Proposed College Hill Hotel is Anything But Smart: Architecture Critic Will Morgan
Monday, October 07, 2019
It is hard to imagine any less attractive or more unappealing development scheme for College Hill than the proposed hotel for the corner of Angell and Brook Streets on College Hill.
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To be sure, the grim, tenement-like apartment block nearby at 257 Thayer Street comes close.
What ties together both follies of ill-advised city planning are that they are predicated upon the destruction of the very kind of historic and residential properties that give the neighborhood its human scale and its charm.
Brook Street is also the site of a building-site-in-waiting parking lot for which Brown University demolished half a dozen Victorian houses a few summers ago.
One is, alas, reminded of the Army colonel during the Vietnam War who declared "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Smart Hotels, the decade-old, Ohio-based company favor sites near "generally top-rated universities."
As President Ed Small notes, some of the desirable towns and cities do "not have hotels that were representative of the institutions they were serving."
The Smart hotel scheme for Providence is so visually blind to its surrounding neighborhood one wonders if Smith spent any time looking around College Hill.
The physical appeal of College Hill–its townscape and unparalleled collection of domestic architecture–is what makes it among the most beautiful neighborhoods in America.
Could anyone doubt that this glorious setting contributes greatly to the reputations of Brown and RISD?
What makes College Hill so special is the way that the two schools are integrated within the very fabric of early Providence.
The threatened houses make this case.
The large one on the corner is French Second Empire, the one in the middle is a Georgian Revival house, while the other is a well-preserved 1892 example of the Queen Anne style.
Despite Mr. Small's declaration that his will a "boutique hotel," it is just another everywhere-and-anywhere outsized motel, more suited to suburban Omaha than historic College Hill.
The architects are ZDS Architecture & Interior Design, whose principal Eric Zuena cut his teeth on hotels in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.
His Homewood Suites downtown is not aggressively bad, it just adds nothing of note to our urbanscape.
The exceptional treasure that is College Hill requires a special responsibility of stewardship for all of us, whether residents, students, educators, businessmen, or developers.
The Vedanta Society, just east of the three marked houses, occupies a stately Greek Revival house.
When it was enlarged a few years ago, the former dean of architecture at Roger Williams University designed a contemporary block, but one that sensitively echoes the proportions of the parent structure.
Smart Hotels' Small's claims to be a preservationist and that he is a proponent of adaptive reuse.
If so, he should consider saving the three houses and imaginatively developing them as the centerpiece of hotel that really would enhance his chain's reputation and be a worthy addition to College Hill.
William Morgan is the author of the Abrams Guide to American House Styles; he served as Chairman of the Kentucky Historic Preservation Review Board for fifteen years.
Editor's Note: An earlier version referred to Smart Hotel's Ed Small and Ed Smith. We apologize for the error.
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