Unbuilt Providence

I should really be posting this stuff before they go away, so I apologize for not mentioning "Unbuilt Providence", an exhibit put together at Brown showcasing 15 buildings/projects conceived but never executed downtown, sooner. Sorry.

So anyway, the exhibit closed May 31st, the day after I got back to RI. Em and I went that day, competing for parking with graduating Brown students and their families. The exhibit was empty, so we had the place to ourselves.

The pieces were arranged chronologically, from the 1850s Merchants' Exchange building to the 1999 original plan for parcel 9 in Capital Center. I won't go into each project, since the accompanying artwork would be necessary, but there were some very interesting ideas, most of which I am glad ended up on the scrap heap. Including:

The Hospital Trust Tower (the white, rectangular member of Providence's skyline trio) was originally concieved as a futuristic tower by Paul Rudolph which I found especially unsettling. Another tower proposed for the land fronting on Kennedy Plaza was Raymond Hood's New Providence Courthouse from 1916 (sorry, no pic). This structure would have been a magnificent complement to the State House, but would have changed the face of downtown dramatically in the years to come (the Industrial Bank Building went up on that site a few years later).

There were more drawings from the Plan for Downtown Providence, 1970 which I had never seen before (this cringe-inducing image being all I had seen of the project). Downtown Providence 1970 (conceived in 1960) could have almost single handedly destroyed everything that makes Providence special, so we should all thank God, Jesus, Allah, Yaweh or President Reagan that it went mostly unrealized.

An early watercolor from the River Relocation Project of the mid-1980s also captured my imagination. On the site of the Citizens Bank Building William Warner had envisioned a European-style piazza and dense, stylistically-coherent buildings surrounding it (he also managed to make the Moshassuck four times wider and boat navigable!) It's very beautiful.

Em unintentionally stole the display copy (it was the last day, I don't think anyone will miss it) of the exhibit magazine, so perhaps I'll be able to scan it in and make it available.

Anyone else get to go? I promise in the future I'll be better about posting this stuff beforehand...