Providence’s New Apartments: Wrong Building, Wrong Place –– Architecture Critic Will Morgan

Monday, February 15, 2021

Will Morgan, Architecture Critic

The student apartment block proposed for 155 Chestnut Street in the Jewelry District was a bad idea at first, and little–not even lopping the height from twelve stories to nine–has made it any better. It is an inappropriate and over-scaled turkey. Like the Fane Tower, it is the sort of project that epitomizes the city's failure to understand and capitalize upon its history and to respond sensitively to its many existing urban assets.

The 100-foot-tall glass and steel box is not of itself a bad design, with its crisp, low-key Modernism, but it is hardly anything exceptional. The design firm, Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel Architects of New York, has done many commercial buildings, although they perhaps have a greater concern for saleable square feet than architectural excellence. Given that their 155 Chestnut scheme is an assault on an historic neighborhood, it is ironic that GVK has won awards for some historic preservation projects.

A further irony is that the developers, Pebb Capital ("an opportunistic multi-strategy" investment firm) has other sites nearby where even taller buildings can be built, and where this design would not look as out of place. Weirder still, Pebb is proposing a three-story restaurant for 33 Bassett Street that makes reference to the Jewelry District's industrial heritage.

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But the block bounded by Chestnut, Hospital, Elbow, and Bassett Street is home to a number of historical buildings none of which is taller than two-and-a-half stories.

 

 

Plopping down this unwelcome intruder in one of the human-scaled parts of the Jewelry District is indicative of a planning process that, in Pebb's words, is "value-oriented and cyclically-defensive." Profitability and architectural excellence need not be mutually exclusive, yet Providence gives carte blanche to developers willing to erect bland boxes.

Just because zoning allows a nine-story envelope here does not mean there is a mandate to build one. It doesn't take an urban designer or an astute city watcher to realize that a 100-foot-tower with ninety-five apartments will overpower everything around it, physically, visually, and psychologically. Shadow studies, anyone?

 

 

And, given the tightness of building's footprint (which goes right to the lot line), how will the developers configure a loading dock that will service an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, provided it can navigate Elbow Street? There should be far more creative and rewarding solutions for developing this spot than just inserting an anywhere-and-everywhere developer's risk-adjusted metric.

Granted, the proposed skyscraper's modular construction could be exciting. A modular building can be a real boon to real estate developers because of speed of construction and the ability, according to the modular contractors, Skystone Group, to "provide turnkey, market-leading solutions."

Giant cranes on the skyline are often indicative of a building boom. Of course, we should welcome innovative construction and ways to build better at less cost. This may work for New York City and Miami, but has this type of construction actually been approved for Rhode Island?

There are just not enough positive benefits for the city to offset 155 Chestnut's glaring practical and design shortcomings. The building's backers may make money, but a chunk of an historic neighborhood will callously be destroyed. (Does anyone wonder why the Boca Raton capital firm is investing so heavily in wee Providence? Are we, as Jason Fane proved, an easy mark?)

 

 

Why not some exciting, innovative architecture for what is also called the Innovation District? As envisioned, 155 Chestnut is certainly not worth promising $4,062,631 of taxpayer money in a tax stabilization agreement to the developers. When will Providence stop rewarding developers who are eradicating our history and townscape?

155 Chestnut Street is an example of much of what is wrong in our planning today: It is driven by money for the few, with far too little thought given to lasting design quality, enriching the city, or elevating the commonweal.

 

William Morgan was trained at Dartmouth and Columbia; he has taught at Princeton, Louisville, and Brown. The author of more than a dozen books on architecture, his writing has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

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