial districts. Ours is the only entire central business district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But that designation doesn't offer protection to any buildings -- not even the Arcade.

If, in addition to building ugly new buildings (see below), the city now plans to demolish beautiful old buildings as well, why would anybody come here?

Mayor Cicilline and the City Council should act swiftly to resurrect the Downcity District.

GTECH: Geddidaddaheah!

Look at the front-page photo in the Business section of the Sept. 22 Journal: Waterplace Park at dusk, with WaterFire just under way, a gondola heading into the basin, and the mall in the background. Taken in 2002 by former Journal photographer Richard Benjamin, the photograph has an almost painterly loveliness. A print of it hangs nicely framed in a place of honor on my wall at home.

Look again at the photo in the paper. What is that thing toward left center? It seems almost as if a pigeon had, um, taken up the hobby of architectural rendering. But no -- it is a computer image of the glassy proposed GTECH headquarters, plopped by Photoshop into the scene in order to show how the building would look in its urban context.

What a blunder. It stinks. Printed large and in color, the picture arouses public disgust.

Another sketch of the proposed monstrosity, as seen from the Route 95 ramp, assaults readers of Page 7 in this week's Providence Business News.

At Tuesday's Capital Center design workshop, the design panel continued to futz with the details, expressing an inchoate dissatisfaction with a design it professes to like. Garage-facade columns once rejected are back, except now they are metal; gone is a roof overhang once embraced. So what? Why re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic Building?

If GTECH insists on having a suburban techno-box wildly out of place in Providence, the General Assembly should release GTECH from its obligation to build at Capital Center. If GTECH won't redesign the building, then let it be built in West Greenwich, on Route 95, where it would fit right in. That way, GTECH could stay in Rhode Island without putting the aesthetic and economic future of the city at risk.

Correction

In "A dark cloud at India Point" (Sept. 23), I wrote: "Brown University plans to build two dormitories . . . near the Raddison Hotel." Brown denies it. Better call it a rumor, not a plan.

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