COMING UP:
Rhody Awards for Historic Preservation
RIHPHC and Preserve Rhode Island are preparing a brand-new Rhody Awards experience. On Sunday, November 15 , we will honor the 2020 winners:
self-guided tour from 1-4pm. Meet selected 2020 Rhody Award winners and visit their properties across the state.
Tickets $50-$150.
Capitol TV broadcast starting at 6pm from the Rhode Island State House.
Free.
Celebrate your favorite historic places and preservation heroes with Rhode Island’s growing preservation community!
TO WIT:
How research guides preservation projects
In 2017, the team renovating the Wit Building (c.1925) in downtown Providence reached out to RIHPHC for images of the original façade. The diminutive commercial building retained hints of its early-20th-century design – including a masonry cornice and a terrazzo threshold – but the upper stories had been completely covered by tile during a mid-20th-century renovation. Period images of the building, which housed long-time department store “Jean’s” from 1934 to 1982, were hard to come by.
Detective work by RIHPHC staff uncovered a 1945 Providence Journal article describing a scale model of downtown that replicated “every window, every skylight…even the color scheme of the area.” A closer look revealed the Wit Building’s original façade and beveled, plate glass storefronts on the upper stories. The discovery guided the recreation of the historic appearance. Historic tax credits enabled the renovation of the Wit, Trayne (1893), and Lapham (1894) buildings, transforming two blocks of Westminster Street.
