4 minute read
Destination Providence: A New England Microcosm
by DYLAN PEACOCK Senior Preservation Services Manager
Dylan Peacock is a resident of Providence. He and Miki Kicic received a 2016 Rhody Award from Preserve Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission for the restoration of their 1911 Shingle Style home, the Cook-Cohen house. Peacock is a lifelong Rhode Islander and has been with Historic New England since 2016.
Providence is the host city for the Historic New England Summit November 2 and 3 at The VETS, which is exciting. In addition to being a great travel destination for attendees, the city is a microcosm reflective of the experiences facing countless communities throughout New England and beyond. This makes Providence an ideal place to discuss our collective roles in creating livable and resilient communities. Providence’s human-scaled buildings and human-scaled issues have allowed the city to consider creative and innovative solutions to problems felt in both large cities and within many small urban anchors.
A lot can be learned from Providence’s ability to cultivate and leverage arts and culture in ways that positively influence community sustainability and the preservation of threatened or underutilized buildings. Organizations with national acclaim, like local nonprofit AS220 (an artist-run organization that offers opportunities to live, work, exhibit, and/or perform in its facilities), have played a pivotal role in creative placemaking in downtown Providence through the rehabilitation of numerous historic commercial structures. AS220’s portfolio of buildings provides artistic opportunities and programming for local youth, affordable live-work space for artists, as well as performance, gallery, and retail spaces that enliven the streetscape and bring new life to the downtown in these formerly underutilized historic structures.
Huge strides continue to be made in ensuring access to arts and culture for diverse communities in Providence. The city is home to world-class institutions of higher education along with an ambitious public library system that is creating new opportunities for engagement. That same need for access exists in public education, where there are deep struggles with equitable access to quality education. The experiences of Providence’s academic institutions with helping to engage and support the local arts community set an example of what is possible when education, arts, and culture all work together.
Providence also proves the value of preservation throughout its architecturally and culturally diverse residential neighborhoods. Preservation solutions deployed in the 1980s are still supporting quality of life and affordable housing as these needs continue to grow. Innovative and leading groups like the Providence Revolving Fund (an offshoot of Providence Preservation Society), Stop Wasting Abandoned Property (SWAP), and the former Elmwood Foundation (since subsumed into One Neighborhood Builders) have spent decades saving distressed and abandoned historic properties through preservation and conversion to affordable housing for rent or sale.
The Providence Revolving Fund also is a national leader in providing nontraditional lending to homeowners to make sensitive repairs to their historic properties, coupled with technical expertise, allowing homeowners an affordable means of preserving their homes. The marriage of these two important goals has resulted in unique, high-quality housing that remains an incredible asset contributing to community stability, livability, and sense of place.
While taking action today, the city also is addressing future challenges, particularly as a coastal city considering the reality of rising sea levels, while being mindful of remaining scars from the past –especially related to historical inequities stemming from twentieth-century divestment and urban renewal, resulting in more traffic, fewer trees, higher pollution, and worsening health outcomes in frontline communities. This is a story familiar to urban centers across the nation. In 2019 Providence released its Climate Justice Plan, which centers environmental justice and equity in the transition from fossil fuels to creating healthier and more resilient communities.
Providence’s many incredible assets – its historic housing stock, local main streets and shopping districts, vibrant arts and cultural institutions, and highly regarded restaurant and food scene – mostly exist in and around historic places and streetscapes that give the city its distinctive sense of place. It is the perfect place for the 2023 Historic New England Summit to convene leading voices in conversations about the multi-disciplinary and collaborative ways in which historic preservation can be leveraged to continue creating quality, sustainable, and resilient communities. For more information visit Summit.HistoricNewEngland.org.
