The Rhode Island city of Providence has a nearly 400-year history integral to that of the United States, including significance in the American Revolutionary War by providing leadership and fighting strength, quartering troops, and supplying goods to residents by circumventing the blockade of Newport. The city is also noted for the first bloodshed of the American Revolution in the Gaspée Affair. Additionally, Providence is notable for economic shifts, moving from trading to manufacturing. The decline of manufacturing devastated the city during the Great Depression, but the city eventually attained economic recovery through investment of public funds.
Founding and colonial era
Providence was settled in June 1636 by Puritan theologian Roger Williams and grew into one of the original Thirteen Colonies. As a minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams had advocated the separation of church and state and condemned colonists' confiscation of land from Native Americans. He was convicted of sedition and heresy and banished from the colony. Williams and others established a settlement in Rumford, Rhode Island in 1636 on land given to them by the Wampanoag. Soon after settling, the Plymouth Colony warned Williams that he had still not left the bounds of the colony. In response, the group moved down the Seekonk River, around the point now known as Fox Point and up the Providence River to the confluence of the a Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket Rivers. Here they established a new settlement they termed "Providence Plantations," cultivating the community as a refuge for religious dissenters.
For the land, Williams reached a verbal agreement with the sachems Canonicus and Miantonomo—leaders of the indigenous Narragansett inhabitants. This agreement was later formalized in a deed dated March 24, 1638.
Unlike Salem and Boston, Providence lacked a royal charter. The settlers thus organized themselves, allotting tracts on the eastern side of the Providence River in 1638. Roughly six acres each, these home lots extended from Towne Street (now South Main Street) up the eastern hill to Hope Street. The portion of land between Towne Street and the eastern bank of the Providence River was held in common.
Although the settlers were religious (mostly Baptist and other dissenting Puritans), the settlement lacked an official religion; no meeting house was erected in the town until 1700. In the absence of a meeting house, the settlers congregated for religious and civil purposes on the common land adjacent to Roger Williams' home lot and later in the 1646 mill built by John Smith.
Over the following two decades, Providence Plantations grew into a self-sufficient agricultural and fishing settlement, though its lands were difficult to farm and its borders were disputed with Connecticut and Massachusetts. During this period, the original temporary log dwellings built by the first settlers gave way to new clapboard stone-end houses with gabled roofs.
An Indian coalition burned Providence to the ground on March 29, 1676, during King Philip's War, making it one of two major Colonial settlements burned. The only two houses known to have survived the fire are the William Field House and Roger Mowry Tavern, both of which have since been demolished.
After the town was rebuilt, the economy expanded into more industrial and commercial activity. The outer lands of Providence Plantation extending to the Massachusetts and Connecticut borders were incorporated as Scituate, Glocester, and Smithfield, Rhode Island, in 1731. Later, Cranston, Johnston, and North Providence were also carved out of Providence's municipal territory.
In 1700, the first church building was erected in the city—the first meeting house of the First Baptist Church of Providence, established in 1638, on the corner of Smith and North Main Streets.
Colonial administrators in Providence banned the enslavement of black people and Native Americans in 1652 and 1676, respectively. In 1703, the Rhode Island General Assembly overruled the municipal statutes and legalized black and Native slavery throughout the colony. Merchants in Providence supplied sugar plantations in the West Indies with slaves, livestock, dairy products, fish, candles and lumber, and received molasses for rum.J. Stanley Lemons, "Rhode Island and the Slave Trade," Rhode Island History, Nov 2002, Vol. 60 Issue 4, pp 94–104, The trade particularly flourished after 1730, helping to establish the city as a major port. In 1755, enslaved people accounted for 8 percent of Providence's population At the time, enslaved people made up 10% of Rhode Island's population, with higher concentrations in Newport and Narragansett Country, while enslaved population averaged 5% for the northern colonies.
By the 1760s, the population of the city's urban core reached 4,000.
In 1770, Brown University moved to Providence from nearby Warren. At the time, the college was known as Rhode Island College and occupied a single building on College Hill. The college's choice to relocate to Providence as opposed to Newport symbolized a larger shift away from the latter city's commercial and political dominance over the colony.
American Revolution
In 1776, Providence recorded a population of 4,321.
During the 1770s, the British government levied taxes that impeded Providence's maritime, fishing, and agricultural industries, the mainstays of the city's economy. One example was the Sugar Act, which affected Providence's distilleries and its trade in rum. These taxes and other official acts of the British crown caused the Colony of Rhode Island to renounce allegiance to Britain—the first of the Thirteen Colonies to do so. Providence residents were also among the first to spill blood in the American Revolution during the Gaspée Affair in 1772, an act of open defiance that preceded the more famous Boston Tea Party by more than a year.
Providence escaped British occupation during the American Revolutionary War, although the British captured Newport and imposed a blockade that devastated the island's economy.
During the war, American troops were quartered in Providence. Brown University's University Hall was used as a barracks and military hospital for American soldiers, while French troops were quartered in the city's Market House.
Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries
Economic and demographic shifts During the late 18th and early 19th century, the city became a center of the lucrative China Trade. Between 1789 and 1841, Providence was one of America's major ports trading directly with China. During this era, three of the seven US consuls to China came from Providence. Exchange with Canton and the East Indies benefited Providence merchants immensely. With their newly accrued wealth, many members of this merchant class constructed large mansions on College Hill; among these homes are the Nightingale–Brown House (1792) and Corliss–Carrington House (1812). After 1830, Providence's trade shifted to Canada, which supplied the rapidly industrializing city with coal and lumber.
During the early 19th century, the economy began to shift from maritime endeavors to manufacturing—particularly machinery, tools, silverware, jewelry, and textiles. At one time, Providence boasted some of the largest manufacturing plants in the country, including Brown & Sharpe, Nicholson File, and Gorham Manufacturing Company. The city's industries attracted many immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, England, Italy, Portugal, Cape Verde, and French Canada.
These economic and demographic shifts caused social strife. Hard Scrabble and Snow Town were the sites of race riots in 1824 and 1831.
Providence residents ratified a city charter in 1831 as the population passed 17,000.
Seat of government The city government was housed in the Market House from its incorporation as a city in 1832 until 1878. Market House is located in Market Square, which was the geographic and social center of the city. The city offices quickly outgrew this building, and the City Council resolved to create a permanent municipal building in 1845. The city spent the next 30 years searching for a suitable location, resulting in what one historian calls "Providence's Thirty Years War," as the council bickered over where to situate the new building. The city offices moved into the Providence City Hall in 1878.
Jewelry industry During 19th and 20th centuries, the manufacturing of jewelry and costume jewelry emerged as a dominant local industry. Jewelry manufacturing began in Providence in 1794, and by 1880 Rhode Island's jewelry industry accounted for more than one quarter of the entire national jewelry production. By 1890, the city was home to 200 jewelry firms employing 7,000 workers.
During the 1960s, jewelry trade magazines referred to Providence as "the jewelry capital of the world." The industry peaked in 1978 with 32,500 workers, then began a swift decline. By 1996, the number of jewelry workers shrank to 13,500.
During the following decades, the large jewelry factories that had once dominated the city's Jewelry District were closed or vacated. Many of these buildings have since been renovated and repurposed for commercial, retail, residential, and educational use, mirroring the city's broader shift from a manufacturing to service economy.
Late 19th Century
Growth Providence experienced considerable growth during the late 1800s, with immigrants increasing the population from 54,595 in 1865 to 175,597 by 1900.
In 1871, Betsey Williams, the last descendant of Roger Williams, bequeathed 102 acres of land to the city for the development of Roger Williams Park. The elaborately landscaped grounds were designed by Horace Cleveland and intended to serve as an escape for the workers of the industrial, urban center of Providence, in accordance with the ideas of the City Beautiful movement.
By 1890, Providence's Union Railroad had a network which included more than 300 horsecars and 1,515 horses. Two years later, the first electric streetcars were introduced in Providence, and the city soon had an electric streetcar network extending from Crescent Park to Pawtuxet in the south and Pawtucket in the north. According to journalist Mike Stanton, "Providence was one of the richest cities in America in the early 1900s."
Increased population density caused public health problems; in 1854, an epidemic of cholera swept the city. A survey of living conditions conducted by the city discovered unhealthy crowding among immigrants and workers. In one case, 29 people were recorded as living in a single-story house; in another, 47 people shared a two-story home. The survey found 5,780 latrines in the city, of which "fewer than half were emptied annually". 1854 was remembered as "The Year of Cholera" for the next 30 years.
Sole capital
The Rhode Island General Assembly rotated among a number of legislative buildings throughout the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. In 1900, the assembly passed the Article of Amendment XI, making Providence the state's sole capital and the legislature's permanent home. This designation was concurrent with the construction of the Rhode Island State House, which was completed in 1904.
Early 20th century An "industrial wonder" At the start of the 20th century, Providence had grown to become one of the ten largest industrial centers of the United States. Providence ranked first nationally in per capita wealth. Its Board of Trade boasted of what it called the Five Industrial Wonders of the World: Brown & Sharpe, the world's largest tool factory; Nicholson File, the world's largest file factory; American Screw, the world's largest screw factory; Gorham, the world's largest silverware factory; and Corliss, the world's largest engine factory. The city was also first in the nation for production of jewelry and woolen and worsted textiles, and third in production of base metals.