The Community Libraries of Providence (CLPVD) may open a new branch in Silver Lake in the former Ralph Street School.
Providence Redevelopment Agency (PRA) authorized Joe Mulligan, executive director of the PRA and director of planning and development for the city, to negotiate with CLPVD regarding 22 Rye Street at its April 2 meeting.
Representatives from CLPVD — Jordan Day, board president for CLPVD, and Milton Baxter, a real estate development consultant — detailed the proposal prior to the vote, including plans for programming in the building and funding sources for the redevelopment.
Currently, the Silver Lake neighborhood is served by the Olneyville CLPVD branch in Olneyville Square. The Olneyville branch is a five-minute drive and 15-minute walk (including passing under Route 6) from the proposed Rye Street site. The Olneyville branch is small and prone to flooding, Baxter shared, and it is not currently handicap accessible.
Baxter said that the dense residential area is “underserved from the library’s perspective,” and added that “there was a lot of community support for community use” in the space. The PRA acquired the property in 2020, property records show.
“The program for 22 Rye Street would be to create a state-of-the-art … high-community-impact facility that will provide resources for all of Silver Lake,” Baxter said. The building is proposed to be adaptively reused, not demolished. It would include children’s, teen’s, and adult libraries, a Spanish language library, and the Entrepreneurship Center. CLPVD is also proposing including a used bookstore, space for GED classes, makers’ space, community meeting spaces, a playground, and administrative offices for the library staff. Currently, the CLPVD administrative staff is split between the Knight Memorial and Rochambeau branches.
“One of the things that we heard from some of the members of communities [is that] there isn’t an awful lot of space available to hold community meetings, and so this configuration will allow for the space that’s dividable into two sections of community meetings,” Baxter continued. The new design would allow the first floor to be secured when staff isn’t on the premises, while the “upper level will still be accessible to people who are coming for community meetings or classes or to the bookstore,” Baxter said.
CLPVD estimates that the total cost of redevelopment will clock in just shy of $10 million, which will be a fundraising challenge. But Day said they were prepared to take that challenge head-on, and the first million has already been secured.
“Our board is full of people who have done capital campaigns or fundraising professionals, and we’re working within their network to identify the right people to be part of our team to make sure that we’re able to finance this moving forward,” Day said. “Milton has said this 1000 times, and I hope it’s right that the first million dollars is the hardest — so now that we have that, I feel like the road ahead should be smooth, but I’m willing to pave roads myself if I have to.”
Despite the age of the building and its vacancy, Mulligan said, the building’s envelope is in decent shape. The “space is well intact,” he said. “It’s a very simple building. There’s not a lot of complexity to it, and it’s been well maintained,” he added, saying that the maintenance of the building was down to “sheer luck.”
A National Register nomination prepared by Edward Connors & Associates in 2021 details some of the history of the site. The building was constructed in 1902 on the site of a former school that had been constructed around 1860. After parts of Olneyville and Johnston were annexed by Providence, the City wanted to modernize and replace the schools it had acquired.
The building was originally at the address 71 Ralph Street (hence the name “Ralph Street School”) and was designed by Angell and Swift architects. Hartwell, Williams, and Kingston General Contractors completed the building, and the school opened in the fall of 1903, according to the report.
“The Ralph Street School remained in service as a city primary school until the early 1980s. In 1985, it housed Providence Head Start, a federal anti-poverty program. After the closing of Head Start at this location, other non-profit organizations occupied the building until recent years,” the nomination reads. “The building, currently vacant, is owned by the Providence Redevelopment Agency and is currently under consideration for adaptive reuse.”
The property is just over 20,000 square feet and is two stories with a “mostly finished basement,” according to the request for proposals the PRA put out last summer. Habitat for Humanity Providence considered redeveloping the property in 2022.
The PRA discussed whether CLPVD acquiring or leasing the property would make the most sense, given the complex master agreement between the city and CLPVD for the nine existing branch buildings. The committee determined that those details would be worked out further down the line.
Baxter said that when the library was looking for a new space, 22 Rye Street “immediately came to mind, just because of its location, its size, it just met all the criteria of what the library was looking to accomplish,” he said. “And as we dug into this potential site … it became more and more clear that this proposed use makes the best use of a public asset.”
“It’s a high-impact community asset. It supports education, literacy, workforce development, and it aligns with the overall community vision for the Silver Lake and Olneyville neighborhoods,” Baxter said.
Originally posted April 7, 2025
By Katy Pickens / Planning & Preservation Writer / kpickens@ppsri.org