Providence is the capital and the most populous city of
the U.S. state of Rhode Island
, and one of the first cities established in the
United States. Located in Providence
County
, it is the estimated second or third largest city
in the New
England
region. Despite the city proper only having an
estimated population of 171,557 as of 2008, it anchors the 36th largest
metropolitan population
in the country, with an estimated MSA population of 1,600,856,
exceeding that of Rhode Island by about 60% due to its reaching
into southern Massachusetts
. Situated at the mouth of the Providence River, at the head of Narragansett
Bay
, the city's small footprint is crisscrossed by
seemingly erratic streets and contains a rapidly changing
demographic.
Providence was founded in 1636 by
Roger Williams, a religious
exile from the
Massachusetts
Bay Colony. He named the area in honor of
"God's merciful Providence" which he
believed was responsible for revealing such a haven for him and his
followers to settle. After being one of the first cities in the
country to industrialize, Providence became noted for its
jewelry and
silverware industry. Today, Providence
city proper alone is home to eight hospitals and seven institutions
of higher learning, which has shifted the city's economy into
service industries, though it still retains significant
manufacturing work.
The city was once nicknamed the "Beehive of Industry" though in
2009, Providence began rebranding itself as the "Creative Capital"
to emphasize its educational resources and arts community. Its
previous moniker was "The Renaissance City", though its 2000
poverty rate was still among the ten highest for cities over
100,000.
History
The area which is now Providence was first settled in June 1636 by
Roger Williams, and was
one of the original
Thirteen
Colonies of the United States. Williams secured a title from
the
Narragansett natives around
this time and gave the city its present name.
Williams also
cultivated Providence as a refuge for persecuted religious
dissenters, as he himself had been exiled from Massachusetts. Providence's growth would be slow during
the next quarter-century—the subsuming of its territory into
surrounding towns, difficulty of farming the land, and differing of
local traditions and land conflicts all slowed development.
Providence in the mid-nineteenth
century
In the mid-1770s, the British government levied taxes that impeded
Providence's maritime, fishing and agricultural industries, the
mainstay of the city's economy. One example was the
Sugar Act, which was a tax levied against
Providence's distilleries that adversely affected its trade in rum
and slaves. These taxes caused Providence to join the other
colonies in renouncing allegiance to the British Crown. In response
to enforcement of unpopular trade laws, Providence residents
spilled the first blood of the American Revolution in the notorious
Gaspée Affair of 1772.
Though
during the Revolutionary War the
city escaped enemy occupation, the capture of nearby Newport
disrupted industry and kept the population on
alert. Troops were quartered for various campaigns
and Brown
University
's University
Hall was used as a barracks and military hospital.
After
departing from Newport, French troops sent by King Louis XVI and commanded by the Comte de
Rochambeau passed through Providence on their way to join the
attack against British forces. The march from Newport
to Providence was the beginning of a campaign led jointly by
General George Washington in a
decisive
march that ended with the defeat of General Cornwallis in the Siege of Yorktown at Yorktown,
Virginia
and the Battle
of the Chesapeake.
NPS map of the W3R Route
Providence in the mid-20th
century
Following the war, the economy shifted from maritime endeavors to
manufacturing, particularly machinery, tools, silverware, jewelry
and textiles. At one time, Providence boasted some of the largest
manufacturing plants in the country, including
Brown & Sharpe, Nicholson File, and
Gorham Silverware, and
with 7,614 people, was the
country's
ninth-largest city. The city's industries attracted many
immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, England, Italy, Portugal,
Cape Verde, and French Canada. Economic and demographic shifts
caused social strife, notably with a series of race riots between
whites and blacks during the 1820s. In response to these troubles
and the economic growth, Providence residents ratified a city
charter in 1831 as the population passed 17,000.
During the
Civil War, local
politics split over slavery as many had ties to Southern cotton.
Despite ambivalence concerning the war, the number of military
volunteers routinely exceeded quota, and the city's manufacturing
proved invaluable to the Union. Postwar,
horsecar lines covering the city enabled its growth
and Providence thrived with waves of immigrants and land
annexations bringing the population from 54,595 in 1865 to 175,597
by 1900.
The city's boom began to wane in the mid-1920s as industries,
notably textiles, shut down. Jewelry manufacturing continued to
grow, taking up the slack and employing many of the city's new
immigrants, coming from Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian and
Jewish backgrounds. A number of hospitals also opened. The
Great Depression hit the city hard, and
Providence's downtown was subsequently flooded by the
New England Hurricane of 1938.
Though the city received a boost from
World
War II, this ended with the war. The city saw further decline
as a result of nation-wide trends, with the construction of
highways and increased suburbanization. The population would drop
by 38% over the next three decades. From the 1950s to the 1980s,
Providence was a notorious bastion of
organized crime. The mafia boss
Raymond L.S. Patriarca ruled a vast criminal
enterprise.
The city's eponymous "Renaissance" began in the 1970s. From 1975
until 1982,
$606 million of
local and national Community Development funds were invested
throughout the city, and the hitherto falling population began to
stabilize.
In the 1990s, Mayor Vincent Cianci, Jr showcased the city's
strength in arts and pushed for further revitalization, ultimately
resulting in the uncovering of the city's natural rivers (which had
been paved over), relocation of a large section of railroad
underground, creation of Waterplace Park
and river walks along the river's banks, and
construction of the Fleet Skating Rink (now the Bank of America
Skating Rink) downtown and the 1.4
million ft² Providence
Place
Mall.
New investment triggered within the city, with
new
construction including numerous condo projects, hotels, and a
new office highrise all filling in the freed space. Despite new
investment, poverty remains an entrenched problem as it does in
most
post-industrial New England
cities. Nearly 30 percent of the city population lives below the
poverty line. Recent increases in real estate values further
exacerbate problems for those at marginal income levels, as
Providence had the highest rise in median housing price of any city
in the United States from 2004 to 2005.
Geography
Providence neighborhoods with major highways shown
The Providence city limits enclose a small geographic region, with
a total area of 20.5 square miles (53.2 km²).
18.5 square miles (47.8 km²) of it is land and the
remaining 2.1 square miles (5.3 km²) (roughly 10%) of it
is water.
Providence is located at the head of
Narragansett
Bay, with the Providence
River running into the bay through the center of the city,
formed by the confluence of the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket Rivers.
The
Waterplace
Park amphitheater and riverwalks line the river's banks
through downtown.
Constitution Hill (near downtown), College (or Prospect) Hill (east
of the Providence River), and Federal Hill (west of downtown and is
New England's largest Italian district) are the most prominent of
the city's hills.
The remaining hills include Tockwotten Hill
at Fox Point
, Smith Hill (where the State House is located),
Christian Hill at Hoyle Square (junction of Cranston &
Westminster Streets), and Weybosset Hill at the lower end of
Weybosset Street, which was leveled in the early
1880s.
Neighborhoods
The Providence skyline viewed from
College Hill
Providence has 25 official neighborhoods, though these
neighborhoods are often grouped together and referred to
collectively:You think this will help you when you need something I
think not. lol=The Providence Plan |year=2007
|accessdate=2007-01-31}}
- The North End is formed by the combination of the neighborhoods
of Charles and
Wanskuck.
- West Broadway is an officially recognized neighborhood with its
own association. It overlaps with the southern half of Federal Hill and the
northern part of the West End.
Cityscape
Perspective of Westminster
Street
The city of Providence is geographically very compact,
characteristic of
eastern seaboard cities
which developed prior to use of the automobile. It is among the
most
densely populated cities in the country. For this reason,
Providence has the
eighth-highest
percentage of pedestrian commuters. The street layout is
somewhat chaotic—over one thousand streets (a great number for the
city's size) run haphazardly, connecting and radiating from
traditionally bustling places like
Market Square.
Downtown Providence has numerous 19th century mercantile buildings
in the
Federal and
Victorian architectural styles, as well as several post-modern and
modernist buildings, are located throughout this area. In
particular, a fairly clear spatial separation appears between the
areas of pre-1980s development and post-1980s development. West
Exchange Street and Exchange Terrace serve as rough boundaries
between the two.
The newer
area, sometimes called "Capitol Center", includes Providence
Place Mall
(1999), a Westin hotel
(1993) and The Residences at the Westin
(2007), GTECH (2006), Waterplace
condominiums (2007), and Waterplace Park (1994); the area tends toward newer development
since much of it is land reclaimed in the 1970s from a mass of
railroad tracks which was referred to colloquially as the "Chinese
Wall". This part of Downtown is characterized by open
spaces, wide roads, and intent landscaping.
The historic part of downtown has many streetscapes that look as
they did eighty years ago. Many of the state's tallest buildings
are found here. The
largest structure,
to date, is the art-deco-styled former Industrial Trust Tower,
currently the
Bank of
America Building at 426 feet (130 m).
By contrast, nearby
to it is the second tallest One Financial Plaza
, designed in modern taut-skin cladding, constructed
a half century later. In between the two is 50 Kennedy
Plaza
. The Textron Tower
is also a core building to the modest Providence
skyline. Downtown is also the home of the Providence
Biltmore
and Westminster Arcade
, the oldest enclosed shopping mall in the U.S.,
built in 1828.
The city's southern waterfront, away from the downtown core, is the
location of many oil tanks, a docking station for a ferry boat, a
decommissioned Russian submarine, a non-profit sailing center,
bars, strip clubs, and power plants.
The Fox Point
Hurricane Barrier
is also found here, built to protect Providence
from storm surge, like that it had
endured in the 1938 New
England Hurricane and again in 1954 from Hurricane Carol.
The majority of the cityscape comprises abandoned and revitalized
industrial mills, double and
triple
decker housing (though the
row houses
found so commonly in other Northeast cities, are notably rare
here), a small number of high-rise buildings (predominantly for
housing the elderly), and single family homes.
I-95 serves as a physical
barrier between the city's commercial core and neighborhoods such
as
Federal
Hill and the
West
End.
Climate
Waterplace Park
Providence's climate is between
humid continental climate and
humid subtropical climate,
with warm summers, cold winters, and high humidity year-round.
The
USDA
rates the city at Zone 6a, which is an "in-between"
climate. The influence of the Atlantic
Ocean
keeps Providence, and the rest of the state of
Rhode Island, warmer than many inland locales in New
England. January is the coldest month with average high
temperatures of 37 °
F
(3 °
C) and average low temperatures of
20 °F (-7 °C). July is the warmest month with average high
temperatures of 83 °F (28 °C) and average low temperatures of 64 °F
(18 °C). The record high temperature in the city was 104 °F (40 °C)
recorded in 1975. The record low temperature in the city was -17 °F
(-27 °C) recorded in 1934.
As with the rest of the northeastern seaboard, Providence receives
ample precipitation year-round. Monthly precipitation ranges from a
high of 4.43
inches (112.5 mm) in March
to a low of 3.17 inches (80.5 mm) in July. Precipitation
levels are generally slightly lesser in the summer months than the
winter months when powerful storms known as
Nor'easters can cause significant snowfall and
blizzard conditions.
Although hurricane are not frequent in coastal
New
England, Providence's location at the head of Narragansett
Bay makes it vulnerable to them. According to Forbes.com,
the Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metropolitan area is ranked
30 on America's Most Toxic Cities
Demographics
As of the
census of 2000, the population
comprised 173,618 people, 62,389 households, and 35,859 families.
The
population density was
3,629.4/km² (9,401.7/sq mi), characteristic of comparatively
older cities in New
England such as New Haven
, Connecticut
; Boston
, Massachusetts and Hartford
, Connecticut. Also like these cities, its population
peaked in the 1940s just prior to the nationwide period of rapid
suburbanization.
Providence has had a substantial Italian population since the turn
of the century, with 14% (a plurality ) of the population claiming
Italian ancestry. Italian influence manifests itself in
Providence's Little Italy in
Federal Hill. Irish
immigrants have also had considerable influence on the city's
history, with 8% of residents claiming Irish heritage.
Belying Providence's traditionally white makeup is the sizable
minority presence it has acquired in the last twenty years. Though
nearby cities like Boston and Hartford have longer-standing black
and Latino communities, Providence now surpasses both in the
density of its minority population, with non-Hispanic whites
comprising less than half (40.9%) of the population. Though salient
contributions to this growth have been among Asians and unspecified
races, the most dramatic change comes from Hispanics, whose
presence has increased fivefold.
Having origins in Puerto Rico, Colombia
, Bolivia
, the Dominican Republic
, and Central America
(particularly Guatemala
), Hispanics have strong influence in the
neighborhoods of Elmwood, the West End, and Upper and
Lower
South Providence. Hispanic impact is even larger in the
city's schools. Hispanics represent over half (55%) of all students
in the city's school system while comprising only 36% of
Providence's population.
In
addition, Providence, like the nearby Massachusetts cities of Fall River
and New Bedford
, has a considerable community of immigrants from
various Portuguese-speaking countries,
living mostly in the areas of Washington Park and Fox
Point. Portuguese is the city's third-largest
nationality, (after Italian and Irish) at 4% of the population
while Cape Verdeans make up another 2%.
African American
constitute approximately 17% of the city with the largest
percentages in
Mount Hope and Upper
and Lower South Providence neighborhoods.
Asians are 6% of Providence's population
and have enclaves scattered thoroughout the city. Another 6% of the
city has multiracial ancestry. Native Americans and Pacific
Islanders make up the remaining 1.3%. With Liberians comprising .4%
of the population, the city is home to the one of the three largest
Liberian immigrant populations in the
country.
The
Providence metropolitan
area, which includes Providence, Fall
River, Massachusetts, and Warwick
is estimated to be 1,622,520. In 2006, this
area was officially added to the Boston Combined Statistical Area
(CSA), the
fifth-largest
CSA in the country. In the last fifteen years, Providence has
experienced a sizable growth in its under-18 population, attributed
to the influx of Hispanics. The median age of the city is 28 years,
while the largest age
cohort is
20 to 24 year olds, owing to the city's large student
population.
The
per capita income, as of the
2000 census, was $15,525,
which is well below both the state average of $29,113, and the
national average of $21,587. The median income for a household was
$26,867, and the median income for a family in Providence was
$32,058, according to the 2000 census. The city has one of the
highest rates of poverty in the nation with 29.1% of the population
and 23.9% of families living below the
poverty line in 2000, the largest
concentrations being found in the city's
Olneyville, and Upper
and Lower South Providence areas. Poverty has affected children at
a disproportionately higher rate with 40.1% of those under the age
of 18 living below the poverty line, concentrated particularly west
of
downtown in
the neighborhoods of
Hartford,
Federal Hill, and
Olneyville.
Crime
The rate of violent crime in the city dropped from 2002 to 2007
running contrary to contemporaneous national trends in comparably
sized cities, though it rose 19.5 percent in 2008. Crime overall
was up 12 percent in 2008, for which police implicate cell phone
robberies, gang-related incidents and a poor economy. Police chief
Dean Esserman said that initiatives have been taken and crime in
2009 has dropped as a result. The 11 murders in 2006 was a historic
low, though this rose to 14 in 2007 and 13 in 2008. Averaged over
three years, murders had highest concentrations in Olneyville and
the West End neighborhoods. Of the 239 United States cities with
populations over 100,000, Providence's violent crime rate ranked
84th in 2003, as compared with New York City at 94th and Boston at
28th. Notwithstanding its comparatively low rate of violent crime,
Providence has the fifth-highest rate of property crime per 100,000
inhabitants in the country, which is 50% above the national
average, with car theft in particular at 150% higher.
David Cicilline, mayor since 2002,
is a member of the
Mayors Against Illegal
Guns Coalition, a
bi-partisan group
with the goal of reducing illegal gun ownership.
The Coalition is
co-chaired by Boston
Mayor
Thomas Menino and New York City
Mayor Michael
Bloomberg.
Economy
Providence was one of the first cities to industrialize in the
United States. By 1830, the city had manufacturing industries in
metals, machinery, textiles, jewelry, and silverware. Though
manufacturing has declined, the city is still one of the largest
centers for
jewelry and
silverware design and manufacturing.
Services, particularly education, health care, and finance, also
make up a large portion of the city's economy. Providence also is
the site of a
sectional
center facility, a regional hub for the U.S. Postal Service.
Since it is the capital of Rhode Island, Providence's economy
additionally consists of government services.
Over one third of Providence's economy is based in either trade,
transportation, and utilities, or educational and health
services.
Fortune 500 conglomerate
Textron and Fortune
1000 company Nortek Incorporated are both headquartered in the
city, and
GTECH's world headquarters has
recently been moved to downtown Providence.
Citizens Bank is also headquartered
in Providence. Another company whose origins were in the city is
Fleet Bank.
Once Rhode Island's
largest bank, it moved its headquarters to Boston, Massachusetts, after acquiring Shawmut Bank in 1995.
Before its acquisition by
Bank of
America, Fleet merged with
BankBoston
to become New England's largest commercial bank.
The city is home to the Rhode Island Convention Center, which
opened in December 1993.
Along with a hotel, the convention center is
connected to the Providence Place Mall, a major retail center, through a skywalk. The Port of Providence, the second
largest deepwater
seaport in New England,
handles cargo such as cement, chemicals, heavy machinery,
petroleum, and scrap metal.
Government
Providence serves as Rhode Island's capital,
housing the Rhode Island
General Assembly as well as the offices of the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor in
the Rhode Island
State House
.
Providence's city government has a
mayor-council form of government.
The
Providence City Council
consists of fifteen city councilors, one for each of the city's
wards. The council is tasked with enacting ordinances and passing
an annual budget. Providence also has probate and superior courts.
The
U.S.
District
Court for the District of Rhode Island is located downtown
across from City
Hall
adjacent to Kennedy
Plaza.
David N. Cicilline was elected mayor by a large
margin in 2002 and was re-elected without any major opposition in
2006. Cicilline is the first and only openly
gay
mayor of an American state capital.
Providence was the largest American city
to have an openly gay mayor, until Sam Adams took office in
Portland,
Oregon
on January 1, 2009.
Education
Postsecondary
Hope College and Manning Hall at Brown University
of the fourteen institutions of higher learning in Rhode Island
have campuses in Providence (city proper):
Between these schools the number of postsecondary students is
approximately 44,000, or 25% the population of Providence.
Compounded by Brown University's being the second-largest employer,
higher education exerts a considerable presence in the city's
politics and economy.
Private and charter schools
Several
private schools, including Moses Brown
, the Lincoln School, and the
Wheeler
School
, are in the city's East Side.
LaSalle
Academy
is located in the Elmhurst area of the city near
Providence
College
. The public charter schools
Time Squared Academy (K-12)
and Textron Chamber of Commerce (9-12) are funded by GTECH and
Textron respectively. In addition, the
city's South Side houses Community Preparatory School, a private
school serving primarily low-income students in grades 3-8.Within
the semi-private schools, The Metropolitan Regional Career and
Technical Center (The Met) and The Big Picture Company schools
serve students through real world experiences and project-based
learning. There are two separate centers for students with special
needs.
Public schools
The
Providence Public
School District serves about 26,000 students from
pre-Kindergarten to grade 12. The district has 25 elementary
schools, nine middle schools, and thirteen high schools. The
Providence Public School District features
magnet schools at the middle and high school
level, Nathanael Greene and
Classical respectively. The overall
graduation rate as of 2007 is 70.1%, which is close to the
statewide rate of 71% and the national average of 70%.
Culture
The Providence Performing Arts Center
Much of Providence culture is synonymous with
Rhode Island culture. Like the state,
the city has a
non-rhotic accent which
can be heard on local media. Providence also shares Rhode Island's
affinity for coffee, as the former has the most coffee/doughnut
shops per capita of any city in the country. Providence is also
reputed to have the highest number of restaurants per capita, many
of which are founded and/or staffed by its own Johnson & Wales
graduates.
has several ethnic neighborhoods, notably
Federal Hill and the
North End
(Italian),
Fox Point (
Cape
Verdean
and Portuguese),
West End (mainly Central
American and Asians), and
Smith Hill (Irish with
miscellaneous enclaves of other groups). There are also many
dedicated community organizations and arts associations located in
the city.
The city gained the reputation as one of the most active and
growing
LGBT communities in the Northeast; the
rate of reported gay and lesbian relationships is 75% higher than
the national average and Providence has been named among the "Best
Lesbian Places to Live". The current mayor, David Cicilline, won
his election running as an openly gay man, making him the first
openly gay mayor of a U.S. state capital. Former Mayor Cianci
instituted the position of Mayor's Liaison to the Gay and Lesbian
community in the 1990s. There are numerous social and community
organizations supporting the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgender community. Providence is home to the largest
gay bathhouse in New England.
Fireworks at the State House during the 2006 July 4
celebration
During the summer months, the city regularly hosts
WaterFire, an
environmental art installation that
consists of about 100 bonfires that blaze just above the surface of
the three rivers that pass through the middle of downtown
Providence. There are multiple Waterfire events that are
accompanied by various pieces of
classical and
world music. The public art displays, most
notably sculptures, change on a regular basis.
The city
is also the home of the Tony
Award-winning theater group Trinity
Repertory Company
, the Providence Black Repertory Company, and the
Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra. Providence is also
the home of several performing arts centers such as the Veterans
Memorial Auditorium
, the Providence Performing Arts Center, and the
Providence Festival Ballet. The city's underground music
scene, centered around artist-run spaces such as the now-defunct
Fort Thunder, is known in underground
music circles.
Sites of interest
Old Stone Bank and Unitarian
Church
Providence is home to an park system,
notably Waterplace
Park and Riverwalk, Roger Williams Park
, Roger Williams National
Memorial
, and Prospect Terrace Park
, the latter featuring expansive views of the
downtown area. As one of the first cities in the country,
Providence contains many
historic
buildings while the East Side neighborhood in particular
includes the largest contiguous area of buildings listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in the U.S. with many
pre-revolutionary houses.
The East Side is also home to the First
Baptist Church in America
, the oldest Baptist church
in the Americas, founded by Roger Williams in 1638, as well
as the Old
State House, which served as the state's capitol from 1762 to
1904. Nearby is Roger Williams National Memorial.
Downcity
Providence is home to the fourth largest unsupported
dome in the world (the second largest marble dome after
St. Peter's
Basilica
in Rome), as well as the Westminster
Arcade, which is the oldest enclosed shopping center in
the U.S.
The main
art museum is the Rhode Island School of Design
Museum
, which has the twentieth largest collection in the
country. The city's southern waterfront hosts a
decommissioned Cold War era Russian submarine
. In addition to the Providence Public
Library and its nine branches, the city is home to the
Providence Athenæum, the fourth
oldest library in the country. Here, on one of his many visits to
Providence,
Edgar Allan Poe, met and
courted a love interest named
Sarah
Helen Whitman. Poe was a regular fixture there, as was
H. P.
Lovecraft; both of them influential
writers of
gothic literature.
The
Bank of America Skating Center,
formerly the Fleet Skating Center, is located near Kennedy Plaza in
the downtown district, connected by pedestrian tunnel to Waterplace
Park, a cobblestone and concrete park below street
traffic that abuts Providence's three rivers.
The
southern part of the city is home to the famous roadside attraction
Nibbles
Woodaway
(also
known as the "Big Blue Bug"), the world's largest termite, as well as the aforementioned Roger
Williams Park, which contains a zoo, a botanical
center, and the Museum of Natural History and
Planetarium.
Sports
The city
is home to the American Hockey
League team Providence Bruins,
which plays at the Dunkin' Donuts Center
(formerly the Providence Civic Center
). From 1926 to 1972, the AHL's Providence Reds (renamed the Rhode Island
Reds in their last years) played at the Rhode Island
Auditorium
. In 1972, the team relocated to the Providence
Civic Center, where they played until moving to Binghamton
, New
York
, in 1977.
Providence has its own
roller derby
league. Formed in 2004, it currently has four teams: the Providence
Mob Squad, the Sakonnet River Roller Rats, the Old Money Honeys,
and the Rhode Island Riveters.
The NFL's New England Patriots and MLS's New England Revolution play in
Foxborough
, Massachusetts, which is situated halfway between Providence and
Boston. Providence was formerly home to two major league
franchises: the NFL's
Providence
Steam Roller in the 1920s and 1930s, and the
NBA's
Providence Steamrollers in the
1940s. The city is also where
Rocky
Marciano won 29 of his 49 fights.
The city's defunct baseball team, the
Providence Grays, competed in the
National League from 1879 through 1885. The
team defeated the
New York
Metropolitans in baseball's first successful "world
championship series" in
1884. In
1914, after the
Boston Red Sox
purchased
Babe Ruth from the then-minor
league
Baltimore
Orioles, the team prepared Ruth for the major leagues by
sending him to finish the season playing for a minor league team in
Providence that was also known as the Grays.
Today, professional
baseball is offered by the Pawtucket
Red Sox, the AAA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox which plays in nearby Pawtucket
. Most baseball fans—along with the local
media—tend to follow the Boston Red Sox.
Major
colleges and universities fielding NCAA Division I athletic teams
are Brown
University and Providence
College. The latter is a member of the
Big East Conference.
Much local hype is
associated with games between these two schools or the University
of Rhode Island
. Providence has also hosted the
Gravity Games alternative sports tournament
during several recent summers, and was also the first host of
ESPN's
X Games, known in
its first edition as the Extreme Games.
Infrastructure
Health and medicine
Providence from downtown exit ramp off
I-95
Providence is home to
eight hospitals, most
prominently
Rhode Island
Hospital, the largest general acute care hospital in the state.
The hospital is in a complex along
I-95 that includes Hasbro
Children's Hospital and Women and Infants Hospital.
The city is also home
to the Roger Williams
Medical Center, St. Joseph Hospital For Specialty Care (a
division of St. Joseph Health Services Of Rhode Island), The Miriam
Hospital, a major teaching affiliate associated with the Alpert Medical School of Brown
University, as well as
a VA
medical center.
Providence is home to the
Quality Assurance Review
Center (QARC), which performs thousands of
radiotherapy reviews per year. QARC is
primarily supported by grants from the
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
and contracts from the
pharmaceutical
industry. It receives radiotherapy data from around one-thousand
hospitals in both the United States and
abroad.
The center also maintains a strategic
affiliation with the University of Massachusetts Medical
School
in Worcester
, Massachusetts.
The
Rhode Island
Blood Center has its main headquarters in Providence. Since
1979, the Rhode Island Blood Center has been the sole organization
in charge of
blood collection and
testing and distribution of blood
products to 11 hospitals in Rhode Island.
Transportation
RIPTA buses in front of Providence
City Hall
Providence is served by air primarily by the
commercial airfield T.
F. Green Airport in nearby Warwick. General
aviation fields also serve the region.
Due to overcrowding
and Big Dig
complications in Boston, Massport has been promoting T.F.
Green as
an alternative to Boston's Logan International Airport
.
Providence
Station
, located between the Rhode Island
State House and the downtown district, is served by Amtrak and MBTA
Commuter Rail services, with a commuter rail running to
Boston. Approximately 2400 passengers daily pass through the
station. Additionally, funds have been allocated to extend the
commuter rail from Providence to T. F.
Green Airport
terminating at a $222.5 million intermodal
station
to be completed in 2009.
I-95 runs from north to south
through Providence while I-195 connects the city to
eastern Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, including
New
Bedford, Massachusetts, and Cape
Cod
. I-295 encircles Providence
while RI 146 provides a direct connection
with Worcester, Massachusetts. The city has commissioned and begun a
long-term project, the
Iway, to move I-195 not
only for safety reasons, but also to free up land and to reunify
the Jewelry District with Downcity Providence, which had been split
from one another by the highway. The project is estimated to cost
$446 million and be completed in 2012.
Kennedy Plaza, in downtown Providence,
serves as a transportation hub for local public transit as well as
a departure point for
Peter Pan
and
Greyhound bus lines. Public
transit is managed by
Rhode Island Public
Transit Authority (RIPTA). Through RIPTA alone Kennedy Plaza
serves over 71,000 people a day. The majority of the area covered
by RIPTA is served by traditional buses. Of particular note is the
East Side Trolley Tunnel
running under College Hill, the use of which is reserved for RIPTA
buses.
RIPTA also operates the Providence
LINK, a system of tourist
trolleys in downtown Providence, as well as a ferry to Newport between May and October.
Utilities
Electricity and natural gas are provided by
Narragansett Electric Company which is
owned by National Grid USA.
Providence Water is responsible for the
distribution of drinking water, ninety percent of which comes from
the Scituate
Reservoir
about ten miles (16 km) west of downtown, with
contributions coming from four smaller bodies of
water.
Sister cities
Providence has four
sister cities
designated by
Sister Cities
International:
See also
Notes
- Out of cities over 100,000 in population
- Out of cities over 100,000 in population
- (Click on People tab)
- (Providence only)
- This figure is calculated as the sum of individually given
figures from school websites, see: , (Note: exact figures for
Providence Campuses were unavailable. For this estimate two fifths
of the total student body were approximated to go to two of the
five campuses_, , , , , and
- of major U.S cities
- 25,943,883 boardings / 365 days = 71,079 daily.
Further reading
External links
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