Architecture Here and There

Illustration: The Weybosset Street end of the Providence Arcade (Photo by David Brussat)

RHODE ISLAND is the nation's smallest state, and just as clearly the oddest state. Rhode Island probably leads America in the number of books per capita poking gentle fun at itself.

Latest in the collection is Rhode Island 101: Everything You Wanted to Know About Rhode Island and Were Going to Ask Anyway, by Tim Lehnert, published in June. It follows on the heels of Rhode Island Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff (2007), by Seth Brown, and You Know You're In Rhode Island When . . . (2006), by Ryder Windham.

Books of like interest include guides for travelers, foodies, hikers and bikers, history and architecture buffs, or collections of old photos or postcards. My bookshelves groan under the weight of their guilty pleasure, and curmudgeons like me enjoy trolling through them, hunting for typical errors.

For example, to borrow a phrase, you know you are a Rhode Islander if you cringe when someone says the Providence Arcade was the first shopping mall in America. No, it's the oldest shopping mall in the nation. At least it was until its owner shut it last year. Let's hope there's something like a Five-Second Rule (about dropped food) that would let us reclaim our lost dibs on the nation's oldest shopping mall if it reopens soon as a collection of shops. If not, we may lose that point of pride to Watertown, N.Y., whose Paddock Arcade opened in 1850. It has already claimed the distinction on Wikipedia.

(The nation's first shopping mall was the Philadelphia Arcade, built in 1827 and razed in 1860.)

Windham's You Know You're In Rhode Island When gets the Arcade right, which, while laudable, offers little grist for critical mastication.

Brown's Curiosities calls the Arcade the oldest but also the first. Brown is a poet and the author of epic verse railleries on The Journal's commentary pages while a student at Williams in the '90s. Wit runs riot through his book. Literary license imbibed at Williams may be to blame for his embrace of both the "oldest" and "first" Arcade distinctions. Who really cares when you're having so much fun!

Lehnert's book gets it right on the Arcade in part because he called upon me to list the state's five best and worst buildings. The Arcade is No. 2 on the best list, and I didn't miss a beat in calling it the nation's "oldest (not first) indoor shopping mall." The Arcade follows the State House, and is followed by the Industrial Trust, the Providence County Courthouse and Providence Place mall. The worst buildings are entirely predictable: GTECH, Old Stone Square, the RISD Chace Center, Broadcast House (now Johnson & Wales's library) and the Howard Building (at the southwest corner of Kennedy Plaza).

Lehnert let one of his contributors (me) get away with selecting only Providence buildings as the best and worst in the state. Such manners! What about Newport's Redwood Library? What about the CCRI campus in Warwick? Lehnert got me off the hook by giving both of them "outside Providence" honorable and dishonorable mentions (respectively).

Nobody that I know has criticized Lehnert for including in his book a list whose best buildings are all traditional and worst are all modernist. And they'd better not! After all, the facts are the facts.

Unlike the other two, Lehnert's book is less a look at particular oddities of the state than at the overall oddness of its history, its geography, its climate, its population, its culture and its politics. The collection of exiled founders, the burning of the Gaspee, our early declaration of independence from Britain, our boycott of the Constitutional Convention, the Dorr War, the Bloodless Revolution, H.P. Lovecraft, the rise of the state's top mob lawyer to be its chief justice, the Haven Bros.' diner next to Providence City Hall, the rise and fall and the rise and fall of Buddy Cianci . . . such a book could not have been written about any other state. Rhode Island 101 may pose as a basic primer of the Ocean State, but it pokes into corners of history, and nibbles on doodles of contemporary culture, that validate our oddness. Even the hoariest of historians will be repeatedly startled and amused by the contents of this book.

Such as: "In 1698, Block Island was captured and looted by French privateers, and Colony soldiers were dispatched from Newport to repel the invaders. The French fled following a two-hour battle."

Who knew? That only scratches the surface of what I read that was new to me -- some of which I figured must be erroneous but which turned out to be merely odd. Part of this strangeness is inherited from Rhode Island's founders, who turned religious liberty into a mutual disagreeability pact. Cram all of this into the smallest state and what you get might be fairly described as predictable. "It's just as you expected: Rhode Island's got issues" reads a July 13 Journal story on a British study that tags Rhode Island as the second most neurotic state (after West Virginia). Well, that just sums up what's in the paper every day. Tim Lehnert's Rhode Island 101 merely puts it all in a handy nutshell.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board (dbrussat@projo.com). His projo.com blog is called Architecture Here and There.

 Tags  Curiosities Providence RI Rhode Island Rhode Island 101 Seth Brown Tim Lehnert

Comments

Please be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity are not allowed. Name and email are required; email address will not publish.

T.R. CATANZARITE said:

WELL, BRUSSAT - It's a nice article, but - and I hate to be the first to tell you this - Rhode Island is no longer funny or quaint or odd or cute. All that you talk about is old hat. RI has become dull and boring and altogether a miserable place, and why thousands have moved out. The Arcade is gone, the Fogarty Building will eventually be torn down, the section of Washington St. with that Japanese Restaurant, Talk of the Town, and the Cuban Revolution (that used to be an inexpensive coffee shop)was razed, and to be replaced by a Sierra Suites Motel, the Journal building is for sale, and maybe empty for a long time before it finds another tenant. (The downtown has more Dunkin' Donut shops than anything else.) And, further, for a state that supposedly likes its icons, I could never understand why it let Rocky Point go, and not even save the Shore Hall. What you discuss is a Providence and a Rhode Island of past times that ended in the 1970s or early 1980s. No one is interested anymore. RI is ready for an experiment involving ekistics, the only thing that would help it,---and that would take a generation. I personally think that what killed the state was that we are now in the 15th year of Republican governorship, and where the dominant Democrat General Assembly is afraid to cooperate with a Republican governor for fear of getting blind-sided politically. The state needs a Democrat governor with whom the GA will cooperate. PEOPLE HAVE STOPPED LAUGHING ABOUT RHODE ISLAND AND LAUGH AT IT! TRC

Link | August 21, 2009 2:02 PM
Report Abuse

---

David Brussat said:

T.R. - You are what is known as a "glass quarter empty" man - who exults at the quarter that is empty by ignoring the three quarters that are full. It's not a matter of interpretation as in the case of "glass half empty/glass half full." Rhode Island remains a strange state in spite of its problems, some of which you have identified, and some of which I have addressed in my column, mostly over and over again. Your angst sounds more partisan than otherwise in motivation, but you are free to see it as you like.

Link | August 21, 2009 2:12 PM
Report Abuse

---

David Brussat said:

T.R. - You are what is known as a "glass quarter empty" man - who exults at the quarter that is empty by ignoring the three quarters that are full. It's not a matter of interpretation as in the case of "glass half empty/glass half full." Rhode Island remains a strange state in spite of its problems, some of which you have identified, and some of which I have addressed in my column, mostly over and over again. Your angst sounds more partisan than otherwise in motivation, but you are free to see it as you like.

Link | August 21, 2009 2:14 PM
Report Abuse

---

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.