William Morgan: Save downtown Providence's centerpiece

The Industrial Trust Co. building is the fulcrum of the Providence skyline.

— Photo by David I. Jacobson

Saving and rehabbing the Industrial Trust Co. Building is crucial to revitalizing downtown Providence. To imagine the city without the nicknamed “Superman Building,’’ is like contemplating Paris without the Eiffel Tower or London without Big Ben, New York without the Empire State Building or Washington without the Capitol.  

Most of the recent discussion of saving the skyscraper, designed by the New York firm of Walker & Gillette and built in 1928, has been about the cost of restoration and who should bear that hefty multimillion-dollar expense. While no small matter, the real issue about preserving and rehabbing Providence’s most prominent urban symbol cannot hinge just on the money. Losing this landmark would be a disaster, one that would cost the city and state immeasurably more than bonded indebtedness or taxpayer pain. It would mean a loss of prestige, optimism, self-confidence and our well-earned reputation as a Renaissance City.        

Aerial view of downtown Providence shows keystone position of Industrial Trust Building.

— Photo by Luis Carranza

The limestone-sheathed Art Deco masterpiece at 55 Kennedy Plaza is simply a landmark that we must not lose. More than any other element of the skyline, with the exception of the State House, the Industrial Trust Building is the identifiable icon of the city.

Not just the tallest, but the most attractive element of the downtown skyline.

— Photo by William Morgan

There are significant architectural and historical considerations that favor preservation, not to mention the benefits of an infusion of new downtown inhabitants. Yet, the key role that the Superman Building plays is as a majestic visual fulcrum – a clearly recognized feature, a compass marker, an urban punctuation point much like the Eiffel Tower.

Eye appeal: lantern detail of the top of the building, designed, among other things, to be a port for dirigibles.

— Photo by William Morgan

Unlike a lot of its newer neighbors, the Industrial Trust Building is an artfully decorated architectural masterpiece, and not a boringly repetitious wall of undifferentiated glass. Not just vertical real estate, its mass diminishes as it reaches for the sky–the work of architects who understood beauty, good proportions, scale and civic aspiration. 

Compare the Superman Building with the 1973 addition to the Hospital Trust Tower, an uninspiring lump of travertine; in half a century the quality of downtown commercial architecture declined visibly.

— Photo by William Morgan

It is irresponsible to declare that the Industrial Trust Building will be razed if the current financing package cannot be agreed upon: this is a structure for which a use and renovation plan must be found. There is no alternative. As Robert Whitcomb argued recently in GoLocal, tearing down this noble identifier and symbol of the city’s once great commercial prowess would send a terrible message to the world. If we cannot afford to restore this treasure, how likely would we be able to fill in the void left by its destruction? Or as one of my urban-planning mentors, Congressman Charles Farnsley, a sponsor of the 1966 Historic Preservation Act, used to say of such urban mauling: This is like a beautiful woman losing a front tooth in a country with no dentists.

Charles Farnsley, mayor of Louisville, Ky., before working with Lyndon Johnson on preservation, had another phrase that is even more haunting: Americans are the only people who bomb their own cities. In a town known as a preservation success story, that’s not a mantle we should want to wear. Rather, we need to be the city that opened the rivers, removed an interstate highway slicing through its heart, and created a vibrant arts scene. If we can do that, we can figure a way to breathe new life into the Industrial Trust Building.

Providence skyline without the Industrial Trust Building.
— Photo by William Morgan

William Morgan is the architecture critic of GoLocalProv.com, as well as a long-time contributor to New England Diary. He’s the author of many books on architecture.

Retrofitting Art Deco buildings ain't cheap

The United Shoe Machinery Building, on Federal Street in Boston's financial district.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Providence’s Industrial Trust Building (aka the Superman Building) might be best used for design studios for Providence’s big art and design community on the first few floors over the ground floor (which could have restaurants and shops), and then apartments and condos and then a restaurant near the top. If none of these soon become economically plausible, then tear the damn thing down; it’s starting to fall apart. The building is probably too clunky and outdated (with its step-backs) to lurea big company.

Of course, if Providence were as rich as Boston, there would be enough money around to retrofit the mini-skyscraper as well as was done at the great art deco United Shoe Machinery Building in downtown Boston.

Robert Whitcomb: Open woods; the aim is merely fame; Art Deco challenge

A version of this first ran in the Digital Diary feature on GoLocalProv.com.

The other week, as I drove through miles of woodsin inland southern New England where caterpillars had consumed the leaves of so many trees, I thanked God that no one has suggested spraying to kill the creatures. You hear enough about massive spraying campaigns to kill mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.

The trouble with these campaigns is that they kill a lot more than the targeted culprits. They kill, for example, bees, which we need for pollination of our crops,  as well as birds, fish and many other creatures.

The trees will come back without chemical bombing. For now, we can enjoy the eerie sight of midsummer woods looking like November’s.

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In picking Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump has shown yet again that he really doesn’t have any “policies.’’ His only real apparent interest is maintaining himself as a “winner’’ and Mr. Pence might help.

Mr. Pence’s support for “free-trade’’ agreements that have helped kill jobs and lower wages in the U.S.; his backing for open immigration (which also cuts U.S. wages), and his evangelical  Christian views don’t jibe with Mr.  Trump’s rhetoric or behavior.

Mr. Trump has two main issues:  Crack down on “free trade’’ and on immigration. On the latter, he wants to kick out 11 million illegals, build a “wall’’ on the Mexican border and make it tough for Muslims to enter America. Operational details to come.

Maybe.

The governor has also been a loyal servant of the Koch Brothers and other very rich  people.  For a time, Mr. Trump made  vague populist noises about the need to reduce the power of  Wall Street big shots and Washington lobbyists but that has gone away as he realizes the Republican reality. The public has less and less patience with details anyway, and citizens rarely remember what a candidate said a few months back.

Judging by how he has conducted his business and much of his personal life, The Donald would rank high up on most metrics of, to be polite, ‘’amorality’’.

But that matters little in the Reality TV and Twitter age, even to the Boy Scouty Mr. Pence, who has decided to try to ride the Trumpmobile back to Washington, where he was an ineffective, if pleasant, congressman promoting the usual collection of Tea Party and supply-side nostrums that,  although having been tried for much of the past few decades, do not seem to have ushered in a golden age for the middle class.

Anyway, the aim is fame. Isuspect that Donald Trump originally ran for president  simply to keep himself and his businesses in the news. He may have been surprised that his incoherent, virtually detail-freebut entertainingly demagogic primary campaign did as well as it did. And this pathological liar and con man will get a lot of votes in November from people who won’t admit their choice to their neighbors. As for Mike Pence,  he knows that there’s a good chance that a vice president can become president.

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People tend not to like Hillary Clinton because she has told some self-protective lies; because she has a reputation for extreme secretiveness; because she seems to feel herself privileged to make her own rules (but not as much as Donald Trump), and because she and her husband have made a fortune by mingling/cross-self-promoting government work, “nonprofit’’ work and for-profit work (especially by being paid vast sums to speak to companies and other special-interest groups).  And, as unfair as it is, a lot of people find her voice grating.

Not surprisingly, she generally avoids press conferences. But she could do herself a big favor by holding a long press conference in which she takes any questions. She could, for example, elaborate more on why she used a private server to conduct top-secret discussions by email and  also explain the mysterious workings of the Clinton Foundation. Such a forum might help lance the boil of public distrust, if not dislike.

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David Sweetser, whose High Rock Development owns the Industrial Trust Building,  in downtown Providence, is smart to have arranged for public tours of the Art Deco skyscraper to be offered over the next couple of months to, he hopes, get people excited/intrigued enough to rent there (or buy the whole place).

It’s a gorgeous structure, although, of course, fading. The model in New England of how to retrofit such a stepped-back Art Deco building is the gold-topped United Shoe Machinery Building, on Federal Street in downtown Boston, which is now fixed up and full. But it’s  usually a lot cheaper to tear down an old building and put in a cheap utilitarian replacement than to save it.  And there’s much more money in Boston than in Providence. But hang in there, Mr. Sweetser!

Robert Whitcomb is the overseer of New England Diary.