Market House Square, 1840s.

Circa, early 1900s.

Circa, 1930s.

Circa, 1930s.

Circa, late 1940s.

January, 1976.

March, 1976.

June, 2007.

Current Massachusetts GIS/Google Earth aerial photo.

A wider shot showing the general area of the revitalized Providence waterfront and the WaterFire display. Market House is in the distance on the right.

For Part One of my series on Providence, RI, I am focusing on a single area which is called Market Square to highlight the changes that have occurred over the last two centuries. The image progression begins in the 1840s and ends in the present. Market House which is a constant in all of these has changed in its use from a center of commerce in the early days to one of the academic buildings of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) since the 1940s.

There is a plaque on Market House that commemorates Providence's Tea Party which took place before the more famous Boston Tea Party.

It was in Market House that I spent the bulk of my sophomore, junior and senior years in the graphic design department, so it's one of the buildings I know the most about. Back in the 1970s when I was a student, there were plans already in existence, some created by RISD architecture students, that showed how Providence's waterfront could be opened up and made into an attractive centerpiece of downtown. It wouldn't be until the early 1990s when these ideas came into reality.

The WaterFire installation along the river has become a major attraction for the city starting in 1995. I will be discussing more about the changes to the waterfront in future posts.