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Saturday, June 05, 2021
From Hope High School to Lippitt Park, this thoroughfare demonstrates how a street can form a vibrant town within a city. Carolyn, and I pondered this question dining at Avenue N, as we celebrated the lifting of covid restrictions. As we ate, we watched our town opening up along Hope Street, the spine of Providence s East Side.
Avenue N, with views of Hope Street, Chez Pascal, and Lippitt Park. PHOTO: Will Morgan
Streets are more than just traffic arteries. Streets are basic units of city planning. The pandemic reinforced this, as people were forced outside to dine. Overnight we adopted the European al fresco tradition, as if we had always occupied the sidewalk to eat and socialize. This simple change re-connected people with the street, and re-affirmed a tenet of citizen-driven planning.GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
Gina Raimondo. PHOTO: Will Morgan
The State of Rhode Island is going to spend fifty thousand dollars on an official portrait of former governor Gina Raimondo. Really?
There is nothing wrong with honoring our past chief executives with an image in the State House. It is honorable, too, to actually pay a too often underappreciated and undervalued artist for their work.
The current Secretary of Commerce deserves her place in the pantheon of Governors of Rhode Island. The problem is the word official. Given the nature of such paintings, plus the dreadful lack of quality of the existing gubernatorial portraits, the Raimondo version is likely to be a visual disaster.GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
Rhode Island s fifth-largest city, East Providence stretches from Rumford to Riverside, from piedmont to bay, with remarkably varied topography and several village centers. While historic and affordable (all the access and half the taxes), it is terra incognita to most East Siders. When the wealthy come to Providence in search of a home, can you imagine a broker from one of the prestige real estate firms saying, Have you thought of East Providence?
Perception and prejudice aside, East Providence may be the best remedy for the East Side pricing paradigm. As Brown aggressively grows and inevitably takes over the East Side, ever-so-close East Providence might provide an escape valve. It is a human-scaled place of infinite possibilities, plus it appears to a well-run city by Rhode Island standards. Thoughtful development here would benefit everyone. (The new housing at Kettle Point on Veteran s Parkway is an acknowledgment of the exploration of hitherto-unthought-of domestic desti
Apartments for 155 Chestnut Street. Courtesy: Pebb Capital
The student apartment block proposed for 155 Chestnut Street in the Jewelry District was a bad idea at first, and little–not even lopping the height from twelve stories to nine–has made it any better. It is an inappropriate and over-scaled turkey. Like the Fane Tower, it is the sort of project that epitomizes the city s failure to understand and capitalize upon its history and to respond sensitively to its many existing urban assets.
The 100-foot-tall glass and steel box is not of itself a bad design, with its crisp, low-key Modernism, but it is hardly anything exceptional. The design firm, Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel Architects of New York, has done many commercial buildings, although they perhaps have a greater concern for saleable square feet than architectural excellence. Given that their 155 Chestnut scheme is an assault on an historic neighborhood, it is ironic that GVK has won awards for some historic preservation