PANEL 2
Perspective of South Main Street showing rehabilitated buildings, to be divided into apartments and offices, with shops on the first floor, and new 4-story apartment houses to the north and south, set back from the street, with parking behind the northern apartments.
JOHN R. TSCHIRCH
"Mid-century Modernism is overt in this plan for South Main Street. The integration of contemporary architecture, which makes no effort to nod to the past, into a historic corridor is a thought provoking and much debated approach to urban design and preservation. One major weakness of the plan is the setback of the proposed apartments with a large open square in front. This would have radically changed the scale of the streetscape, which must be retained if the character of a place is to be preserved. Modern apartments did appear on South Main Street, but adjacent to the road and in keeping with the height of the nearby 18th and 19th century buildings.
Old and new happily co-existing in historic districts is an ongoing challenge, depending on one’s perspective and interests. The historically inclined often desire an almost complete recreation of the past; others view contemporary design as lending vibrancy to an area. Aesthetes just want things, whether old or new, to be pretty, a most subjective goal indeed. Has Providence attained a balance of old and new, of the beautiful, cool and interesting? I think so. Look at these plans and judge for yourself."
LAURIE VOLK & TODD ZIMMERMAN
"This very clearly demonstrates the difference between architecture and urbanism. As architecture, these elegant Mid-Century building forms could, with proper block disposition, work quite nicely and unobtrusively within the existing urban fabric. Instead, with the walled setback divorced from local precedent, they somehow manage both to address the street and ignore it at the same time. The plaza might be nice for residents in just the right weather conditions; the sidewalk would be a bore for pedestrians. Unfortunately, the reality of this block is much worse: a poor pastiche of “New England” architecture with the backs of the buildings facing South Main Street forming a streetscape that is probably at its most lively when the paltry strip of grass is being mowed."
DAVID BRUSSAT
"Panel 2 represents the real intent of all too many of the survey’s recommendations: too much renewal and much less rehabilitation than advertised. The four apartment houses visible come with a deck that is unlikely to survive the pressure to turn the space into parking. If that is South Main crossing up and right from the bottom of the image, then it appears that Benefit Street will get a swath of parking. Off to the left and to the right of this image, unseen, are the stretches of new construction to its north (near what is now Old Stone Square) and the tower complex to its south.
That the survey chose to make the new houses and buildings so different from the demolished structures and their neighbors is puzzling in the extreme. Yes, modern architecture was reaching the apogee of its power, but the survey was supposed to be a demonstration of how renewal could help to preserve a historic district, not ruin it. Architects had not then and still have not abandoned traditional styles for residential infill. There was at that time literally no good, non-ideological reason why familiar styles of architecture could not have been used as infill."