Two New Downtown Hotels - Is This Providence’s Future?
Monday, February 04, 2019
The Society of Architectural Historians will hold their 72nd annual international conference in Providence in April. This is the second time in recent memory that we have hosted the gathering of the world's leading historians and architects in our small capital city.
That the SAH has returned so soon is a tribute to the historical and architectural richness of Providence. As a group, architectural historians are obsessed with looking at the buildings of the host city. While much of the conference will consist of lectures and dinners in the Convention Center, the star of the four-day visit will be Providence itself.
SAH conferences always feature tours, and there will be longer bus trips to places such as Newport, New Bedford, and Cape Cod. But several walking tours will focus on College Hill and downtown Providence. Of the many buildings that will be highlighted, we can be certain that they will not include the two new hotels, the Residence Inn by Marriott and the Homewood Suites by Hilton.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThere is every reason that beautiful or famous hostelries would merit historical interest, as certain hotels can define a city or an era. Our Biltmore probably comes closest to, say, New York's Waldorf Astoria or the St. Francis in San Francisco. But, sad to say, the spanking new hotels in Providence are nothing more than motor inns of the kind you see along the highway near the airport in any American city. These characterless bits of suburban blandness are never going to be significant monuments.
The irony is that Providence needs more hotel rooms. Boutique hotels like the Dean and the Hotel Providence, both in repurposed buildings, have garnered praise in the national media. So our new hotels are to be hailed, but let us not pretend that they are visual additions to the cityscape. They are convenient packages to warehouse visitors: fine places to rest your head, but not fashionable hotels to wax poetic about.
"R.I.'s newest extended stay hotel" is across the street from where the architectural historians will gather. SAHers would be interested to know that the Marriott occupies the site of the Fogarty Building, designed by Castelluci, Galli & Planka in 1967.
With its repetitive waffle-like, pre-fabricated-concrete facade and exposed structural columns, the home of the Rhode Island Department of Human Services was the state's pre-eminent Brutalist-style building. The Fogarty was one of scores of public buildings across America spawned by the dramatic yet controversial Boston City Hall. Ugly duckling or misunderstood radical, the Fogarty was at least an attempt at up-to-date design. The Marriott is just a ho-hum box.
Hoarding around the construction site lists all the contributors to the project, including contactors, engineers, bankers, developers, and so forth. Among the smaller names are the designers, Vision 3 Architects.
The Homewood Suites is marginally better than the Marriott. For one thing, the odd shape of the lot saves its from being an overbearing cube. The designers, ZDS Architecture & Interior Design, mitigated the hotel's 109,000-square foot, eight-story bulk by dividing the facade into three groupings, in a 2-4-2-story sequence, that makes vague reference to a classical column.
(Why do so many new buildings in Providence get wrapped in contact-paper-thin brick panels? Presumably, the brick is an allusion to early American domestic architecture, and the delusion of stability. But it is not easy to make a chunk like this look homey. Isn't it time that our new buildings look more contemporary than cozy 1920s Colonial Revival?)
Homewood Suites architect Eric Zuena of ZDS Architecture & Interior Design hails his work for luxury hotels in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So why didn't Providence get some of that glitz? Perhaps in the $20 million budget for this anywhere-and-everywhere hotel there could have been money for some balconies, a velodrome on the roof, or some details that would enliven the featureless facade.
Again, our visiting architectural historians may be interested to learn that the Homewood Suites was built on the site of the 1890 Central Fire Station, a major landmark. Neighbors to the new hotel include the 1908 Federal Building and Union Station. Imagine if the Hilton folks had attempted to compete with this august company by adding some drama, color, or texture to counter the corporate motel template.
Central Fire Station and the Federal Building and Post Office
So, let us welcome several hundred hotel rooms that will make this destination city a bit more accommodating. Also, we can congratulate the developers and city boosters who made them happen. But the uninspiring appearance of this pair of hotels reminds us that creating a livable city requires more than real estate parametrics. The Creative Capital has a responsibility to create hotels that will contribute to the special physical presence of Providence and that will entice visitors to return.
Providence-based architecture writer Will Morgan is an occasional contributor to GoLocalProvidence. He is the author of several books, including Yankee Modern and Monadnock Summer.
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