PANEL 7
Plan, east elevation, and perspective of the Golden Ball Inn II (never realized) on the corner of Benefit and South Court Streets. The hotel would have includes 120 guest rooms, 180 parking spaces, and a large observation deck, providing a panorama view of the city.
J. HOGUE
I am particularly intrigued by the Golden Ball Inn II, panel 7. If I may quote:
"As the Benefit Street Historic Trail is developed and becomes better known, there should be an increase in the number of out-of-state visitors and a restaurant and inn situated in the center of the area would be justified. [...] The proposed restaurant should also be successful. There are not many good restaurants in the city and one located here would have the advantage of a magnificent view of the entire city."
A magnificent view indeed. The proposed Golden Ball Inn II would have been constructed at the foot of Roger Williams, in fact, "Particular attention has been given to the roof design, as it will be overlooked from Prospect Terrace Park." 120 guest rooms, a large restaurant, a small tea room, bar and cocktail lounge, and parking for 180 (!) cars were all proposed to be integrated into the steep hillside as a series of plazas. The stepped construction would allow terraces where the mod residents of the illustration stare out at the downtown Providence skyline across the way, beneath a spectacularly modern open architectural awning.
From "Points of Historical Interest in the State of Rhode Island", 1911, Rhode Island Historical Society:
"The house at the southeast corner of Benefit and South Court streets was opened by Henry Rice, December 13, 1783, as the 'Golden Ball Inn.' It later became known as the 'Mansion House.' General Washington, accompanied by Thomas Jefferson and George Clinton, was entertained there on August 18, 1790. President Munroe, General Lafayette, and James Russell Lowell are among the distinguished men who have found entertainment at the inn."
Certainly, an urban renewal plan of the late 50s should strive to be rooted in the history of the area. A noble proposal, then, to return the area of Prospect Park to its former glory, one befitting of a sitting US President and another to be. The optimism of the whole proposal is truly admirable, and it shows in these clean and optimistic architectural sketches — drawings which by today's standards still have a sense of modernity, even if it may be retro-modernity.
I do really appreciate an urban renewal proposal that places value on structures that were old at the time, but perhaps not quite old enough to be important. The study admitted that older structures tend to go uncared for longer periods of time, which leads to further dilapidation (a 1950s interpretation of demolition by neglect). At the same, time, if one were to read the rest of the report, one might surmise that they overestimated the importance of the car and wanted to make many concessions in the name of parking. There, too, shared urban lots were proposed to lessen the need for parking directly in front of houses, especially historic structures, but they seem to have underestimated the laziness of people as well.
The Golden Ball Inn II idea is just pure fantasy, in contrast, and that is perhaps why I like it. Based on history with a flair for (retro) modernity. The drawings are precise but vague – is the cladding concrete, brick, or something more exotic? Is the awning concrete or steel? Is the patio a lovely terrazzo? The location and integration at the foot of Prospect Park would have been fantastic. In the end, the idea never took root, of course, and I can't be sure if that is a good thing or a bad.
PS — I love that the Industrial Trust tower was rendered as a simple series of vertical lines, like a true skyscraper ought to be — reaching for only the sky, with very little concern for the ground which holds it up.
MARISA ANGELL
BROWN
"In Panel 7, Warner proposes a mid-sized hotel called the Golden Ball Inn II on the west side of Pratt Street between Bowen and South Court Streets with 120 guest rooms, 180 parking spaces and a large observation deck facing downtown.
Of all of the College Hill panels, this and the following panel (Panel 8) are uniquely dramatic and mysterious; they are like storyboard sketches for a long-lost 1950s-era noir thriller peopled with heroines, villains and “extras.” Who is the woman nearest to us, dressed in a matronly suit and prudent hat, gazing out over downtown through binoculars? Props scattered behind her indicate that she has been passing the afternoon reading. Is she alone? A couple in the background are lost in conversation, while distant figures indicate this deck’s popularity as a safe place to come and gaze on the city from afar, demonstrating both the value of the historic fabric of Providence and also the upside to inserting modern amenities into its historic core.
180 parking spots and 120 rooms: these are most likely suburbanites who have come for a day, a night, or maybe a weekend (it is relevant to remember that by 1960, 1/3 of Americans lived in the suburbs). In the popular imagination, “the city” could be dangerous and dirty – as depicted in film noir of this era, it was an especially threatening place for women, who, in movie after movie, are depicted as victims of the criminal forces at work in the urban jungle.
City of Fear (1958)
Slaughter on Fifth Avenue (1957)
With this context in mind, the meaning of this panel clarifies. Warner’s proposed hotel would offer a zone of refuge, within but apart from the city center, allowing suburbanites – especially fragile suburban women! – to come and enjoy the sights if not the actual sounds of downtown Providence. So anti-city was this era that in a sense this was the most preservation-minded that one could be."
C. MORGAN GREFE
When I became a graduate student at Brown, with no car and living in a one-bedroom, basement apartment, I was often on the lookout for a lovely hotel for my visiting family. Yes, there were modern hotels, but that’s not what I fell in love with in Providence, and not what I wanted for them. I was romanced by the old. The patina. The sense that around any corner could be Job Durfee or Moses Brown. When we lost the Golden Ball Inn, we lost Providence’s very own, “George Washington Slept Here,” claim. But, to be frank, there are many of those, both real and imagined, to visit in other locations. What we really lost was a place for visitors to stay on a bustling historic street. A place where you could rest your head, but lose yourself in the centuries that came before. This is the Providence I left Philadelphia for—and believe me, Philadelphia can hold its own in the history business.
While it is true that I am often struck by the need for more public accommodations on College Hill, I am never thinking of something like that which is expressed on Panel 7 of the College Hill Plan. When I walk down Benefit Street, I am not wishing to find there a large, out of character, mid-century modern hotel. The wonder of Benefit Street for me is the way in which its character has been so well retained—it’s not the individual buildings, but the whole. This is not to say that such a landscape must be stagnant. Nor is it to say that I would not like to stand on a viewing platform to take in the sunset over the city. Rather, anything new, anything deserving of the name of the Golden Ball, should fit in scale and flavor of the historic fabric of the neighborhood. It doesn’t have to be a lie, a pretender to historic status, but it should make sense and avoid any overt trendiness that will disrupt the magical character of this street.
If this plan had come to fruition, it would have changed the tenor of the entire area and most likely have effected what has become such an attraction for residents and visitors from all over the world. To me, the building on Panel 7 could have been anywhere that has a hill, and I want more than that for our Providence.
But, of course, I am a historian!
DAVID BRUSSAT
"Panel 7 represents the plan and elevation of a rebuilt “Golden Ball Inn II (never realized),” according to the description of the panel PPS provided to commenters. How delightful is that parenthetical note! Almost none of the survey’s plans and recommendations were realized, thank God!
It naturally comes to mind that the production and public release of the College Hill Survey was generally coterminous with the production and public release of the Downtown Providence 1970 plan. They were published respectively in 1959 and 1961. Both plans largely embraced the conventional wisdom of their time. Both sacrificed patterns of urbanism and design that had evolved incrementally over centuries in favor of massive experimental dislocations based on untested planning and design theories that have generally proved to be failures at every level of implementation. Both thankfully had minimal impact on Providence, almost all of which was, alas, detrimental to the city and its residents.
Panel 7 represents a perspective rendering of the terrace of the Red Ball Inn II that overlooks Benefit Street and downtown from just below Pratt Street on the steep hill topped by Prospect Terrace with its statue of disco Roger Williams. The Inn and terrace are, predictably, of a design in violent contrast to its historic context.
A passage from the survey, page 187, reads: “Detailed studies of the structures in the area confirm the fact that College Hill does not have a concentration of any one style as is the case in many other cities that have enacted historic area controls. This fact emphasizes the validity of the statement that it makes no sense to prevent the design and construction of any one style of architecture.” So why has only one style, contemporary modernism, been preferred in the survey for new construction?"