Did you know there was a prison under the Providence Place Mall, an early customs house below Hemenway’s Restaurant on South Water Street, or a red-light district beneath the Providence train station? In the winter of 1981-1982, architectural historian Myron Stachiw worked on a site underneath where the train station now stands. The Public Archaeology Lab in Pawtucket, which was just establishing itself as a provider of cultural resource management services, was hired to process the finds.
Although it was winter, work began outside, and then with freezing weather and snow, it continued under tents with huge kerosene heaters to keep the ground thawed. An area known as Snowtown, renowned for its dance halls, brothels, and gambling houses in the early nineteenth century, was uncovered. Beneath it, on the shores of the Great Cove lay a Native American summer camp close to where the state house now stands on Smith Hill.
This part of town was inhabited by free black residents who were driven out of an area named Hardscrabble after a race riot there in 1824. Its location is not known but it is thought to have been near Snowtown where sewer pipes emptied into the now filled-in cove. The cause of the riot is not entirely clear, but ultimately the neighborhood gained a bad reputation that was enhanced by the Irish sailors who made use of the area’s entertainments. Racist white factory workers were only too ready to lay the blame on the black population.
“The feeling against the colored people was very bitter,” recalled black Providence resident William J. Brown, in 1883 “The colored people themselves were ignorant of the cause, unless it could be attributed to our condition, not having the means to raise themselves in the scale of wealth and affluence.”
The riot, which destroyed and looted some twenty houses, may have begun when a black resident refused to step aside for a white man on the sidewalk. Of the eleven “gentlemen” (as they were described) charged with rioting, only two were found guilty and, because of legal technicalities, were allowed to go free, while charges were dropped against the other nine. Snowtown saw its own race riot in 1831 when seven houses were destroyed. Eventually, the area was taken over by the railroad.
On the Snowtown site fragments of luxury goods from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were found: blue and white pearl ware, a glass decanter, Delft tile fragments, all in association with a wood-lined hole.
Luxury goods from Snowtown: L: base of a cut glass decanter R: A Delft tile ( Courtesy of the Public Archaeology Lab)
These finds raise all kinds of questions for which the written record has no answers since it only records the spectacular, the riots, not the daily details of the inhabitants’ lives. We can only surmise why fragments of high-end goods cropped up in this area. Might they have been gifts to ladies of the night from well-heeled East Side customers? A more likely scenario was shared by Heather Olson of the Public Archaeology Lab: “Providence was a really important port city with a wide variety of people” she said of this mixed population of mariners, domestic servants, and those in maritime trades, amongst other working people. Such goods she added “could have been gifts, stolen, or bought at auctions – when people ran into debt, they often sold all their possessions.” Her interest is in “. . . finding out about everyday people, not the people who write. The industrial revolution brought outsiders into urban environments and archaeology can give clues as to how they established homes, jobs and so forth.”
Two years after the Snowtown dig, Stachiw was working on another project. A site between South Main Street and South Water Street was about to be developed by Old Stone Square Associates with the Dimeo Construction Company. Indeed, they had already broken ground. Eighteenth-century maps of the area, an early nineteenth-century painting, and the historic record that it was the site of Providence’s 1818 customs house and historic waterfront, gave him the information that the site was significant. Using considerable powers of persuasion, Stachiw managed to get the developer and the construction company to allow an archaeological investigation. They agreed to help and provided funding on the condition that workers arrive when construction had finished for the day and then work until midnight. They provided both a mechanical digger to remove the top layer of dirt that had been brought in from elsewhere to level the site, and the arc lights necessary to see after dark. Five wood-framed and brick buildings erected in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century existed on the site until the early twentieth century after which it became a parking lot. There was a good chance that the site had been undisturbed by later construction.
Under the arc lights and late into the night the group of archaeologists developed a camaraderie and sense of purpose that was maintained throughout the small window of opportunity offered. Despite the conditions, the group discovered not only the 1818 United States Customs House, but also the Ebenezer Tyler house of 1742 and a foundation wall of a house built by John Brown in the 1770s. In addition, the trench exposed the foundation of the 1822 Crawford Allen brick store as well as the pilings of an early wharf. Information from domestic refuse and floral analysis gave more clues about lifestyles and vegetation in the area. Before houses were built, the area was one of wharves and warehouses belonging to the town’s merchants and sea captains. Evidence of even earlier structures dating from the 1740s was also unearthed along with glass, bone, shell, and pottery dateable to that period. The gangways down to the river were uncovered; these became dumping grounds for refuse. In 1749 the town council requested they be cleared but the response was lackluster enough to leave behind plenty of “treasures” for archaeologists. Eventually, these passageways to the water were buried by the construction of the Customs House which sealed them and provided the important clue that anything found in them would be no later than 1818.
Another interesting find was a seawall constructed in 1816 or 1817, a hefty project erected after the Great Gale of 1815, a massive hurricane that flooded the area, washed away the bridge, and destroyed some 35 ships and about 500 houses as well as other buildings. Only after this catastrophe was South Water Street laid out in 1817. A detailed archaeological report was published in Rhode Island History. When driving or walking past Hemenway’s Restaurant, think about what lies below it.
Lying under the Providence Place Mall was the first penitentiary in Rhode Island, the State Prison, built in 1838 and in use until 1877 when the new state prison was built in Cranston. It remained in service as a boarding house until it was demolished in 1894. In 1898 a new building for Rhode Island College was erected on the same site and remained in use until the 1950s when the college moved to the Mount Pleasant area.
It was torn down in the 1990s to make way for the mall. Archaeologists got to work on the site before the mall construction began. Heather Olson said that the prison was for the time “a novel idea as it sought to rehabilitate prisoners as an alternative to physical punishment. It taught them religion and literacy and they learned a trade.” She added that, while incarcerated, the prisoners made, amongst other things, shoes and fans for ladies that were boxed as if made in France. It is thought that Thomas Dorr, of Dorr Rebellion fame, who was imprisoned there may have made some of them. Examples of these fans can be found in the RISD museum’s collection.
According to Spencer Harrington in Archaeology magazine (volume 50, number 6 November/December 1997), the archaeologists discovered the small cells (6ft x10ft) and even smaller punishment rooms (3.5 ft x 6ft) of this harsh and apparently foul-smelling structure described in a newspaper report of the time as “gruesome…of all prisons the most prisonlike in outward show, dreary to see, dreary in history.” It specialized in solitary confinement and provided no exercise yards until prisoners began hallucinating. By the 1840s an outdoor yard was constructed and by the 1850s the prison could no longer sustain solitary confinement for all and placed two prisoners in each cell. By this time inmates were allowed to work in the prison shop, making a range of products including buttons, shoes, furniture, clothing, and blankets.
Numerous fragments of tobacco pipes were unearthed in the dig with “Home Rule” inscribed on them, revealing that many inmates were Irish immigrants who supported the movement to separate from Britain. Also uncovered was a small machine shop with evidence of the items made in the prison shop. Archaeologists found that the prison buildings were of inferior construction and that the foul smell that emanated from the area was due to the sewer pipes not being laid on a steep enough grade to prevent clogs and back-ups.
A chamber pot, a whiskey bottle, and a ceramic tooth powder container were among the wide range of artifacts uncovered at the site.
Heather Olson, of the Public Archaeology Lab, notes that buildings above ground can also preserve layers of history. The Old Brick Schoolhouse on Meeting Street, for example, although still standing, has a many-layered past in various iterations. Built in 1766, it was a free school that focused on reading and moral training on the first floor. On the second floor was a private Latin School until 1771. During the Revolutionary War, the building became a cartridge manufacturing facility and a storage place for munitions.
After the war, Rhode Island College University Grammar School repaired and renovated the building, which was eventually purchased by the state and opened as a free school in 1800 for children of color until 1867. By 1865 the second floor may have become a cooking school, and after 1867 the school offered evening classes until 1893. In 1897 it reopened as the Meeting Street Cooking School and all 8th grade girls in grammar schools (which provided education for students aged 10 to 14) were required to attend for half a year. Boys could also enroll but it was optional for them. By 1907 the cooking school had closed, and the school took on yet another identity as the first “Fresh Air” school in the nation for children with tuberculosis.
The school still stands, today as the headquarters of the Providence Preservation Society, but its long-documented history was enhanced by a historic structure report conducted in 2013 by Myron Stachiw. Myron calls his work “buildings archaeology” and explains in his report that this is “in essence a forensic investigation of the building’s fabric . . . conducted according to rules of archaeological investigation.” This approach includes analysis of layers of paint as well as changes to the interior floor plans and renovations over time. During the investigation, rubble underneath the present ground floor yielded clues of previous iterations of the building. Eighteenth and early nineteenth-century newspaper fragments turned up together with pieces of slate pencils and slate tablets, marbles, pieces of cloth and wallpaper, and even fragments of penmanship exercises. Plaster fragments helped sequence when the walls were plastered and replastered. Two steatite tablets that were used as heating devices by the children in the Fresh Air school also turned up. Throughout the winter months all the windows were left wide open, and the children, bundled up in hats and coats, encased in sleeping bag-like wrappers up to their waists, warmed their feet on the heated stones.
R: Finds from the Fresh Air School including steatite blocks (top left) (Courtesy of the Public Archaeology Lab).
All the debris at this site may yield yet further treats in the form of intact layers from the burning of the Providence County Court House in 1758, and gray ash from this conflagration was found under the edges of the rubble heap.
National Geographic claims that articles about archaeology are among its most read and for good reason. History is one thing, but the hands-on nature of archaeology gives us a real sense of connection with the past and can, in turn, illuminate the drier historical record. In addition, the happy marriage of working with head and hands and with a group of like-minded people creates a sense of balance and contentment that is irresistible. An archaeology program in the UK, Operation Nightingale, founded in 2011 is designed as therapy for military veterans suffering from PTSD. Working outside, solving problems as a team, and achieving results have made the program a real success. Whether it is therapy, the fascination of seeking one’s roots or just having a sense of a time before now, archaeological investigation somehow penetrates the present as a ghost of times gone by, drawing us into what has gone before and allowing us to understand we are all products of the past.
For more information about the Public Archaeology Lab and its programs go to https://www.palinc.com
Ruth Marris-Macaulay is a retired educator who taught at Lincoln School in Providence for 34 years. Born in England she has lived in the United States for 45 years and became a citizen in 2000. She has a bachelor’s degree in Ancient History & Archaeology from the University of Leeds, England, and a master’s degree in American Civilization from Brown University. For 20 years she worked during summers as a mentor teacher to students in Brown’s Teacher Education Program and was a Visiting Lecturer in the Education Department at Brown for a year, doing weekly observations of student teachers in Providence public schools.
