Rhode Island
State House Grounds

Overlooking downtown Providence from a terraced plateau, the historic Rhode Island State House and its park-like grounds occupy an elevated site on Smith Hill. The site was officially selected in 1894, primarily because any building there “could be readily seen from all parts of the city.” Land in the area was relatively cheap at the time, as Smith Hill was separated from the downtown area by railroad tracks and railyards. Throughout the nineteenth century it had been part of a predominantly African American neighborhood called Snowtown; by the late 1880s the neighborhood’s residents had been displaced. The initial six acres of what would become a sixteen-acre site were acquired in 1895. Having won a competition to design the State House, McKim, Mead & White, one of the nation’s leading firms, was awarded the contract, and construction of the Beaux-Arts building began later that same year.

Background

Landscape architecture firm Manning Brothers of Boston, run by well-known landscape architect Warren H. Manning (a protégé of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.) and his brother, Woodward, designed the State House grounds, completed in 1904. Enhancing its monumentality, the building sits atop a terraced earthen platform bounded by Francis and Gaspee Streets. At the building’s north and south entrances, rectangular paved areas of red brick and white marble enhance its axial symmetry. The southern rectangle borders three parallel rows of brick pathways aligned with the building’s entrance, framed by allées of trees, likely added in the 1960s. The Rhode Island State House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.

Aerial photograph of the State House grounds, looking north, Providence, R.I., Circa 1920. Image courtesy of Providence Public Library.

The landscape has undergone several modifications since the 1930s, including an expansion of the parking lot adjacent to the building’s northeast corner. The most radical changes to the landscape came in 1986 when a train station, replacing one located farther south, was built on the southeastern border of the State House lawn. The railroad tracks were shifted, Gaspee Street was realigned, and the southern stretch of Francis Street was straightened to create an axial approach to the State House’s southern façade. Three-quarters of an acre were ceded from the State House lawn in the process. To mitigate the loss of acreage, State House Park, just west of the new train station, was added. In 1992 an executive order by then-Governor Bruce Sundlun established a non-profit organization, The Rhode Island State House Restoration Committee, to support the “restoration, preservation, interpretation, betterment and benefit of the Rhode Island State House.”

Post Card depicting “Bird's-eye View from Industrial Trust Building,” Providence, R.I. Image by Tichnor Brothers, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

On June 23, 2017, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) issued a “request for qualifications” (RFQ) for a proposed Providence Intermodal Transportation Center, a public-private partnership to include a transit hub and commercial buildings near the Providence Amtrak station. The plan proposed a new multi-story transit hub to be constructed on the eastern swath of the State House lawn and, possibly, also on the northwestern corner of State House Park. Although the 2017 development proposal could be traced back to the approval of a $25 million bond issue for a new transit hub in 2014, the location of the proposed hub was not specified at the time. Three years later, RIDOT was poised to site the multifaceted development project within a beloved public space.