Multifamily homes along Perkins Street. Last week, 49 multifamily properties were listed for sale in Smith Hill, many of them bank-owned, priced from $72,500 to $345,900. The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

Planning has already begun on Smith Hill in Providence for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is held on Smith Street every year, ending at the State House. The parade committee is chaired by Patrick Griffin, owner of Patrick’s Pub, also on Smith Street, which has sponsored the parade for the past 15 years, reviving what had been a lapsed tradition in Providence.

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“A group of us at the pub decided we’d get together, and we got it going again,” Griffin said.

Griffin, who was born in Ireland, moved to the United States in 1984. He first settled in Boston, but moved to Providence in 1992 when he bought the pub. Griffin said he thought an establishment so near the State House would be a good business prospect. The Providence St. Patrick’s Day parade will be held March 8, so as not to conflict with parades in Pawtucket on March 1, and Newport on March 15.

Although this inner-city neighborhood still retains a strong Irish-American presence, Smith Hill is one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods, with large Armenian, Hispanic and black communities.

The neighborhood was named after John Smith, who settled in Providence in 1636 and operated a grist mill near present-day Mill Street. Smith Hill was considered one of the city’s rural districts until the middle of the 19th century. Industrialization in the nearby Olneyville and Valley sections and immigration led to rapid development in Smith Hill from 1830 to 1930.

The neighborhood has been the city’s first home for many waves of immigrants, according to Kara Bennett, chief operating officer of Capital City Community Centers , which runs the Smith Hill Center.

“It’s one of the first places they come, but it’s also the first place they leave,” she said. The neighborhood was hit hard by the Depression in the 1930s, and decline continued into the 1950s and beyond. The construction of Route 95 through the center of the city led to the demolition of many historic Smith Hill buildings, and the departure of a major employer, machine-tool manufacturer Brown and Sharpe, to North Kingstown, in 1964, was another blow.

The neighborhood is one of the most economically vulnerable in the city, and evidence of the housing market downturn is abundant, with many “for sale” and “for rent” signs along the streets. Last week, 49 multifamily properties were listed for sale in Smith Hill, many of them bank-owned, priced from $72,500 to $345,900.

The Smith Hill Center operates out of the former Ruggles Street Primary School, a handsome red-brick building built in 1896. The center offers before- and after-school programs for students, an early childhood program, and Bennett said it also runs one of the state’s busiest food pantries.

Although Smith Hill has its share of urban problems, Griffin said he’s seen progress in Smith Hill in the past 15 years. “The police and [Smith Hill Councilman] Terry Hassett, they’ve done some very, very good work on the crime, and making it a better and safer neighborhood,” he said. “There’s been a lot of construction, a lot of new business,” he said, pointing to reuse of many buildings at the 25-acre Browne & Sharpe complex, restoration of the Masonic Temple, and a new mixed-use redevelopment, Capitol Square at Smith Hill, on Douglas Avenue near St. Patrick’s Cemetery, completed last fall. None of the 13 condominiums, which are priced from $159,900 to $239,000, have sold yet, but a number of the six commercial units have been leased. A barbershop and a pizza restaurant area among the tenants.

“I see great things for Smith Hill over the next 10 years,” he said.

Bennett said the neighborhood got a boost late last year when it was announced that the vacant Valueland grocery store on Smith Street, which closed in 1998, would be purchased by ALDI, a German grocery store chain, which planned to renovate the property and open next year. Although there are several small ethnic and neighborhood grocery stores in Smith Hill, including one near the Chad Brown public housing complex, the neighborhood lacks a large, modern, full-service grocery store.

There is also hope that a pharmacy and a bank will open at the site, because ALDI plans to lease some of the space. Bennett said bank services are sorely needed in the neighborhood. “It’s disenfranchised,” she said.

Artist Anthony Demings purchased one of Smith Hill’s historic buildings in 1999, and opened the Brooklyn Coffee & Teahouse at the brick building at 209 Douglas Ave. Demings said the building, which was previously a neighborhood grocery store and later, in 1940, home to the Armenian American Civic Club, was in the process of being condemned when he bought it. But Deming could see the beauty under the rubble, and undertook a complete restoration.

“I thought, ‘I just have to buy it,’ ” he said.

Although the majority of residential housing in Smith Hill is multifamily, there were a handful of single-family houses listed for sale in Smith Hill last week. The lowest-price house a 1900 Colonial at 627 Chalkstone Ave., with five bedrooms, one full and one half bath, and 2,157 square feet of living space, on the market for $115,000. The listing information said the property is bank-owned and that copper pipes and the boiler are missing.

A four-bedroom Colonial Cape at 20 Whipple St., built in 1930, is on the market for $210,000; the listing information says the property include another buildable housing lot.

A property for sale at 503 Chalkstone Ave. is listed at $225,000, including a 1900 Colonial that the listing information said was “gutted to the studs and rebuilt like a new home;” this property also has a double lot.

POPULATION: (Providence, 2000) 173,618

MEDIAN HOUSE PRICE: (Providence, not including East Side, 2006) $212,475

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Harry Kizirian Elementary School

INTERESTING FACT: Former Rhode Island Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy, who was elected in 1976 and served in office for four terms (1977-1985), once lived in the heart of Smith Hill, on Bernon Street.

cdunn@projo.com