Broad Street Stories
About
Broad Street Stories (BSS) was a project formed to create cultural heritage installations along Broad Street in Providence, Rhode Island. BSS models a process of place-keeping in public spaces that is defined and led by Broad Street stakeholders.
Process
What was the process?
Connect: Winter 2023
Bring together the people and voices of Broad Street to share and learn the history and stories of the neighborhood. Reflect on what should be celebrated.
Create: Summer 2023-Fall 2024
Explore through creative exercises and engagement in the neighborhood to develop a language of forms and materials.
Construct: Winter 2025-Summer 2025
Seek out craftspeople and experts to fabricate our vision.
Celebrate: Summer 2025
Gather with neighbors to celebrate and share our hard work.
Communicate: Fall 2025 – Ongoing
Share what we’ve learned with our neighbors and with people in other communities to empower them to create in their neighborhoods.
The Process in Action
Community Design Feedback/Construct, winter 2025-summer 2025
After nearly three years of community-learning and listening, designers Sy and Kimberli Meyer are creating three low-frequency radio stations along Broad Street as the final place-making offering — one near Grace Church Cemetery, another near the Broad Street Synagogue and a third at the site of the former Fefa’s Market. Passersby will be able to broadcast live and tune into these solar-powered radios 24-7, adding their own Broad Street story to the landscape while also learning more about each of these significant places.
On June 3, 2025, we held the first of two community feedback sessions at the Gateway Center on Broad St where any interested person was invited to hear the idea and offer input. Participants reflected on the colors and images on each of the three installations. We heard enthusiasm for various ideas on how to program the radios, from tuning into DJ sets on car stereos to proposing marriages over the radio. Participants also talked about the difference between the three sites and Broad Street’s iconic murals.
On June 4, 2025, we held the second community feedback session as a virtual meeting. Participants named a desire to see intention and funding put toward programming the radios in order to seed the community’s creativity and ensure that the City has a maintenance plan for the installations.
You can see a video of the on-line session here.
You can read a transcript of the meeting here.
Thanks to everyone who has offered their insights along the way and look out for these three new public art pieces in August.
Posters/Create, summer 2023-fall 2024
In spring/summer 2024, BSS team members installed posters on the light posts on Broad Street between Trinity Square and Roger Williams Park. They included images of the neighborhood from past and present, and bits of information on local heritage and culture. Read below on where we found the images, and where you can find the sources for the information on each poster.
A 1953 article in the Providence Journal quoted a man who claimed his grandfather named the place for the street pattern rather than for the church.
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According to the Trinity United Methodist Church website, the Square was named in 1875.
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The top image of the poster is a vintage postcard found in the digital archives of the Smith-Appleby House Museum at the Historical Society of Smithfield.
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The bottom image of the poster is from a mural at the Salvation Army at 386 Broad St. by artist and director of City Love Katherine Gosnell, photographed by Tamara Metz.
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According to digital records this portrait was taken in 1897, the same year as the first movie projector and the first North American subway (which was in Boston!).
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Her father was a preacher at the church where she started singing as a child.
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The background image of this poster is from a vintage photo of Broad Street. We don’t know who took the photo or when they took it, but we know it’s from a time before cars were invented.
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The word Providence is from a photo taken by Tamara Metz of the Providence Automotive Engineering Company at 773 Broad Street.
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According to the cemetery website, the sofa was built so that the head of the family could sit on it. He liked to watch workers carve another piece of stone, a 12 foot granite slab, into the shape of a church where his family would be buried. Read more about the Williamson family with the link below.
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The flower on this poster is called a daylily. You can find daylillies growing all over the cemetery and around Rhode Island. This drawing was made the year before the sofa was carved.
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The background image in this poster is from a hand drawn map of the cemetery from 1913. You can find it on the Grace Church Cemetery website linked below.
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For a complete list of the Jewish owned businesses in this image, see page 191 in the link below.
Read the whole article to learn where Jewish families moved from, the jobs they had, and the addresses where they worked and worshiped.
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The color photographs by Tamara Metz are of a neighbor walking on Broad Street, and of the dentils at the bottom of the pediment of the synagogue at 688 Broad Street.
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The black and white image is of Willard Ave. between Staniford and Plain. On the left side of the picture you can see the sign for Perler’s Bakery, one of many Jewish bakers in southern Providence at the time.
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Quoted in this article in the RI Herald, “southern hospitality was not extended to us.” For more on the rabbis who marched with Dr. King and their experience in Alabama, read the link below.
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The black and white image is a photograph of the synagogue interior. For more on the history of the building and the people who worshiped there, visit the site linked below.
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The sidewalk mural was organized by Rhode Island Latino Arts.
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The headstone photo was taken by public historian Traci Piccard. For stories on the people laid to rest in the cemetery, visit the website linked below.
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The indigenous walking paths in Rhode Island are often referred to as the Pequot Trail. However Broad Street is in the traditional lands of the Narraganset people. For more on Narraganset culture visit the tribal council website, linked below.
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Broad Street could be named in the tradition of renaming indigenous paths. In Manhattan the Wickquasgeck path was renamed in Dutch as Brede weg, later translated to English as Broadway. For more click the link below.
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The aerial image is taken in the early to mid 1900s by Avery Lord. You can find more aerial images of Providence in the Providence Public Library digital archives with the link below.
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Photo of the red horsechestnut tree in bloom taken by Tamara Metz on Broad St. Like most of us, it’s not native to Rhode Island.
The bike path image is included as a reminder that the same road was changed again in 2022 to include a dedicated bike lane.
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The background photo is of an actual electric street car that operated on Broad Street. The photo from the Roger Williams Park Conservancy website.
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Street cars are gone, and now auto repair shops are everywhere. This statue made of auto parts is outside La Bosina Muffler & Tire Shop, 776 Broad St. Click below for a map to their location.
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Click the link below to read one historian’s story of how electric street car technology was debated, and who won the debate. What do you think: should electric street cars run on batteries or on overhead electric cables?
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The author of the 2003 volume from the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Society calls the area where Eastern European Jewish immigrants lived Dogtown. This was a common American nickname for Irish neighborhoods in the early 1900’s. See page 100 of the link below for the mention.
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This report from the National Register of Historic Places by the US Department of Interior describes the intersection of Prairie Ave. and Comstock Ave. as Dogtown, the center of Irish settlement in South Providence. See page 24 in the link below.
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The photo of Broad Street contains a reflection of Wesleyan Ave. and Broad Street from the window of BET Salon & Beauty Supply at 589 Broad Street.
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South Providence was annexed to form the new town of Cranston in 1754. It was given back to Providence in 1868. Read more about it in this 2009 paper from the Providence Department of Planning and Development. Click the link to read.
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The business in the background photo of this poster is Kelly’s Burgers at 325-37 Broad Street in the 1960’s. If you were in that spot 100 years earlier, you would have been in Cranston.
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The leaves on this poster are from elm trees which used to line Elmwood Avenue.
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Josefina Rosario known as Doña Fefa came to the US from the Dominican Republic in the mid 1950’s. She became a pillar of the Providence Dominican community. For more on her story, click the link below.
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La Broa Pizza at 925 Broad Street commissioned artist Rene Gomez to paint their sign, pictured here in red. Find the restaurant website linked below.
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The photo of produce was taken by Tamara Metz at El Chiki Fruta on the corner of Broad St. and Byfield, St. at the 95 overpass. For a quote by the owner in the Providence Journal, click the link below.
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The photo of Doña Fefa standing inside her store was taken by an unknown photographer. For more about the image click the link below.
Courtesy of Rhode Island Latino History Digital Collections
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This photo by Rene Gomez is of Quisqueya en Action Dancers performing at the Dominican Parade in 2022. To find local bachata events, use the link below.
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The Providence Dominican parade is organized by Quisqueya in Action. Quisqueya is a term with Taíno roots, the indigenous people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It’s one of the names for their indigenous land.
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According to one of the parade marshals in 2023, 15 thousand people attended the parade and festival. That’s double the population of Lower South Providence.
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Community Champions Kick-Off Meeting/Connect, winter 2023
In April of 2023, ACT gathered a group of Broad St stakeholders to talk about public memory and public art. They shared ideas about what place-keeping means to the Broad St community as well as whose voices and stories should be at the center of the narrative.
Community Connectors
Community Connectors are community leaders with extensive experience organizing, building, connecting, and advocating for the Broad Street Community.
Dwayne Keys
Managing Director, D Key Solution
Marta V. Martinez
Executive Director, Rhode Island Latino Arts
Founder and Executive Director, Nuestras Raíces: The Latino Oral History Project of Rhode Island
Project Facilitators
Project Facilitators are trained designers who help to connect the creative team to resources, ideas, and fabricators to make the team’s vision a reality.
Katie Edmonds
Tamara Metz
Nonprofit Administration
Broad Street Stories is managed by Rhode Island Latino Arts.
City Support
Broad Street Stories is in partnership with City of Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism.
Funders
This project has been funded by National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Telling the Full History Preservation Fund, with support from National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Trust or the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Broad Street Stories has received funding from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.
This project has been made possible in part by a Rhode Island Foundation Community Grant
This project is funded by RI Rebounds – Outdoor and Public Space Capital Improvements and Events Initiative
