Festival of Historic Houses Returns this June!

Prospect Street & Monohasset Mill 

June 7, 8, & 9

2013 Festival of Historic Houses Gallery (Click to open)

PPS is showing visitors the architectural examples that make Providence unique, and their owners are inviting you to come inside and see these remarkable spaces! Click here to purchase tickets!

Friday, June 7 , 6 pm to 9 pm. Two hosts/owners of neighboring homes on Prospect Street will give a progressive cocktail reception to kick off the festival weekend. The restored Greek Revival Burgess-Nightingale House, and, across the street, the Stephen O. Metcalf Carriage House (now remodeled as a private home), will be the settings for this party. Tickets are limited. Portions of these homes, which are also being shown on Saturday's tour of Prospect Street, will be open exclusively to cocktail party guests.

Saturday's House Tour 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., will commence at the landmark First Church of Christ Scientist, surmounted by its majestic dome at 71 Prospect Street. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the building, unchanged since its construction. To celebrate, the 100 year old organ will be played by organist Peter Krasinski during the first half-hour of the tour; later visitors will have an opportunity to view "behind-the-scenes" workings of this organ.

On Sunday, the festival continues across town from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., centered on Monohasset Mill and recent developments in the Valley district. The owners, artists, and artisans who live and work in the adapted spaces of Monohasset Mill are proudly opening their units to share with our visitors, with over a dozen "MonoMill" units open to the public. In the courtyard and in the adjacent Steel Yard, food trucks will provide food and drinks. There will be an added opportunity to visit the nearby Box Office for a chance to see inside this remarkable adaptation of shipping containers into a multi-story office complex.

For additional information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Join PPS this Thursday for Christina Bevilacqua & "Marcel Proust, Quarryman"

Paris' iconic Champs-Elysees, a setting in Proust's In Search of Lost Time, c. 1900. PPS Kicks off National Preservation Month this Thursday, May 2, with a lecture by the Providence Athenaeum's Christina Bevilacqua at the Governor Henry Lippitt House. The lecture, "Marcel Proust, Quarryman," will explore Proust's understanding of architecture in In Search of Lost Time. There will be a reception at 5:30 pm, followed by the presentation at 6:00.

"The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years." - Marcel Proust

The sentences that characterize Marcel Proust's great work À la recherche du temps perdu may be circuitous, but no attentive reader would mistake their seeming indirection for insubstantiality. He used them to expose that invisible agent, Time, by tracing its passage across our undeniably - yet not exclusively - tangible world of faces, bodies, buildings, and landscapes. For Proust, architecture embodies and exhibits the past in the present, reminding us that every city is both real and imaginary at once, and that whether from near or far, we must explore and re-explore every corner and moment.

Free for Athenaeum, PPS, and PRI Members! Click here for more information and to register!

Step Up for Knight with the Providence Community Library

Help Preserve an Architectural Treasure and Our Community's Access to Knowledge

Thursday, May 9, 6-8 pm
Knight Memorial Library
275 Elmwood Avenue

This event will feature tours of the library, a presentation by Rhode Island Poet Laureate Rick Benjamin, a special Sponsor-A-Step Auction, and a Live Auction. All proceeds will go toward repairs to Knight Memorial Library.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit the Providence Community Library website by clicking here. 

PPS Presents "Living on the Edge: Life at Roy Carpenter's Beach"

Join us THIS THURSDAY, April 25, 2013, for a presentation by photographer Kathie Florsheim, R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council geologist Janet Freedman, architect/planner Kenneth Filarski, and URI landscape architecture professor Angelo Simeone that examines the future of one iconic Rhode Island beach community. The project Living on the Edge explores Roy Carpenter's Beach, in Matunuck, R.I., as a model for understanding how a coastal community will be affected by storm damage and sea level rise.

Free for PPS and Preserve Rhode Island members; $10 for non-members.

Register online by clicking here!

Please call 401-831-7440 or email for more information.

What Makes a Great Building? with Donald Powers 

Thursday, April 4  

Free for PPS and Preserve Rhode Island members! 

This Thursday at Lippitt House, PPS will continue the What Makes a Great Building? series with architect Donald Powers, Founding Partner at Union Studio. The series, which began in 2012, gives local architects the chance to discuss notable Providence buildings they admire alongside examples of their own design.

Mr. Powers has over 23 years of experience in all aspects of architectural practice, including urban and town-planning, multi-family housing, commercial and institutional buildings, adaptive re-use and single-family residences. Through a longstanding commitment to the principles of The New Urbanism, Donald has integrated mixed-use planning and architectural design with the goal of creating diverse, walkable and vibrant neighborhoods, furthering his single-minded vision to save the world from sprawl.

5:30 pm - Reception
6:00 pm - Presentation

Governor Henry Lippitt House
199 Hope Street 

Click here to purchase tickets. 

The Winter Bash! - March 23, 2013

Mark your calendars, because this year's Bash will be held on the evening of Saturday, March 23, 2013, 8 pm - 12 am. Every year, PPS holds the Bash to inject some fun and vitality into the long months following the holidays. This year's Bash will give us a chance to take a sneak-peek inside a the Providence G renovation of the Providence Gas Company building!

Click here for more details!

GRANT FROM THE CHAMPLIN FOUNDATIONS SECURES THE FUTURE OF HISTORIC 1769 BRICK SCHOOL HOUSE

The Providence Preservation Society (PPS) is pleased to announce that we have received a grant in the amount of $341,500 from The Champlin Foundations to fund the Society’s acquisition of the historic Brick School House at 24 Meeting Street from the City of Providence. Built in 1769, the Brick School House is one of only a handful of remaining 18th-century buildings in Providence. With the neighboring 1772 John Carter House (known as Shakespeare’s Head) and the 1762 Old State House, the Brick School House comprises a rare visible memory of what was the civic center of colonial Providence. The acquisition is a key part of a plan to launch a much needed historic restoration of the exterior, and structural stabilization of the building. Working with a team including Ed Wojcik Architect, Ltd., Peter Borgemeister, Architect, and the landscape architects Searle and Searle, PPS has begun an adaptive re-use plan for the property as a Center for Preservation Education, including a new home for the Society’s important preservation library and archive. The plans also foresee a fully accessible meeting room which will allow an enhanced role as a community resource. Since 1960, PPS has leased the building from the City of Providence, and during its long stewardship has already invested nearly $250, 000 in earlier capital improvements in the property. Earlier this year PPS received a $14,400 matching grant from the 1772 Foundation to support the restoration of the School House roof.

In awarding this grant, The Champlin Foundations is continuing their support of the Preservation Society’s mission to preserve and enhance the built environment of Providence. “Throughout 50 years of occupancy and stewardship, PPS has worked to retain the character of the historically significant Brick School House,” says PPS Executive Director James Brayton Hall. “By receiving the funds to purchase the building from The Champlin Foundations, we can make this historic structure a safe, accessible, and available resource for the City of Providence. We are extremely grateful to The Champlin Foundations for this very significant show of confidence in the relevance of our mission, and our organizational capacity.”

2012 Ten Most Endangered Properties Photography Exhibit

Opening Reception, November 8

The Providence Preservation Society’s (PPS) highly acclaimed annual Ten Most Endangered Properties Photography Exhibit will appear November 8 – 29 at the Brick School House located at 24 Meeting Street, Providence. The show features the work of local photographers Jan Armor, Jesse Burke, John Caserta, Michael Cevoli, Stephanie Ewens, Erik Gould, Heidi Gumula, Deborah Hickey, Tim Hiebert, Frank Mullin, and Traer Scott.

An opening reception will be held at the Brick School House, 24 Meeting Street, on Thursday, November 8, 6:00–8:00 p.m. The event and reception are free and open to the public. As part of the reception, the JUMP! Dance Company will be performing at the Brick School House. JUMP! often uses Providence's historic buildings as a backdrop for their performances - as they did this year with the Cathedral of St. John (see below)!

Exhibit is free and open to the public.

Hours: Monday 12– 4 pm; Tuesday & Thursday 12– 2:30 pm; or by appointment. Closed Nov. 12, 21 & 22 

For more information contact PPS at (401)831-7440

PPS would like to thank Jerry's Artarama in Providence for their support of the Most Endangered Properties Photo Exhibit. 

About JUMP!:

Recently named by RI Monthly as a Best in RI for its Dancing in the Streets performances and videos, JUMP! has pioneered site-specific dancing as a means for changing an audience's expectations Often seen in the streets of Providence or at architecturally significant locations, JUMP! dancers tailor each choreography to the particulars of any given location. The result has been a growing body of video dances in which street, monument, park, and all matter of outdoor structures act not only as sets for the dancers but as partners in bold, new choreography.

UVa Speaker Series featuring James Hall, PPS Executive Director

Join the UVa Club of Rhode Island & Southeastern Massachusetts on October 24th at the beautiful Hope Club nestled in the heart of College Hill as Executive Director of the Providence Preservation Society and U.Va. alumnus James Hall (ARCH '83) leads a discussion on the topic "What We've Learned from Benefit Street: Discovering, Preserving and Sustaining a Historic Neighborhood." For more information, click here.

BACK  BY POPULAR DEMAND!

Matthew D. Bird

“A View from the Clouds: the Skyscraper & the Airship”

Tuesday, October 9

6:00 pm – reception 

6:30 pm – presentation

Click here to purchase tickets!

Saturday, October 13th, 2012

Click here to purchase tickets!

PPS 2012 SYMPOSIUM:

NOT ALWAYS PRETTY: BEHIND THE FAÇADE OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION

October 11-13, 2012

PPS’s 2012 Fall Symposium takes a behind-the-scenes look at preservation in Providence, from its complicated early history to how preservation is positioned for the future. Not Always Pretty: Behind the Façade of Historic Preservation in Providence will analyze this movement; revealing motives, capturing untold stories, discussing the underlying forces that have driven preservation, both good and bad, and celebrating what we’ve learned as we look to the future.