From This Old House

The Armory District has ranked number 9 in This Old Houses’ Best Places in NE to Buy an Old House list.

Rocky Point Memories Contest

Rocky Point Amusement Park operated on the shore of Narragansett Bay in Warwick from the late 1840s until its closing in 1995. During those decades generations of Rhode Islanders swam in the salt water pool, screamed themselves hoarse on the Freefall, spun around on the circa 1915 Herschell-Spillman carousel, clung tightly to their dates inside the House of Horrors, bobbed their heads at their first Rock ‘n’ Roll concert, and threw clamcakes to the gulls from the pier outside the World’s Largest Shore Dinner Hall. When the park went out of business we lost more than just a few creaky carnival rides, we lost a cultural touchpoint, a shared community experience that was a big part of the Ocean State’s cultural identity.

What’s your favorite Rocky Point memory? Tell us your best story and you may win two free tickets to Food For Thought on the Coastal Wine Trail, taking place September 25th at the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center! This event showcases Little Rhody’s rich, international flavors by pairing diverse food samples from thirty local independent restaurants with wines from seven local vineyards. There will be live music, entertainment, raffles, and auctions.

Entries should be 500 words or fewer, and will be judged on how well they convey a sense of what Rocky Point meant to you, the writer.

While only the entry judged to be the best will receive the two free tickets to the Food For Thought on the Coastal Wine Trail event, all entries will be eligible to appear on a new Quahog.org page devoted to Rocky Point memories, similar in style to our Blizzard of ‘78 and Salty Brine pages.

Please send submissions to stuffie@quahog.org by Friday, September 19, 2008. The winner will be notified via email by Monday, September 22.

Good luck!

Monohasett Woolen Mill

The photo to the left by P.H. Rose shows a view from the south of the Monohasett Woolen Mill, circa 1890. The mill was (and still is) located at the corner of Eagle Street and Kinsley Avenue in Providence.

The mill was established in 1866 by a couple of guys named Paine and Sackett. The main building, according to “Providence Industrial Sites,” published by the Rhode Island Historical Heritage and Preservation Commission (1981), is “a four-story, brick structure with granite trim, a flank-gambrel roof, and a five-story, flat-top tower which originally had a steep hip roof. [This main structure originally] contained the engine room, boiler room, drying room, and packing room. The tower contained stairways, dressing rooms, and an elevator. The two-story, hip-roofed, brick building contained wool shops and more boiler and engine rooms. The Monohasset Mill specialized in the production of fancy cassimers and was known during its twenty-one years in operation as one of the best woolen manufacturers in the country.” The architect was J.C. Bucklin. Read more

You say you want a revolution. Well, you know…

The Arcade

This is where it all began. The Arcade is the country’s oldest indoor shopping mall. Built entirely of granite in 1828 (when Providence’s population numbered only 14,000), it was the first commercial venture established on the west side of the Providence River.

The 216-foot structure, which fronts on both Westminster and Weybosset Streets, was originally owned by two separate groups whose architects argued over the building’s design. This resulted in a structure with mismatched entrances: The Weybosset Street entrance is topped off by a stepped parapet, while the Westminster Street side is topped by a pediment. The Arcade’s twelve massive 21-foot granite columns, which were quarried in Johnston and dragged to the construction site by a team of 30 oxen, were the largest monolithic columns in the country at the time, weighing in at 13 tons a piece. The total cost of the building was $145,000 ($2,128,100 in today’s money – cheap!).

The building was once named by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as one of the finest commercial buildings in the history of American architecture, and it has also been designated a National Historic Landmark. In addition to its impressive exterior, it boasts a huge glass skylight, supported by wooden beams, that runs the length of the building and floods the open area between the three floors with natural light. Shops on the second and third levels are connected by long, open balconies overlooking the ground-floor. The building has survived a fire, three hurricanes, the threat of demolition, and a $3 million refurbishment.

Incidentally, Cleveland, Ohio’s Old Arcade (1894), Seattle, Washington’s Northgate Mall (1950), Appleton, Wisconsin’s Valley Fair shopping mall (1954), and Edina, Minnesota’s Southdale Center (1958) all claim to be the country’s oldest/first indoor/enclosed shopping mall. Losers.